Mozart

WOLFGANG THEOPHILUS (AMADEUS) MOZART

born: Salzburg, 27 January 1756

died: Vienna, 5 December 1791, aged thirty-five

Mozart gives us the promise of being greeted in Heaven
by voices similar to his.
( Samuel Johnson )

I write music as a sow piddles.
( Mozart )

For me [the greatest of all composers] is Mozart.
Mozart is perfection: he is Grecian, whereas Beethoven is Roman.
The Greek is great, the Roman is Colossal.
I prefer the great.
( Ravel )

I have always reckoned myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart,
and shall do so until the day of my death.
( Beethoven )

Mozart is absolute beauty, perfect purity.
He was music incarnate.
( Ravel )

Don Giovanni is the most humane and tolerant piece
about sacred and profane love that anybody has ever written.
( Virgil Thompson )

He knows how to make great effects better than any of us;
when he chooses he can strike like a thunderbolt.
( Mozart, on Handel )

Beethoven is a genius able to dispense with taste.
Mozart, his equal in genius,
has, in addition, the most delicate taste.
( Debussy )

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination
nor both go into the making of genius.
Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
( Mozart )

Mozart is sweet sunshine.
( Dvorak )

Mozart was somewhat of a prude.
( James Donelan )

I have never heard anybody else play
with so much mind and charm as Mozart.
( Clementi )

I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance,
the way in which I write for string quartet,
then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart.
And I am proud of it!
( Schönberg )

This boy will throw us all into the shade
( Johann Adolf Hasse, on Mozart, aged 11 )

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart,
which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.
( Rebecca West )

As long as I live, I shall never forget Mozart’s playing –
it went straight to the heart.
( Haydn )

From Haydn I first learned how to compose a quartet.
( Mozart )

I declare to you before God as a man of honor, that your son
is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by reputation;
he has taste, and beyond that
the most consummate knowledge of the art of composition.
( Haydn, to Leopold Mozart )

Never has the natural strife between homophony and polyphony,
between melody and counterpoint, been more completely satisfied.
( Alfred Einstein, on Mozart )

I am, so to speak, so swallowed up in music
that I am busy with it all day long –
speculating, studying, considering.
( Mozart )

[Composing] to me is like a vivid dream.
( Mozart )

I compare a good melodist to a fine race horse,
a contrapuntist to a hack post-horse.
( Mozart )

Melody is the essence of music.
( Mozart )

It is indeed a pity to lose so great a genius.
( Salieri, on Mozart’s death )