Cheer Up!

Even Mozart got bad reviews

^{While looking for music for a quartet I’m coaching, I came across a remarkable disparagement of Mozart’s now-famous String Quartet K. 465, the “Dissonance”, by a contemporary Viennese commenter :}

^{[Quoted in Wikipedia] The writer lamented the waste of Mozart’s prodigious keyboard talent on composition and quipped, “...his new Quartets for 2 violins, viola and bass, which he has dedicated to Haydn, may well be called too highly seasoned-and whose palate can endure this for long?””}

^{The first attack-point really took my breath away: Mozart “wasted” his performance talent by…composing?? Of course, it’s true, I have not heard Mozart perform at the keyboard, and how I wish I could. But the absurdity of basically saying that he should “stick to one thing” and forgo composing (no Requiem…no Magic Flute…no Jupiter Symphony…), well, it is an example of a certain kind of narrowmindedness that any artist must resist. Even if you aren’t on Mozart’s level: do the things you want to do. Explore. Experiment. Enjoy.}

^{Such limiting ideas can as often come from within as from without. Fearing that someone will tell us to “stick to one thing”—stick to doing the thing we do that they understand better, stick to doing what “normal people” do, etc.—we risk ingesting this well-intentioned (perhaps) advice hook, line, and sinker. Sure, it takes courage to go against convention, to push back when someone tries to limit us. Smile and resist. Scream and resist. Either way, resist. Remember Mozart.}

^{The second attack is so “ordinaire” as to be laughable…except that when this kind of pooh-poohing comment is directed at us, it rarely makes us laugh. Imagine, Mozart too “highly-seasoned” —is he a tuna filet? Too “tasty” for whom? Someone that prefers a musical diet of the lukewarm and bland? For women, there is this poisonous variant: “she’s too much”. (The opening of the quartet in question is an amazing string of dissonances.) Followed by the ironic suggestion that Mozart’s music, or more precisely, a “palate” for his music, will not endure…(and yet, 234 years and counting…). Endure it does: as a testament to the human condition; suffering, joy, humor, wit, despair. It’s a God-given “whole enchilada”, you might say. As real a deal as it gets.}

^{(P.S. For this reason, Mozart is not background music!)}

^{So when someone says or writes that your XX is too YY, push it away. Do your thing. Have courage. Cheer yourself on. Make a joke about it, or cry and thrash around—for a bit. Then get back to doing your thing. Remember Mozart.}