Happy Birthday to Mozart (@ned's favorite composer)

Hello everyone! Today in honor of @Mozart's birthday, I am sharing these videos about his life and music, as well as a cool clip from the movie about him (Amadeus). If you would like to read last year's post, it was 10 Of Mozart's Compositions To Honor His Birthday.

I have decided to include just one piece in this article. Mozart's requiem (only half of which was actually written by Mozart). He died whilst writing it. The piece truly is unique. Later on in this article I will have a scene from Amadeus of the Confutatis, but I am also including the whole requiem. My church choir is performing this requiem this year. I can not wait for that performance. Here is the requiem:

I only managed to watch this first part of the documentary. I did not realize there were three parts. This segment does an excellent job of explaining how Mozart rose to fame, as well as some of the sacrifices and decisions he made early on in his career. I think it is very interesting. Often, when we think of classical composers, we think of old guys 6,000 years ago (I know that is inaccurate) who wrote music because they knew it would be boring. These composers took everything seriously, and were literally a slave to their art. Then we look at the lives of composers such as Mozart, and realize they were really the same as what we may today call "young punks." They were somewhat irresponsible, and had aspects to their life outside of work in the same way that we all do.

Here is the second part. Judging by the title, I would hypothesize that this is more or so about Mozart's career and passion for performance. I will just say that Mozart was probably just as famous in Vienna for his performance and improv skills as he was for being a composer. This is something we often forget in modern times, that these people were also very skilled composers. I feel like we sometimes turn a blind eye towards this aspect of composers.

Here is the third part. The guy made hints in the first video that he thought that Mozart was the first Romantic composer. The guy says that Mozart is a romantic composer because his music expressed how he was feeling. I disagree with that statement. Most modern composers write music to express how they feel. Why don't we call them Romantic (Era) composers. The answer is because the style is different. There are tons of Bach pieces which could be argued to express emotion. These pieces just express it in a different way. The same logic can be applied to Mozart. As a result of this, I still think Mozart is a classical composer.

Here is a cool clip from Amadeus where Mozart dictates the Confutatis from his requiem to Antonio Salieri, with sheet music to depict what is going on. This is quite entertaining even though it is historically inaccurate and Mozart pronounces arpeggios wrong. Here is the video:

Here is the original scene:

Thanks for reading this! I hope you enjoyed this article. I think I will do another ten compositions by Schubert for his birthday this week. I am not sure. Please let me know what you think I should do. See you later!

Also remember to check for: My weekly 7 post, As well as my composer birthday posts
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