Summary:
Offers biographical detail on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Traces his life from a child prodigy to his adult success and popularity. Includes discussion of the film, Amadeus, starring Robert Downey Jr.
Language is an abstract tool that humanity uses to communicate ideas amongst themselves. Though useful, verbal language doesn't always pass an idea concretely. This can be due to two people having different languages, or one person not understanding the language mechanics used by the other person. However, there is another part of language derived from culture--the language of art. Art has various forms, but the most expressive would be music. Of the many music artists, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is perhaps the Shakespeare or Webster of music. Living in the Classical Era, Mozart was a musical genius, his reach communicating to all types of people centuries after his own time.
Mozart was forever a child. Everything he did in life was as a child seeing something for the first time. First, this is seen in his accomplishments. At age four, he had written a concerto; age seven, a symphony; and at age twelve an entire opera. Adult, accomplished composers sometimes had extreme difficulty with these things, things Amadeus had succeeded in producing while still a juvenile.
Second, his child-like nature was seen in his life. Although a musical genius, Wolfgang was by no means, a businessman. He accumulated many unnecessary debts and other hardships with his festive and freelance lifestyle. Always trying to reach a pseudo-social plateau, Wolfgang Mozart created a world that he seemed to escape through his music (a world without financial slavery, family disputes, or political intrigue).
Amadeus Mozart only had to hear a song once, before knowing the song. In Amadeus, the most notable scene is in Germany when Mozart replayed the court composer's song back to him, as well as improving upon it. Mozart had not even been trying to learn the song, but just by being in the background noise, Amadeus's mind had been subtly producing the notes within the genius's head.
As for his own music, Wolfgang Mozart never rewrote compositions. When he had music in mind, he would write the music from mind to paper. There were no copies, no mistakes, just flawless notation from beginning to end of a musical composition. This was and is still almost unheard of. Even today, musicians write a draft, then slowly made changes in notes, keys, bar structures, and so on, especially in film music when trying to meet a certain mood. For Mozart to do this with compositions and then even operas is astounding and a mark of his genius, a mark that was undoubtedly coveted by his peers of the time, as suggested in Amadeus with the court composer's jealousy.
The music produced by Mozart is a paradox to his own person. The music is highly ordered, down to a note; however, his life was a montage of chaotic dissonant moments. The music was a form of release. It seems Mozart's mind took refuge in the music he composed, bringing a surrealistic order to his world. One cannot blame the inherent will to try to bring order to chaos, having lived a random and hectic life from his early days--his early days from when his father paraded him about the country to his party days as an adult.
Amadeus Mozart, as represented in Amadeus, is a good representation of the life that the music genius must have lived. Though a gift to the world through his musical abilities and theories, he is an example of how one needs more then just genius to live and exist.
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