Inspired Poetry for Mozart

Poetry competition for Wolfgang Mozart

Wolfgang and the Snow- A Poem for Mozart

By Liz Ringrose

Here's the winning entry for our unique poetry competition few years back, 4 Feb 2006, given by Kris from one of my Mozart's groups, for a Rare Mozart CD award.

And the winner is,  Liz Ringrose!  What a beautiful and heart-warming tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Wolfgang and the Snow

Carriage wheels turning,
rolling, lulling him into half sleep.
Revolutions, repeating, turning and then
hooves, rhythmic clatters and drum punctuations,
the jolt of the carriage, straining on straps,
a whip crack, and allegro along the straight.

The hour strikes, a fugue of bells and carillon
muted on the wind.  He draws back from slumber
gathering rhythms and beats, shaping and forming.

His sister's whisper:  "Wolferl, it's snowing, look at the snow."

He raises reluctant eyelids, sees the cascade,
holds out his palm to the night.

"Mama, he's catching the snow. Wolferl's gathering flakes."

He sighs.  "Not flakes, Dear Sister. Notes."

My Poetry Entries

Child Mozart's Memory

By Tel Asiado

Was Wolfgang 10 or 11?
Oh, but a boy!

He heard songs,
and copied them out from memory.

I need a memory like that.

(*My first entry) to Kris's Rare Mozart CD Competition.

Enjoying Mozart Concerti over Chores

How wonderful,

if for a time,

I've nothing else to do

but listen to your concerti.

No chores at all,

No laundry,

No dishes to wash.

Wolfie -

Don't ever wonder if

such moments of luxury

would never bore me stiff!

(*My second tribute entry)

Note:   This post was originally posted from Classical Music Lounge, sometime Feb 2006, for Kris's Rare Mozart CD competition. It's revisited for Mozart lovers to remember his birthday this year 2012.

Mozarteum at Salzburg

(This very informative and insightful entry came about as a stimulated response from Agnes Selby to my post  entitled  "International Mozart Foundation" dated 21 Sept 2006.  Mrs. Selby is author of Constanze, Mozart's Beloved.)

Dear Tel,

I am most grateful to you for mentioning the year 1841 in your Classical Music Lounge for this is when the Mozarteum was really founded. It is such a long time ago that it is rarely associated with the present International Mozart Foundation which is a non-profit organisation, just as you said in your article. A non-profit organisation allows financial contributors to deduct their contributions from their taxes. Hence the change to the Mozarteum's structure which existed since 1841.

The original Mozarteum was founded when Salzburg's city fathers began to notice the influx of visitors who came to pay homage to Mozart's widow,  Constanze.

Mozart Foundation and Salzburg Mozarteum

Salzburg: Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum

Austria | Salzburg

The International Mozarteum Foundation is a private non-profit organization that focuses on preserving the heritage of Mozart. The foundation was started in 1880 by citizens of the city of Salzburg and has its roots in the “Dom-Musik-Verein und Mozarteum” of 1841. It was established in Salzburg, in September 21, 1880.

Every year, around the time of Mozart’s birthday on January 27, the International Mozarteum Foundation puts an artistic accent on the European concert scene that can hardly be exceeded: the Mozart Week. Top international orchestras, ensembles, conductors, singers and soloists have been performing here for more than 50 years during the Mozart Week. As a compliment to the Mozart Week, the ISM also organizes the concert cycles “Young Artists”, “Rising Stars” and “Chamber Music in the Viennese Hall” between the end of September and June.

Nadia Boulanger

Classical Music / Great Music Teachers

French Teacher, Conductor, Composer

 
Brief biography of Nadia Boulanger, her life and career. One of the most influential women inall of music history, considered the greatest music teacher of the 20^th century. Many of her students became prominent composers.


Nadia Juliette Boulanger (1887-1979), was one of the most influential figures in music during the twentieth century. A distinguished teacher of prominent composers, she was also a conductor and a composer. Although she initially became known as a composer and conductor of major orchestras, her role as music teacher is what she's most famous for.

French poet, playwright and film director Jean Cocteau said of her: “… It is rare that a young musician intrigues us, or that his work at least partially opens a door, without his disclosing that he is a pupil of Nadia Boulanger.”

Boulanger was born in Paris on September 16, 1887, coming from a musical family, with her father, Ernest Boulanger, like his father before him, taught singing at the Paris Conservatoire. Her mother Raissa, a Russian-born princess, was a pupil of her father. She was her first teacher.

At 5 years old, Boulanger could read music. She enrolled at the conservatory at 10 and completed training at 17, by this time, already winning awards for composing. She won second place in France's prestigious Prix de Rome for her cantata, "La Sirene."

Van Loon Lives book review by Agnes Selby

15 August 2006

I am re-reading one of my favourite books, "Van Loon Lives". I can recommend this book. The author is Hendryk van Loon. I have just ordered a copy for my grandchildren from Amazon.com.

It is in this book, where Mozart is invited to dinner with Hans Christian Anderson by van Loon and his friend, Fritz. The Marriage of Figaro is played in the background and Mozart is most impressed with the clarity of the orchestra and how much instruments have improved in quality. Likewise he also loves the sound of the piano and wonders what marvellous compositions he would have composed if only he would have had such a piano.

We meet interesting persons in this book including Beethoven, the Bachs, Elizabeth I and of course, Napoleon and many others.

(Thanks for this contribution Agnes. Agnes Selby is author of Constanze, Mozart's Beloved.)

Review of Two Figaro Operas

ON DVD FOR YOUR LISTENING (AND VIEWING) PLEASURE:

Review of Two Figaro Operas

by Daisy Brambletoes

Well folks, I finally got a copy of the two Figaro operas, directed by Jean-Piere Ponnelle, which I have wanted for many years.

Ponnelle is a fine director of opera-on-film, and has filmed both of these operas with meticulously accurate Spanish settings, which I personally find very refreshing, as most productions are made to look French or Italian. As we all know, Beaumarchais was French, Rossini and DaPonte were Italians, and Mozart, naturally, was German - but the setting was always southern Spain. So the two films score very big here. Musically, they are also both excellent productions, and a great deal of fun to listen to. But after that, things become lightly awkward.

Despite the fact that Hermann Prey plays Figaro in both films, the rest of the cast is almost entirely different. They also seem to be set at different moments in time than doesn't quite juxtapose correctly.

Rossini's opera is clearly set right at the turn of the century with a few 18th century  vestiges, but a mostly early 19th century atmosphere. Add to that, an amusing portrait of Dr.Bartolo looms in the background, which bears a suspicious resemblance to a famous photo of Salvadore Dali. It is fun to watch and listen to, and the humor is as much in the music itself as anything else - a page Rossini borrowed from Mozart's book, no doubt. But the comedy here is almost on a Chuck Jones level, and at times I also almost felt I was watching Disny's comedy-adventure classic, "Zorro". Many visual references are taken from Goya, as well they should be - particularly Don Basilio, the wicked music teacher, who in this production seems to be some kind of alchemist or dark magician, lifted directly from  one of Goya's canvases. (Ponnelle used a similar approach in his film of "Madame Butterfly", showing Chocho against a painted background of flying black crows, creating the look of classic Noh theater.)

The Mozart film, of course, is Mozart at his almost-best (My favorite Mozart opera is still "Die Zauberflote"). In this film, however, Ponnelle falls back on the old gimmick of allowing music to reflect the thoughts of the characters while they stare at the screen with closed mouths. This may work well for reflective arias like those of the Contessa, but it doesn't always work. Cherubino simply looks speechless and floundering, f'rinstance, and other scenes visually static despite the musical quality. Presumably we are there for Mozart alone, but this is still a movie, and you still want it to look right. Mind, of course, the clever staging of Figaro's angry aria in Act Four was quite interesting as Figaro has a musical conversation with himself, and it reminds me of Smeagol vs Gollum in "Lord of the Rings". All the same, in spite of this minor annoyance, the action flows and sparkles, and it is a very enjoyable production. For once Cherubino looks like a boy, and the characters are all well portrayed.

The real problem, however, is one that will forever haunt these two excellent operas. When Beaumarchais wrote the comedies, they flowed together very sensibly and complimented each other. But we've lost something in translation. Mozart's graceful masterpiece involves serious, thought-provoking characters who are funny because Mozart and the circumstances make them so. Rossini, on the other hand, went for laughs and lots of coloratura & patter, and his characters (many of the same ones in Figaro)are cartoon-like people who are difficult to take seriously.

As brilliant as the two operas are individually, they do not stand comfortably together, and even the skills and efforts of Ponnelle to make them do so miss the mark. You can't watch them together and feel as if you are watching a great comedy and its natural sequel. They are just too different in too many ways.

Do I recommend these films? Yes, certainly. But there will always be the caviat that despite characters with the same names, we are looking at two completely different sets of people, as if they live in alternate universes.

Do yourself a favor - buy them or rent them, and watch them - but on two different days.

But they're still fun.

(c) 2006. Tel Asiado. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Mozart in Novels

For Mozart lovers: Novels we reas along the way with a mention of Mozart.

Contributed by Liz Ringrose 

Mozart in "Snow Falling on Cedars


Snow Falling on Cedars is a novel written by David Guterson published by Vintage Books. It's supposed to be inspired by one of my all-time favourite novels, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Thanks Liz.)

"Isn't it great when Mozart pops up in literature and other media? I read Snow Falling on Cedars recently and loved the part where Ishmail Chambers sees a recording of the Jupiter on the record player beside his mother's bed, and he imagines her lying there listening to Mozart."



Mozart in These Foolish things


These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach is published by Random House. Moggach makes us face the realities of aging - sincere, funny and at times terrifying. Still an honest view of old age, what it offers and where it might or leads us.


I also read a humorous book called These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach. In this novel a seriously overworked Indian doctor has to have his ghastly English father in law (Norman) living with him. The old man is uncouth and vulgar. I love this passage:

"Mozart's Requiem. Only then could he become a husband again - a human being, even. The house was so small, with her father in it. Ravi's body was in a permanent state of tension. Every room he went into, Norman was there. Just at the Lacrimosa he would blunder in, the transistor [radio] on a string around his neck burbling the cricket commentary from Sri Lanka."

(Thanks Liz. The use of Mozart's Requiem to me is relevant. Symbolic. Significant.)

Salzburg Festival DVD

9 September 2009


To those interested...

There is a new DVD out on the history of the Salzburg Festival. It's quite well done and very informative. I watched nearly the whole thing today and thought I would let people know about it.

The Salzburg Festival has hosted every great star of the opera and concert hall, from Toscanini to Anne-Sophie Mutter, from Fischer-Dieskau to Barenboim, from Pollini to Mitsuko Uchida. In this film, the first to tell the story of this remarkable Festival, set in the birthplace of Mozart, director Tony Palmer has been granted unprecedented access to Austria's film archives. Highlights include performances of Jedermann from 1920 to the present day featuring actors such as Maximilian Schell
and Klaus Maria Brandauer; Don Giovanni (with Furtwängler in '54 and a controversial performance directed by Peter Sellars in the 1990s); a wealth of footage of Herbert von Karajan, including performances never-before-seen home movies; and footage of the Nazi hierarchy at the
Festival during the Second World War.