Something special about Mozart

 Mozart!

(c) By Agnes Selby, Guest Writer-Friend

I can't remember a time when I was not "acquainted" with Mozart. What with the wonderful Mozart biscuits my grandmother baked and the special Viennese chicken coated in breadcrumbs and fried in butter, Mozart came to me first through my stomach. My grandmother's Mozart recipe book is now mine and although we do not fry in butter in a cardiologist's household, the pleasant memories still persist.

As time went on it was his music that engaged my heart. His piano concertos were my staple diet throughout both of my pregnancies for his music was the food I craved.

Later still, when "Amadeus" played in all the theatres around the world, I became alarmed that my Mozart had chosen a silly girl like Constanze for a wife. We lived in Philadelphia at the time and I read all about Constanze in the Curtis Institute's Library. I bought all the books I could find. Then I left for Salzburg where, through the courtesy of the Mozarteum, I spent a month locked up in the Mozarteum archives reading Constanze's letters and her diaries and all I could find about her in that vast library.

Mozart in Novels

Novels that mention Mozart

1. Da Vinci Code

For anyone familiar with Dan Brown’s controversial bestseller The Da Vinci Code, we come across a reference in page 134, well, in some of our own copies. Robert Langdon the Professor is talking to his students about PHI, which he calls the Divine Proportion or 1.618. He says it occurs in nature, in art, in architecture, and “appeared in the organizational structure of Mozart’s sonatas.”  Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (p.134)

(Contributed by Terry McIntee) 

2. An Angel at my Table

"One evening however, when Karl and Kay brought two records, 'A Little Night Music' and Beethoven's Violin Concerto played by David Oistrach, Frank said, 'We can play them on Janet's radiogram.' Accepting it. I can see that room with the bare wallboard and the wooden floor which Frank oiled each Saturday morning with a mop soaked in linseed oil ('it keeps down the dust'), with the canvas chairs ('the most comfortable type') with their wooden arms, the room that already held all the characters from War and Peace, Anna Karenina, the stories of Tolstoy and Chekhov, from Proust, Flaubert, Olive Schreiner, Doris Lessing, receiving now the music of Mozart and Beethoven while we listen."  An Angel at my Table by Janet Frame (p.152, Vintage Edition)

(Contributed by Terry McIntee)

3.   Snow Falling on Cedars

This is another of those books we read along the way with a mention of Mozart.  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.  Snow Falling on Cedars is a novel written by David Guterson published by Vintage Books. It's supposed to be inspired by an all-time bestseller, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

(Contributed by Liz Ringrose.)



Note: One of my Mozart groups way back July 2006 planned on listing novels where Mozart is quoted. This list has been revived today, Nov 18, 2012,  intended to be an ongoing post, with latest contribution/s added.

Cousin Marianne: Guardian of Mozart Sacred Works

Mozart's cousin Marianne and his sacred works or How so many Mozart masses came to Augsburg

© by Susanne M. Scholze, Guest Writer-Friend

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart wrote the most wonderful music I can think of. Nowadays, his music can be heard either performed life in concert, or from a CD, privately or through the radio, internet, DVD – however, wherever. Thanks to modern technology it is available at practically any time. I do not know whether all of his known 626 works are currently available on CD, but in this very year 2006, his 250^th anniversary, this might very well be possible. Operas, concertos, divertimenti, arias, chamber music, Lieder, Tänze. And church music. Whatever you wish. This hasn’t been always so. 

During his lifetime, the places where lucky people got to hear, for example, his church music performed were – only churches, of course. At that time, the two churches worldwide that performed his divine music regularly were the Salzburg Cathedral, and the Heilig Kreuz Monastery in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. Augsburg? How come? 

Leopold Mozart

Mozart's Father: Leopold Mozart 

German Violinist, Teacher, Composer and Theorist, Wolfgang Mozart's father

While Leopold Mozart (1719-1787), is best known as the devoted father of musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was a distinguished violinist, a violin teacher, composer and theorist.  Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was born on November 14, 1719 in Augsburg, Germany, to a respectable family of tradesmen. Today he is best known as the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.

Bragg's Law a Cornerstone of Crystallography

Bragg's Law: a cornerstone of the science of crystallography

In physics parlance, Bragg's Law gives the angles for coherent and incoherent scattering from a crystal lattice. The law was derived by physicist Sir William Lawrence Bragg in 1912 and first presented on 11 November of the same year to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. In mineralogy and crystallography, a crystal structure is a unique arrangement of atoms or molecules in a crystalline liquid or solid.

The Bragg's Law Equation:

Where n is an integer, λ is the wavelength of incident wave, d is the spacing between the planes in the atomic lattice, and θ is the angle between the incident ray and the scattering planes. Note that moving particles, including electrons, protons and neutrons, have an associated De Broglie wavelength.

Verdi Opera La forza del destino

Classical Music Dateline: November 10


November 10, 1862. The opera of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, La Forza del destino, which had been commissioned by the Russian Imperial Opera, premiered in Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of St. Petersburg. The libretto of La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Alvaro o La Fuerza de Sino (1835), by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager.



After some revisions, performances were held in Rome and Madrid. Subsequently, the opera travelled to New York, Vienna, Buenos Aires and London. Verdi made other revisions, with additions by Antonio Ghislanzoni, which premiered at La Scala, Milan in 1869. This has become the "standard" performance version. La forza del destino is part of the standard operatic repertoire. There are a number of recordings of it regularly performed.


Video Credit:

Montserrat Caballe "Pace, pace mio Dio" La forza del destino, with Vienna State Opera. Youtube, uploaded by Oneguin65. Accessed October 10, 2017.

Latest update: October 10, 2017. 

Resources:

Verdi La Forza del Destino (English Libretto).

Verdi La Forza del Destino (Italian Libretto). 


(c) 2012-2017. Tel Asiado. Written for Inspired Pen. All rights reserved. 

Marie Skłodowska Curie

Science / Scientist's Datebook: November 7

 

Polish-French Chemist and Physicist, famous for pioneering work on Radioactivity

Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), was born in Warsaw, Poland. She was a chemist and physicist famous for her pioneering work on radioactivity. She was married to a fellow scientist, Pierre Curie, and mother of Irène Joliot-Curie and Ève Curie.

Irene followed in her parents' footsteps also becoming a Nobel laureate in Chemistry (1935) with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Eve (Ève Denise Curie Labouisse) was a writer, journalist and pianist. Ève was the only member of her family who did not choose a career as a scientist, however, her husband Henry Richardson Labouisse, Jr., American diplomat and statesman, collected the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on behalf of UNICEF.