Wolfgang Wazart Essays - Mozart Family, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Wazart Essays - Mozart Family, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Wazart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in Austria, the son of Leopold, Kapellmeister to the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. By the age of three he could play the piano, and he was composing by the time he was five; minuets from this period show remarkable understanding of form. Mozart's elder sister Maria Anna (best known as Nannerl) was also a gifted keyboard player, and in 1762 their father took the two prodigies on a short performing tour, of the courts at Vienna and Munich. Encouraged by their reception, they embarked the next year on a longer tour, including two weeks at Versailles, where the children enchanted Louis XV. In 1764 they arrived in London. Here Mozart wrote his first three symphonies, under the influence of Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian, who lived in the city. After their return to Salzburg there followed three trips to Italy between 1769 and 1773. In Rome Mozart heard a performance of Allegri's Misere; the score of this work was closely guarded, but Mozart managed to transcribe the music almost perfectly from memory. On Mozart's first visit to Milan, his opera Mitridate, r di Ponto was successfully produced, followed on a subsequent visit by Lucia Silla. The latter showed signs of the rich, full orchestration that characterizes his later operas. A trip to Vienna in 1773 failed to produce the court appointment that both Mozart and his father wished for him, but did introduce Mozart to the influence of Haydn, whose Sturm und Drang string quartets (Opus 20) had recently been published. The influence is clear in Mozart's six string quartets, K168-173, and in his Symphony in G minor, K183. Another trip in search of patronage ended less happily. Accompanied by his mother, Mozart left Salzburg in 1777, travelling through Mannheim to Paris. But in July 1778 his mother died. Nor was the trip a professional success: no longer able to pass for a prodigy, Mozart's reception there was muted and hopes of a job came nothing. Back in Salzburg Mozart worked for two years as a church organist for the new archbishop. His employer was less kindly disposed to the Mozart family than his predecessor had been, but the composer nonetheless produced some of his earliest masterpieces. The famous Sinfonia concertante for violin, violo and orchestra was written in 1780, and the following year Mozart's first great stage work, the opera Idomeneo, was produced in Munich, where Mozart also wrote his Serenade for 13 wind instruments, K361. On his return from Munich, however, the hostility brewing between him and the archbishop came to a head, and Mozart resigned. On delivering his resignation he was verbally abused and eventually, physically ejected from the archbishop's residence. Without patronage, Mozart was forced to confront the perils of a freelance existence. Initially his efforts met with some success. He took up residence in Vienna and in 1782 his opera Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail (The abdication from the Seraglio) was produced in the city and rapturously received. The same year in Vienna's St Stephen's Cathedral Mozart married Constanze Weber. Soon afterwards he initiated a series of subscription concerts at which he performed his piano concertos and improvised at the keyboard. Most of Mozart's great piano concertos were written for these concerts, including those in C, K467, A, K488 and C minor, K491. In these concertos Mozart brought to the genre a unity and diversity it had not had before, combining bold symphonic richness with passages of subtle delicacy. In 1758 Mozart dedicated to Haydn the six string quartets that now bear Haydn's name. Including in this group are the quartets known as the Hunt, which make use of hunting calls, and the Dissonance, which opens with an eerie succession of dissonant chords. Overwhelmed by their quality, Haydn confessed to Leopold Mozart, 'Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.' The pieces are matched in excellence in Mozart's chamber music output only by his String Quintets, outstanding among which are those in C, K515, G minor, K516 and D, K593. Also in 178 Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte collaborated on the first of a series of operatic masterpieces. Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) was begun that year and performed in 1786 to an enthusiastic audience in Vienna and even greater acclaim later in Prague. In 1787 Pragues National Theatre saw the premiere of Don Giovanni, a moralizing version of the Don Juan legend in which the licentious nobleman receives his comeuppance and descends into the fiery regions

Well, we know its big - Emphasis

Well, we know its big Well, we know its big David Cameron has referred to it as his mission and his passion, but it does seem that very few people are entirely sure what the Big Society is actually all about. This isnt too surprising when even those well and truly behind the idea are not helping matters. Phillip Blond, director of the think tank ResPublica, and according to the Telegraph a driving force behind David Camerons Big Society agenda, has argued the case for the policy in the Independent. He guides the people thus: Public sector mutualisation and budgetary takeover by citizens of the state is a crucial initial phase in endowing ordinary citizens with the power to ensure that the services they run are operated in a way that combines public interest with economic efficiency and localised employee ownership building in all the gains that this model delivers. Writing this convoluted and opaque will do very little to clarify the concept for the ordinary citizens it claims to want to empower. In relation to this, one letter to the Independent quoted Nobel prize-winner Peter Medawar: People who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief. The writer then commented: I dont think Mr Blond is unskilled in writing. If Cameron and co. are to defend the Big Society as more than (as some rumours have it) a slightly sinister cover for the cuts, they need to put away the thesaurus and use considerably fewer big words.