November 8 – Mozart, his music

Mozart, his music
library recorded sound
and we have it all

In the movie, Amadeus, Antonio Salieri shuffles through pages of sheet music penned by Mozart and says, ” … music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall.”

I thought of this when my iPhone randomly played the 11th piano piece or the “Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K. 331 – I. Andante grazioso“

I often think that had only the 1st measures of this piece survived, Mozart would still be according greatness.

Simple.

Magical.

Simply magical.

What kept this arrangement of notes hidden until Mozart came along?

I like to tell myself that if I ever I managed an accomplishment to equal just the first page of the score of this piece, I could die quite pleased with my life.

I can barely read music.

I have no natural sense of rhythm (no lie, I have to count between stanzas of the Michigan Fight Song or I am yelling, HAIL, HAIL, all by myself).

No musical ability.

But I have the music.

All of it.

Writing the obituary of another musical giant, Alistair Cooke wrote about Duke Ellington, “He has left us, in the blessed library of recorded sound a huge anthology of his music, which never got stuck in the groove from his 28th birthday to his 75th.

When I was in college, my roommate was not only a jazz maniac but also one of the very first knowledgeable jazz critics, and when he left Cambridge – as I did in the summer of 1932 – he wrote in the university weekly a tribute to the Duke. “Bands may come,” he wrote, “and bands may go, but the Duke goes on forever.” In other words, we thought it a marvel that the Duke had ridden out all fashions and lasted five long years. In fact, his music grew and developed through an incredible 47 years, and we have it all.“

Duke Ellington – 31 May 1974 – Letter to America by Alistair Cooke – READ IT HERE – HEAR IT HERE