Compare mozarts work to previous orthodoxies... ?

Question

does any one have any links that help answer this question? or any ideas would be much appreciated too.. thanks

i think by orthodoxies my teacher means ideas that everyone believs in? i asked him to explain what it meant but hes like sit down and be quiet. figure it out.. weird person! :S

Answer 1

so good

Answer 2

What do you mean by previous "orthodoxies". Music is an art, not a science although science is part of it, and definitely no religion. Every time some retard comes up with some "ultimate" rules of harmony, a great composer comes along and shatters the old rules to death. Beethoven was a major breaker of the "old orthodoxies" not Mozart, the dandy, and darling of the public, who was perhaps the most orthodox of all. No other composer created such beautiful pieces (viz. Mozart's Requiem) with such simple harmonies and scalar passagework. Still even Mozart broke rules left and right especiallyl in his operas. One of the first to use German in an Opera, where previously Italian dominated. He used rather risque themes for his day like the Seraglio (Harem) with its sexual situations! Some have the idea that J.S. Bach wrote the rulebook on keyboard music. These people are not aware that this most inventive composer and organist broke older rules of harmony and counterpoint all over the place and replaced it with rules of his own devising. Bach's genius eclipsed any composer that had come before him. But the basic rules were established hundreds of years before Bach.

Some people are not aware that numerous composers, some of high standing like Vivaldi and Couperin preceeded Bach, and that prior to the Baroque period was about a four hundred year period of late Middle Age music that led to the Tocatta form, the Cantata, the Madrigal, the Fugue. Most of these were the "evil" secular music of a time when religion dominated everthing.

All the great composers broke rules and we today are grateful for that. That's why religion has gone nowhere in 2000 years while music keeps on developing and evolving and is progressive. But as I tell my students, "You better KNOW the rules before you begin to BREAK them"

Answer 3

I'm not sure that there are 'orthodoxies' in music, per se. There will be schools, such as the 2nd Viennese school which preach that music can only be written in a certain way, but most geniuses (as Mozart was) will plough their own furrow. Mozart's genius lay in the fact that he took existing forms, some being newly developed such as the symphony, as developed them in his own unique style. All the forms he worked in existed before he started composing.