Word: mozart
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Most prodigious of all musical prodigies was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Heifetz Hofmann and Yehudi Menuhin showed a early genius for playing music that others had written but Mozart at four was composing a concerto, spilling ink all over himself. He was not quite six when his father, a Salzburg violinist, bundled him and his sister Nannerl into a coach, started showing them off to the rest of Europe...
Marcia Davenport, daughter of Soprano Alma Gluck, stepdaughter of Violinist Efrem Zimbalist, in a notable book published last week tells Mozart's story.* The elder Mozart stalked patrons for his son until he was grown. The family needed money but rings and snuffboxes often paid for 18th Century music. Little, bewigged Mozart sat on the Empress Maria Theresa's ample lap. Once he was permitted to watch Louis XV eat. But with all his genius he never found one large-hearted patron on whom he could depend. He married an amiable, unpractical creature, pregnant or convalescent from childbirth...
Marcia Davenport tells all this in a manner vital and direct. Her descriptions are authentic. She trekked all over Europe visiting the places Mozart visited. Her facts are sure but they are for laymen to read. No cross-references speck the pages. The sources, most of them original, are tucked neatly away in the back of the book...
President Scott particularized more last week than he had before. "By precocious," said he, "we imply an intelligence quotient higher than 130?or such youthful attainments as were characteristic of such men as Napoleon Bonaparte, George Washington, Lord Byron, Mozart, James Watt or others." Also, he announced, the students must meet all entrance requirements. Extraordinary talent in one field is not in itself evidence of eligibility...
...very hasty and inadequate command of both musical history and literature. For example, the Palestrina choral style which is known as that of the post-Trent period is entirely free from "incredible complexity". Dr. Pratt's statement that Gershwin shows possibilities of approaching such masters as Brahms and Mozart in choral effects and counterpoint is astonishing. Aside from the fact that the best choral works of Mozart and Brahms are of a serious nature, a careful analysis of the works reveals no similarity in either their construction or the final effects produced...