by Greg D'Alessio
Every culture finds the geniuses it needs. The various cultures that have developed in Western Europe and America in the long years since the French Revolution have, whatever else their differences, largely agreed on at least a couple of musical geniuses. That the nature of these two men’s lives and abilities also form a neatly matching pair of opposing attributes says more, surely, of our need for clear and uncomplicated models than it does about the actual natures of Mozart and Beethoven, or their music.
Put simply Mozart has come to stand for effortless ease and otherworldly perfection, inborn and unexplainable. Beethoven, for the ability, through struggle and the intensity of one’s own desire and will, to triumph over all adversity. These identities have been fixed for a long while and have served as a large part of the foundational legend of what has become “classical music.” It’s not that they are invented exactly: Mozart did often seem to be able to write inexhaustibly graceful and inventive music more or less at will. Beethoven, as is well documented in his sketchbooks, did seem to wrest his titanic works out of the void with only long and strenuous effort.
But, for many, these characterizations of the artistic personalities of Mozart and Beethoven have become so inseparably linked with their actual pieces, that the one seems to transmit the other as a kind of parable or model for how one might, or should aspire to, meet their own life. So powerful has this effect been—like a secular “Lives of the Saints” (one that is taken in emotionally)—that in many ways it has tended to distort something in our perceptions of these two artists.
We have all, I suppose, had the experience of someone forming an opinion of us: “you are such a snob,” “you’re so good with machinery,” “you don’t worry about anything do you?” and so forth. These people, even if they are quite close to us, will often stick to their opinions regardless of any contrary evidence; they simply see us through the lens of their opinion, no matter what we may actually do. Of course their opinion, and their unwillingness to change it, is more a function their own sense of themselves than of us. They aren’t really talking about us at all, but rather a distorted image of themselves or of their own worst fears or strongest desires.
So, the fact that the identities assigned to Mozart and Beethoven do not always find correspondences in the lives and work of the actual men—Mozart sweated out some pieces for which he had greater ambitions, and some works came to Beethoven with an apparent (almost Mozartean) ease—ultimately has proven to be less important in the larger scheme of things than keeping the symbolic roles of these two founding heroes clear.
For what is our idea of the artistic genius but a modern hero? The old heroes, like Theseus, Hercules, Odysseus and the rest, served to incorporate for their cultures particular virtues—bravery, cunning, persistence, the favor of the gods—that were particularly difficult to attain and therefore of particular value, to the (at least the free male) members of the culture that venerated the tales of their deeds. Mozart and Beethoven then, heroes to the age of precarious universal individuality, are as important as heroes as they are as composers of music. This is why it is always the lightest of Mozart (Eine Kleine Nacht Musik) and the stormiest of Beethoven (the 5th or 9th Symphony), which are used whenever “classical” music is referenced in the larger culture. What is important is not the actual music, but rather the individual virtues these pieces symbolize.
Given all this, the fact that the mythic sagas of our two heroes—“Mozart could compose and perform at age 6, Beethoven went deaf but still wrote music!”—are also common cultural currency and are often some of the only facts that people not otherwise interested in classical music know about the subject is not, therefore, so surprising. Nor is it surprising that poor Hadyn, though he largely created the language that Mozart and Beethoven used, is so often an afterthought. He simply has no heroic profile (other than outlasting a bad marriage and a grinding low-status job) with which to serve as a model for the rest of us.
I don’t think this is all necessarily such a bad thing. We need our heroes. When confronted with personal crises, we need to feel that triumph is possible, or that grace, humor and wit are enough to see us through whatever ridiculous scenario life might cook up. If Mozart and Beethoven can serve as our spiritual training wheels as well as our greatest composers, well then bless them. And bless us for having such good taste.
