Perfect (or absolute) pitch: the ability to identify and/or produce the frequency of any given note, by whatever naming system the person chooses. (i.e. they can receive their questions or state their answers in Hertz, or in alphabetical note names, or whatever unambiguous method suits them.)
Mike Ness would kick the shit out of Mozart.
I just remembered that the reason I had perfect pitch in mind was a factoid about it being more common in tonal language countries. So it can be bred so to speak, and these are china and other asian countries. It confirmed my bias when I recalled the asian piano prodigy phenomenon. Don’t know how scientific that is.
What if Kane Roberts were in Wolfie’s band?
And the same applies to Paganini on the violin.
To clarify, we are talking about his ability to play, right? Not compositional ability but the ability to, as Bach put it, play the right note at the right time?
I can see an argument for both sides:
Better than Mozart: 200 years of music development. Better nutrition. Better health. Better instruments. More competition.
Not better than Mozart… arguments would include:
Single-minded focus: Mozart’s education was “music and stuff which supported it”. His education in other subjects was rather limited.
A need to constantly play (no recorded music means you… or someone… had to play live if you wanted to hear music). He couldn’t rest and listen to his favorite songs, he had to play them. A modern player would relax by listening to music. Mozart would relax by playing.
Better long-term family and societal support. Mozart’s dad was one of the finest music teachers in Europe. From the age of 5, Mozart was lauded as a genius by the upper reaches of society - nobody told him “put that piano down and start cracking on that history lesson!”
Of course, we have no recording of Mozart playing anything, so who knows? I do think… playing the instrument-wise… the moderns likely have him handily beat.
But compositionally? Mozart has “us” beat. There really is no comparison.
That’s like asking How do modern playwrights compare with Shakespeare?
There is no comparison for some people. Mozart simply was the best of all time, combining natural talent with education and environment to create ONE singular sensation.
One playing skill where Mozart may have the moderns beat is his ability to improvise. Accounts would have him at a piano playing extemporaneously for 30, 60 minutes, with the audience marvelling how he could fully develop a theme on the fly. This was shown a bit in the film Amadeus when he takes Salieri’s march, corrects its mistakes, and then goes off, blissfully unaware of the faux pas he just made. (I also think the film had him take Salieri’s tune and turn it into one of the hits in Figaro. This wasn’t overt, nor a plot point, but I’m pretty sure that is how it went down.)
More to the point, Leopold kept Wolfgang playing constantly from an early age (public performances from age five, IIRC); Wolfie was the main breadwinner for the family with his sister Nannerl as a supporting act. Leopold literally used to invite people to come to wherever they were staying to challenge the boy to play anything. So Mozart’s skill was a combination of natural talent and intensive training and performing from pretty much as young as he could physically play the violin and piano.