Could he get a recording contract? I got to thinking about this tonight. Given the crappy state that the recording industry and commercial radio is in these days, if someone as talented as Mozart (or any other of the really great composers) were to come along, how would the music industry handle them? Especially if the person’s work would cause a total re-examination of every musical genre.
I can’t see the industry embracing someone with such talent, simply because it would mean them throwing out so many of their current ideals. If Mozart were to show up, then I have to think that it’d be the end of all the pre-packaged “bands” which seem to be the main product of the industry, and since it’s the producers and record executives who profit the most from such “bands” I can’t see them being happy about such a person showing up.
If Mozart showed up today, with his musical style, he probably would have a hard time getting a big contract. However, that is more because there isn’t a huge (albeit, very consistant) market for Classical music CD’s.
Mozart would undoubtably get a recording contract. He playing ability at the age of 5 would mean a big contract and he would do Christmans specials with Charlotte Church.
There are tons of composers out there cranking out classical-style music. If somebody with his talent came along, symphonies would be beating a path to his door to commission work.
Actually, they might not. NPR, IIRC, did a piece about the profitablity of orchestras, and they stated that in tough economic times like these that symphonies tend to load their programs with artists folks are familiar with, in order to put butts in seats, as folks aren’t likely to shell out the money for symphony tickets for works by people they’ve never heard of. Of course, that’s assuming a modern Mozart would chose the medium of classical music in which to compose, and not rock and roll or rap, or country, or any of the hundreds of other musical genres out there.
I’m inclined to think Mozart would enter the more mainstream music (as he did in his day). AFAIK, Mozart was a brilliant composer and musician, who perfected what he found, rather than someone who takes the art form to a completely new and different level (like Beethoven). Mozart did develop the sonata form further from where Haydn had taken it, and in his final years started integrating Bachian counterpoint in his work. On the other hand, his final works have tinges of Beethoven’s middle symphonies, so maybe he would have developed much further if it hadn’t been for his death.
Looking at the current music scene, I would suggest someone like Prince might be a comparable artist: highly talented, taking in lots of different styles and transforming these into his own kind of music.
Back to the first post: most of the questions about ‘would he get airplay’ assume that he’d be trying to work in popular music instead of classical. All things being equal, I don’t think he’d have that much trouble getting played on classical radio if that’s what he was doing.
But seriously, I think this question has already been answered by the classic film “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”
What about JS Bach? Will he ‘Stomp’ like Kirk Franklin? His unsurpassed mastery of melodic counterplay would clash with today’s minimalist world. Will he return to cathedral obscurity again, only to be rediscovered by Prince Rogers Nelson V?
Has anyone else read Robert Silverberg’s story “Gianni”? It’s about a composer plucked from the past and brought into the present. Although the fictional Gianni was a minor composer (so that his disappearance from the past would not be noticed), I always felt the character was based on Mozart.
It’s a great story.
If Mozart were alive today he would be in the music business. His father was a musician and it is irrelevant what kind of musician his father would have been today. Mozart was a child prodigy and they are rarely ignored, so he would have been well known even when he was a child. Somebody would have capitalized on it, but unlike Michael Jackson and Charlotte Church, he wasn’t known for singing. His compositions are very tuneful, so he surely would have had hits at least comparable with Lennon and Macartney since they would sound effortlessly simple and catchy. He liked to party and today he would probably be into drugs and get bad press. Mozart did not really create any new styles, but expanded on the styles that were popular in his day, so I wouldn’t expect him to be avant-garde. He was very prolific, so I can imagine he would be writing hits, film scores, Musicals and would probably be the best Jazz improviser you ever heard. There were more popular musicians around in his day that were more simple and more straightforward to listen to, but serious musicians would know that he was a cut above all of them. Mozart wasn’t ignored in his day, he just spent so much time composing and partying that he never got down to business, so today, he may have destroyed his career before he even got to the top, you never know.
