Interesting question that I sort of recently asked.
At the school where I work, they have an audio department - mostly with students who enter school to become the next great Grammy winner of song of the year.
However, many are now seeing other directions -such as writing scores for movies.
One thing that technology has made easier is for even the slightly talented to lay several tracks of music, on their own, to create a very intricate score. They can start off with the piano melody, then add strings, horns, drums, other sounds and eventually create some really nice scores.
The good news is that many students are now doing exactly this. What would have taken a Mozart genius back then to simply create this in their mind and hand write the notes for each instrument is now done electronically and they can get instant feedback and go back in to fiddle with that drum beat, or change up the strings section, or whatever.
Some of these students are kind of shy to play what they are creating - it is not the “norm” for what their friends listen to, but I am amazed at the different directions they are moving. It might not mean that classical music will be making a huge comeback on the pop charts, but it is interesting to see that many students who might not look like traditional classical composers are starting to experiment with far more intricate scores.
I don’t think he was really as cutting edge as Hendrix. More like, oh, McCartney, or maybe better Keith Richards: Mozart and Richards both took what was more or less already there but did it with such note perfect control they’re the central figure of the style. Both managed to be creative but were very happy to be widely appreciated, and never went for novelty for the sake of novelty, or God forbid intentionally pushing the boundaries of their audience’s comfort zone. I suppose there’s the personal life similarities as well – certainly not aiming for happy boring middle-class life (unlike McCartney , or (from what we can tell) Bach) and quite eager to escape a workaday, um, mindset. But not out to oppose the middle-class life either (as opposed to, oh, Johnny Rotten or John Lennon or to some degree Beethoven).
Oh, looks like we’re out of time, folks. Tune in next week for another edition of “Half-arsed parallels between rock and classical musicians”!
I don’t know that he was a particular wild partier, was he? He was bad with money, enjoyed scatological humor and I guess was always pulling pranks on people, but I don’t know that he was particularly wild.
He was a superstar
He was popular
He was so exalted
Because he had flair
He was a virtuoso
Was a rock idol
And everyone cried
Come on and rock me Amadeus
