I Just Want to Celebrate!: Mozart

Sunday, July 25, 2010

It's no ordinary minor score

Today I'm celebrating Wolfgang Mozart's completion of his Symphony No. 40 (K550) in G minor. This symphony is often called the Great G Minor Symphony, distinguishing it from his Little G Minor Symphony, No. 25. The symphony exists in two versions; in the second, the flute and oboe parts were revised for the addition of two clarinets. It notably excludes trumpets and timpani. It is one of my favorite symphonies. The opening theme of the first movement has been unforgettable to me, described by some as a nervous, urgent theme. I can almost still see in my mind the graphical image of the music that I drew during those music lit sessions to better remember the music and to decipher its form. If you listen closely in the fourth movement, you will hear some technical surprises as well.

Some say that this symphony, one of only two written in a minor key, perhaps reflects the grim circumstances of Mozart's life at the time, his growing poverty, fading popularity, cancelled concerts, and his daughter's death. Mozart had written in a letter begging for a loan, "Black thoughts...often come to me...thoughts that I push away with a tremendous effort." Albert Einstein called the first and last movements "plunges into the abyss of the soul" and Charles Rosen described this work as one of Mozart's "supreme expressions of suffering and terror." Classical Notes describes "its darker tone was hailed as a rare advance from the presumed superficiality of Mozart's other work....an astounding balance and blending of seeming opposites: polished precision and spontaneous utterance, stringent formalism and heartfelt emotion, personal expression and universal humanism...". At the beginning of the development section of the finale, Mozart launches into a very surprising, unexpected chromatic segment in unison and syncopation "structured with rigorous mathematical logic" described as "rude octaves and frozen silences" by the critic Michael Steinberg. Barbara Heninger notes that "Mozart has taken us on an unusual voyage, but in the end his musical language still achieves a balance, order, and resolution." I love Classical Notes' description that "the remaining half of the movement seems ever so brighter and its burdens lighter, as Mozart's glance into the future adds just a glimmer of hope, as if to say that although life itself is basically sorrowful, steadfast dignity and faith in the future hold a crucial promise of uplift and redemption." I choose to believe that as well.

Today I celebrate Mozart's expression through music, with a tad of mathematical influence, the glimmer of hope and the promise of the future.

All four movements can be heard from YouTube, but you can hear the first movement from a YouTube video of a concert by The New Philharmonic Tokyo Chamber here:

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The math behind the music of Mozart

Today I'm celebrating the music of Mozart!

On this date in 1756, Mozart was born in Salzburg. He was a great musician and composer. Often you hear people talk of the Mozart effect, a theory that listening to Mozart's music can enhance intellect. As an undergraduate, I double-majored in mathematics and music. For many years I have heard about the link between music and mathematics. However, I was not aware of the specific link to mathematics with Mozart and his music. Accounts of Mozart's life describe his interest in mathematics, from his sister noting that Wolfgang "talked of nothing, thought of nothing but figures" during school days. There are accounts of walls of rooms filled with mathematics to mathematical equations jotted in the margins of some of his compositions. He actually calculated his odds of winning a lottery on a composition margin. There are discussions about how Mozart exploited patterns, symmetry, and proportions when creating his musical works.

One of the most amusing things I learned about Mozart and his link to mathematics is his musical composition dice game. Mozart composed a minuet in which many variations were created using dice. For each of the sixteen bars of the minuet, Mozart wrote two choices for the eighth and sixteenth bars of the composition and eleven choices for each of the other bars. The performer was instructed to select randomly the choices for each bar using the dice. Using this approach, a composition with a huge variety of variations was created. Can you guess how many? It is actually 1,518,999,334,332,964 variations. If it took about a half a minute to play each, it would take more than 1,400,000,000 years to play all the variations.

So, you think you'd like to test that Mozart effect but think that Mozart would not likely be on your teenager's MP3 playlist? Perhaps you've heard a wonderful symphony like the No. 40 or you've seen The Magic Flute opera (here's a cool scene that shows three ladies taking control and conquering a cool looking dragon), but you still don't think it will work. Well, I found three videos on YouTube that might change your mind. There's a neat video on YouTube of a guitarist playing his rock version of the last movement, Alla Turca (popularly known as the Turkish Rondo) of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 16 in A major, K. 331. There's also a video of an electric violin version of the Symphony No. 40. However, I bet that you will find the following video of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 on rollerblades to be very interesting!