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drplaceboIt's Forgotten Masterpiece Friday!
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791-1844) could have been considered a great child prodigy. His first published piece, a piano quartet, was published when he was 11 years old and may have been composed as early as two years before that. Unfortunately for him, he lived in the shadow of a father he never knew. He was one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's two children who survived infancy; his famous father died when he was just five months old.
Both Franz and his brother Karl were gifted pianists. Karl gave up music, went to work for a trading firm, and eventually became a civil servant. Franz, however, received a first-rate musical education, first from his father's rival Antonio Salieri, then from Johann Nepomuk Hummel and finally Ludwig van Beethoven. He had a peripatetic but financially successful career as a pianist, teacher, and conductor: seeking to escape comparisons to his father in Vienna, he spent much of his life in various towns in modern-day Poland and Ukraine where skilled musicians were rare and accordingly well-paid. He returned to Vienna in 1838, and in 1841 moved to his father's hometown of Salzburg where he directed the choir of the newly-founded Mozarteum for the last three years of his life.
Though highly regarded during his life as a pianist and conductor, Franz Mozart was introverted and given to self-deprecation. He constantly underrated his own ability and compared himself unfavorably to his father. His career as a composer was short: he composed very little after 1820, and had an 11-year period from 1828 to 1839 in which he completed nothing at all. Some of his work was misattributed to other composers, including one late piano piece that was believed until 1994 to have been composed by a young Liszt. His small output included a single symphony, two piano concertos, and an assortment of chamber music, solo piano music, and choral music.
Franz Mozart's second piano concerto was perhaps the piece that showed his promise more than any other. It was composed in 1818, as he was beginning to write in his mature style; it is also one of his last works, as he all but stopped composing soon afterward. Most of his earlier compositions could have passed for his father's late works; by this point his style was developing into an early Romanticism under the influence of Beethoven. Parts of the concerto seem to foreshadow Chopin as well, which might be unsurprising both because Franz's teacher Hummel was one of Chopin's favorite composers and because he was living in Poland when he composed this concerto.
Movements:
I. Allegro con brio
II. Andante espressivo (13:37)
III. Rondo: Allegretto (17:45)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791-1844) could have been considered a great child prodigy. His first published piece, a piano quartet, was published when he was 11 years old and may have been composed as early as two years before that. Unfortunately for him, he lived in the shadow of a father he never knew. He was one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's two children who survived infancy; his famous father died when he was just five months old.
Both Franz and his brother Karl were gifted pianists. Karl gave up music, went to work for a trading firm, and eventually became a civil servant. Franz, however, received a first-rate musical education, first from his father's rival Antonio Salieri, then from Johann Nepomuk Hummel and finally Ludwig van Beethoven. He had a peripatetic but financially successful career as a pianist, teacher, and conductor: seeking to escape comparisons to his father in Vienna, he spent much of his life in various towns in modern-day Poland and Ukraine where skilled musicians were rare and accordingly well-paid. He returned to Vienna in 1838, and in 1841 moved to his father's hometown of Salzburg where he directed the choir of the newly-founded Mozarteum for the last three years of his life.
Though highly regarded during his life as a pianist and conductor, Franz Mozart was introverted and given to self-deprecation. He constantly underrated his own ability and compared himself unfavorably to his father. His career as a composer was short: he composed very little after 1820, and had an 11-year period from 1828 to 1839 in which he completed nothing at all. Some of his work was misattributed to other composers, including one late piano piece that was believed until 1994 to have been composed by a young Liszt. His small output included a single symphony, two piano concertos, and an assortment of chamber music, solo piano music, and choral music.
Franz Mozart's second piano concerto was perhaps the piece that showed his promise more than any other. It was composed in 1818, as he was beginning to write in his mature style; it is also one of his last works, as he all but stopped composing soon afterward. Most of his earlier compositions could have passed for his father's late works; by this point his style was developing into an early Romanticism under the influence of Beethoven. Parts of the concerto seem to foreshadow Chopin as well, which might be unsurprising both because Franz's teacher Hummel was one of Chopin's favorite composers and because he was living in Poland when he composed this concerto.
Movements:
I. Allegro con brio
II. Andante espressivo (13:37)
III. Rondo: Allegretto (17:45)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-08 11:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-09 09:38 am (UTC)