Awe and wonder heavens share
hearing Mozart played,
till succumbing with despair,
since it is manmade.
Terry Teachout writes about the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of Mozart’s birth in Commentary (January 2006) (“The Major Minor Mozart”) . He cites Aaron Copeland with approval:
[W]e can pore over him, dissect him, marvel or carp at him. (Don’t understand the bit about carping. Mozart is neither gefilte fish nor chopped liver, something that Aaron Copeland, born Aaron Kaplan, surely realized. GWH.) But in the end there remains something that will not be seized. That is why, each time a Mozart work begins…we composers listen with a certain awe and wonder, not unmixed with despair. The wonder we share with everyone; the despair comes from the realization that only this one man at this moment of musical history could have created works that seem so effortless and so close to perfection.
1/17/06
gershon hepner
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mozart/
