Making Mozart: The Frustrated Life of a Musical Genius

(Salzburg Mozart statue Image source: IC Photo)

Le Zhenghe/Wen

Maynard Solomon's original mozart, subtitled "Alife," is a 644-page Chinese heavy, and for many Chinese music lovers, its weight is far more than that—after all, his Biography of Beethoven is in the forefront and popular among domestic music researchers and enthusiasts.

From the first draft of Beethoven's biography in the late 1970s to Mozart's biography in 1995, Solomon, who was licensed to practice medicine in psychology, consistently used psychoanalysis as an important tool, carefully speculating on the mysteries of the lives of the two musical giants. Compared with "Beethoven's Biography", which solves many life problems such as the exact identity of the "eternal lover" in Beethoven's letters, Mozart's biography uses psychoanalytic tools to be bolder and extends more far. Therefore, it is inevitable that a greater controversy will arise in the musicological world than "Beethoven's Biography".

Beethoven and Mozart in two tomes

Norbert Elias, author of The Process of Civilization, has sociologically discussed the successes or failures of Wolfgang Mozart. Comparing "Beethoven and Mozart, who are also freelance musicians", he once said: "[About the musical imagination] When Beethoven began to break with tradition, Mozart could only develop the possibility of the individual within the ancient standards and frameworks." "Sociologists have always had a fixed flaw in interpreting musicians by observing the study of individual and group behavior: they have to presuppose Beethoven and Mozart's existing evaluations of artistic development, and then seek after-the-fact explanations. The problem, however, is that the history of artistic style is not a history of simple factual judgments, and certainly not the product of value judgments, but the sum of aesthetic judgments. People often confuse these in reality. Sometimes it seems to be based on facts, but in fact it is just to succumb to the value; or to think that you are defending a value, but that is obviously an aesthetic prejudice; but on the other hand: if you order a powerful AI machine to write the history of artistic style, it will inevitably produce a shocking and ironic system and conclusion, because its standards are clear, and the argument is "too correct", rather than the "product of prejudice" that should be formed. Some researchers have been frustrated to classify existing music theories as "the theoretical system of only images". In fact, even if it is really "only image", what about it?

Perhaps when psychoanalysts and music scholars are combined in one person, they cannot produce wonderful sparks. At the very least, they will not give up on taking the subjectivity of the subject as the starting point. We emphasize that interpreting music by observing the behavior of individuals and groups can sometimes form absurdities. Fortunately, people today have less and less to promote external events and behavioral logic to directly brew a good musical work - a certain Jun witnessed injustice, and he thus created "music that stirs up righteous indignation". In some special times people would have believed this, but today our basic judgment is that it is possible if he wrote wonderful social commentary for this, and at least it is difficult to be a wonderful and timeless work if it is music. However, spiritual and even physical pleasures, family trauma, may actually break the ground of the work of art, even if the shell wrapped around it may be a social value, or even a work of authority. The work and career of composers such as Shostakovich may reflect this. Under the attitude that most people regard psychoanalytic theory as "to worship ghosts and gods and stay away", Solomon's versions of Mozart and Beethoven's biography focus more on the inner world of the characters seem to have their own significance.

In fact, Solomon is not careless about the social level, both biographies are the product of psychological and social balance, but Solomon only uses the introduction of the social level as a realistic guarantee for exploring the rationality of the inner world of the characters. Take Beethoven's life as an example: in order to gain a foothold in an environment where competition is greater and sponsorship is basic, he had to choose the tendency to "oppose singing" to achieve more than half of his early piano sonatas, but the reason why he turned from an early Liszt keyboard showman to a great creator of contemplative art was because of the fear of ear disease being made public and had to stay away from the reality of the crowd (even if the initial hearing loss was not large, but the discomfort caused by tinnitus and the fear of future expectations were more important). For Beethoven, heroism and symphony are born from this, and what induces it is not so much courage as it is fundamentally the self-confrontation between fear and fear. The late Beethoven style means an old man who has long been accustomed to living with fears (such as the fear that custody of a loved one may be taken away at any time).

In contrast, the origin of Mozart's singing part is also derived from society, and serenades for celebrations and joyful occasions have a joyful function innately, and it is precisely because Mozart is used by his father Leopold as his own pure tool, engaged in many early activities of "pleasing others".

Perhaps people remember many of the pleasant beauty of Mozart's music, but in fact correspond to the "altruistic" part of Mozart under Leopold's "coercion". Solomon, in Mozart's biography, shows us this imitation of pleasing others. Mozart in the early days seems to be imitating the style of all the popular creators, thus pleasing audiences with different tastes in European countries, localities, courts and even theaters. In an article comparing Mozart and Beethoven, the author once said that "Mozart's imitation period is not long", and the so-called "not long imitation period" refers to pure learning imitation, but Mozart's imitation is purely applied imitation, which is not so much imitation as detachment from musical grammar and creative habits. Because of this, Mozart developed what many people imagine as "styleless", even "God-like style".

Mozart's work brings us his "selfless and altruistic imagery" in distant time and space– even in his time, which was actually rewarding. But we can't fool ourselves, just like the mysterious and contradictory perception of Mozart in reality: Mozart's music is pleasant; Mozart's music seems to be dark. This darkness and tragedy is by no means confined to the corners and corners of his vast treasure trove of works, but is even reflected in the most well-known Symphony No. 40 in G minor. Mozart's music is accustomed to the calm transition after entertaining pleasure into a dark, or self-soothing world, with a mournful and unsenting style. Mozart's "altruism" and "darkness" seem to be related to the family relationships he faces.

Two fathers and two sons

Most commentators on Mozart's question in history have adopted a basic attitude of approval towards Mozart's father, Leopold, differing only in whether there is "reserved approval." As a playwright, Hildesheim (W. Hildesheim) Hildesheimer's basic judgment in his treatise Mozart is that "his (Leopold's) thoughts and plans were for the sake of the Son, and his great disappointment, wariness, and disbelief were for the Son." Leopold's behavior is summed up as "pedantic but long-term smart", which sounds contradictory. Hildesheim did discover a dramatic and important point in Mozart's life, but he reluctantly blamed it on Leopold's "vanity."

But Solomon did not want to stop at proposing a dramatic point, and under Solomon's observation, the detailed correspondence between father and son could provide a psychoanalytic space for both Mozart and Leopold. Father Leopold forged a strict "Leopold-Wolfgang" paternal psychological symbiosis, and Leopold's success was the success of this symbiote, but wolfgang's success as a tool was not regarded as the success of this symbiote. Solomon's psychoanalytic framework may be worthy of caution, but he did try to explain why Leopold's logic of behavior was so contradictory, and Mozart's pain was that he had to break through this symbiotic logic that his father firmly protected. But helplessly, Mozart's rebellion against his father's selfishness did not bring him a better future.

Reading through Solomon's two biographical works, we find that the so-called success of the symbiosis "Leopold-Wolfgang" actually induced Beethoven's original tragic roots: Beethoven's father, as a singer, coveted the "success" of Mozart's father and son, and became a tyrant father with poor keyboard playing teaching. Without such an experience, Beethoven's musical character, marked by a strong self-sufficiency of the patriarchy, could not have been finally produced. In contrast, the "success" of the Leopold-Wolfgang "symbiosis" created a music of Mozart that combines pleasure and darkness, while the early bankruptcy of the "John-Ludwig" symbiosis made the heroic Beethoven music break ground under the inspiration of many years of suffering...

Solomon's inner quest can resonate with the artwork itself, and Mozart's entanglement and compromise with patriarchy constitute his guilt over his mother's death (Solomon argues that Leopold strengthened his son's mental control by increasing Mozart's unwarranted responsibility for his mother's death). Whenever I hear the small step movement of "Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor" (work K304) completed by Mozart during the bereavement of his mother, I hesitate about what kind of initial speed can express "Mozart's nostalgia for his mother", according to the rhythm and pace of the musical melody, the slow initial speed is certainly not particularly appropriate, but the moderate or too fast speed dissolves the sad music. But Solomon's psychoanalysis suddenly dawned on me that perhaps it was not sadness that sprouted it, but self-relief. That is to say, as long as the middle part of the three voices in the middle of the song is properly handled and can express this relief, that is the most important. Solomon's analysis, in turn, hopes to break down our stereotypes about classicism as we look back from the Time of Beethoven. Slow movements may not always be springboards for contemplation, and row and softboard movements in Mozart's world are often the most central and central part of the entire work.

Perhaps Solomon's psychoanalysis, which seems to be deviant, is in fact cautious. Musical interpretations, based on psychoanalysis rather than social reality, are cautious rather than radical. In his observation of the inner world of Mozart's father and son, Solomon's vision is not known for its broad breakthroughs, and compared with him, Charles Rosen's staging of Haydn in classical style alone gives us a bold and broad vision of music history (Haydn before Mozart's death as a large chapter, Andr. Haydn as another chapter after Mozart's death). But instead, Solomon thought That Rosen's evaluation of the String Quintet in B flat major (K174) was "too amazing", and he even faced Rosen with an agitated and fussy attitude, judging Mozart to be the best at showing physical pleasure, indulgence, and "the destruction of sentimental values" with sound. Solomon thus claimed that Rosen was "concise and eloquent."

The value of biography

Why should we study the biographies of musicians? For many music lovers and researchers, one of the most basic functions of a musician's biography is actually the "chronicle" of the artist's vast musical works— marking the position of our beloved repertoire in the trajectory of the author's artistic career.

This is why I like to say that Romain Rowland's "Beethoven Biography" is actually a literary nostalgia for historical figures and historical times, while Solomon's two biographies, or Kinderman's "Beethoven", are the artist's biography. Mozart's "Chronicle of Works" was organized by Ludwig von Köchel's painstaking work numbers long ago, while Solomon's inner exploration of Mozart's father and son and Beethoven not only casts richer flesh and blood for us, but also speculates on the ordinary and extraordinary hearts of the two.

Solomon also seems to warn us that although using the delusional delusion of detachment from the social environment to wrongly measure historical figures will form the judgment of "why not eat meat paste", we do not know that although we have escaped the "why not eat meat paste" at the social level, we have fallen into the spiritual level of "why not eat meat paste". Therefore, the comparison of the material and social levels will lead to the conclusion that "Beethoven's life is more unfortunate than Mozart's".

From The Biography of Beethoven, drafted in the early 1970s, to Mozart's Biography written in the 1990s, Chinese readers continue to look forward to solomon's achievements in the 21st century, which reflects the Chinese of late Beethoven and use it as a complete summary. Mr. Solomon passed away in 2020, the year of suffering, which is also the 250th birthday of Beethoven, we have sent away the big year of Beethoven's birth, and in the blink of an eye, we will usher in the little year of Mozart's death (1791-2021), reading Solomon's two biographical works may be a good way to commemorate him and these two music masters.