Mozart the Popular Artist

i think he would probably be forced to go to school and carry on a normal kid life like everyone else.

I think you're right. He'd probably eventually end up with a degree in sports science or sociology like our entire generation!

Does anyone else think that Mozart might be a pop music composer if he lived today? In both "Amadeus" and a few biographies I've read, one specifically interesting entitled "1791," his character is made out to be quite childish, lighthearted, humorous, and focused on sex and money. Also his Singspiel opera "The Magic Flute," which premiered in the public opera house Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden, gained Mozart much fame among common people and a lot of money, which he evidently liked a lot.

Of course, Mozart is the scraggy - but in the same conversation, "would Brahms be a 12-tone composer if he lived in mid 20th century," it seems Mozart would take the other route. He obviously loved being a celebrity and wanted to make as much money as possible, and I think he would achieve that today by writing hooks for pop bands, or at least in musical theatre.

Any comments?

Keeping on subject... IT really depends on what you want to believe people do under different circumstances. Was he a Classical Music genius and may have become one of the few famous composers? Or would he take a modern popular style and perfect it.

Personally I think a question like that is irrelevant and much better question would be what we he have created if he didn't die so young... if we were to get into theories. Would he have ventured further from his roots?

Keeping on subject... IT really depends on what you want to believe people do under different circumstances. Was he a Classical Music genius and may have become one of the few famous composers? Or would he take a modern popular style and perfect it.

This is one of the big questions I have when trying to place Mozart in the present, too. This might be another myth perpetuated by Amadeus, but from what I understand, the "classical" music of his time was almost analogous to our pop music to a certain extent. While Mozart and his contemporaries certainly had better craft than modern pop musicians, he was much more popular than any modern art music composer.

This is one of the big questions I have when trying to place Mozart in the present, too. This might be another myth perpetuated by Amadeus, but from what I understand, the "classical" music of his time was almost analogous to our pop music to a certain extent. While Mozart and his contemporaries certainly had better craft than modern pop musicians, he was much more popular than any modern art music composer.

I seriously doubt that. Due to the media and a wide range of people who can afford to buy records/go in concerts today, there are many living composers today that have audiences much larger than anyone living in the 18th century could even dream of. The only reason those composers of today seem "unpopular" to us is that they are overshadowed by the huge role popular music plays, but still: Go to a concert where a new piece by a "living old composer" like Boulez or Henze is played. It will be sold out and the audience will give standing ovations, almost no matter what the piece sounds like. Or go to a big festival like Donaueschingen. In contrast, such concerts in the 18th century were a thing mostly of the rich/noble (well, to a degree that can be said to still apply today :P) and restricted to a relatively small geographical and temporal zone, outside of which a composer would be practically unknown. Just consider the fact that a majority of the visitors of this still relatively small forum know rather well who Stockhausen or Ligeti is, despite them being dead and having lived very far from where most forum members live.

There simply wasn't a -way- to be as popular back then as it is today easily possible.

rich/noble

it's like - poor/low? :angry: