Jupiter

Armandae took me to a performance of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony by the Handel & Hayden Society, it was really neat. I don’t get to the symphony often so I know very little about classical music. I enjoy it, but I don’t really pick up on the subtleties, and I have no idea of the context of work and how it relates to hundreds of years of the most complex music created. Interesting how the most complex instruments (pianos, strings, and woodwinds) and compositions (I don’t know any other musical traditions that call for 100+ people on stage) ever devised by humans all came from Europe in the 1600s-1900s. And no one really attempts this stuff anymore. Well there’s John Williams and Danny Elfman and, while they’re pretty great, I don’t think anyone put them on that level. The musical geniuses like Mozart and Beethoven surely had brains that were different from the rest of us, and those brains must still be born once every generation or two, so who are they now, who in the last 100 years can we say is as talented as Mozart? Or did the child born with that caliber brain just do something else – playwright, sculptor, actor? No, it’s gotta be music, I totally believe the Music Brain is unique among all others. It just seems odd that the human race would not consistently produce a Mozart-level genius with some regularity. It’s a little depressing to think that the greatest classical music has all been made, and nothing greater will come. But, given modern instruments, would Mozart be writing what we define at classical music were he living now? I get the feeling he’d be Trent Reznor.