Greater than a quarter of a millennium after he composed his first items of music, different listeners will evaluate differently the specific nature of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s genius. However one can onerously fail to be impressed by the truth that he wrote these works when he was 5 years outdated (or, as some scholars have it, 4 years outdated). It’s not unknown, even immediately, for precocious, musically inclined children of that age to sit down down and put together simple melodies, and even reasonably complete songs. However what number of of them can write somefactor like Mozart’s “Minuet in G Main”?
The video above, which traces the evolution of Mozart’s music, begins with that piece — naturally sufficient, because it’s his earliest identified work, and thus honored with the Köchel catalogue number of KV 1. Thereafter we hear music composed by Mozart at various ages of kidhood, youth, adolescence, and grownuphood, accompanied by a piano roll graphic that illustrates its increasing complexity.
And as with complexity, so with familiarity: even listeners who know little of Mozart’s work will sense the emergence of a distinctive fashion, and even those that’ve nakedly heard of Mozart will recognize “Piano Sonata No. 16 in C main” when it comes on.
Mozart composed that piece when he was 32 years outdated. It’s often known as the “Sonata facile” or “Sonata semplice,” regardless of its distinct lack of easiness for novice (and even intermediate) piano players. It’s now cataloged as KV 545, which places it towards the tip of Mozart’s oeuvre, and certainly his life. Three years later, the evolutionary listening journey of this video arrives on the “Requiem in D minor,” which we’ve previously featured right here on Open Culture for its extensive cinematic use to evoke evil, loneliness, desperation, and reckoning. The piece, KV 626, contains Mozart’s final notes; the unanswerin a position however neverthemuch less irresistible question stays of whether or not they’re somehow implied in his first ones.
Related content:
Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist
Hear the Items Mozart Composed When He Was Solely 5 Years Previous
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceguide.