The Doors

 

On a whim last week I decided to listen to all the Doors releases with Jim Morrison singing, in chronological order, one album a day.

 

Why?

 

Well, way back in the day I was really into their music for about nine months, beginning in the winter of 1987. Back then, Morrison had only been dead for 17 years, so it would be like one of my daughters doing a deep dive into the music of Michael Jackson today. I had a couple of cassettes, some recordings off the local FM station, and No One Here Gets Out Alive, a biography of Morrison Santa brought me two years earlier.

 

In addition to the nostalgia factor, I wanted to see if the music still held up. Every now and then I hear “Light My Fire” or “Soul Kitchen” from the Alexa in the upstairs bathroom when occupied by my daughters, and I scratch my chin and say to myself, “I should listen to some Doors.” So I did.

 

Additionally, there was the possibility that I might uncover a hidden gem or two. Over their six studio albums they recorded 62 songs. I could probably name 20 off the top of my head, and probably 20 more I’d recall on re-hearing, but there still would be about a third of their total song count that could sound fresh to my ears.

 

So I listened to six albums over five days, some while working and some while walking, and enjoyed it immensely.

 

What did I learn?

 

In a little over four years, from January 1967 to April 1971, The Doors released six studio albums. Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971, two and a half months after their final, L.A. Woman was released, and the remaining three members reworked semi-finished songs and released them as Other Voices in August of 1971, and followed that with the album Full Circle in August of 1972. I did not listen to these albums.

 

Of the six “canonical” Doors albums, I rank them in this personal preference:

 

   L.A. Woman (1971)

 

   The Doors (1967)

 

   Strange Days (1967)

 

   Morrison Hotel (1970)

 

   Waiting for the Sun (1968)

 

   The Soft Parade (1969)

 

 

 

But it’s only a ranking for the sake of making a ranking. Every album has great songs; every album has mediocre songs.

 

My favorite tunes have not changed. I think I’ve posted about them here at the Hopper, but for the record, my top tens would probably be something like

 

   “LA Woman”

 

   “Soul Kitchen”

 

   “Strange Days”

 

   “Moonlight Drive”

 

   “When the Music’s Over”

 

   “Waiting for the Sun”

 

   “Peace Frog”

 

   “Hello I Love You”

 

   “Five to One”

 

   “Wild Child”

 

 

 

I came away with three uncovered gems, “gems” in this case being songs I didn’t recall hearing before that stuck with me after the music was over. They are

 

   “Summer’s Almost Gone” off Waiting for the Sun

 

   “Wishful Sinful” off The Soft Parade

 

   “Hyacinth House” off L.A. Woman

 

 

 

Of the three, I find “Hyacinth House” unusually haunting. There’s that A-minor chord, there’s Morrison hitting some really low notes, there’s a neat little organ solo, and there’s kind of a plaintive cry for help as the chorus wraps up at the end of the song. I can’t shake it for some reason.

 

It was an enjoyable experience. If you like to do similar things I recommend it. The Doors were never my favorite band, but I did have a phase right after high school and I associate a lot of fun memories with their tunes. The more I grew musically the more I realized how Morrison totters along the fine edge of just staying in tune, and the older I get the more cringy I find his whole “lizard king” schtick to be. But it all worked. The faux poetry, the baritone tightrope, the carnivalesque keyboards, the jazzy drumming, and Robby Krieger’s superb and underappreciated guitar work (mostly done on a Gibson SG, my first true love in my life). It works.

 

I started doing a similar thing with Johnny Winter. I had his 1973 blues album just after this Doors phase, given to me by my lead guitarist way back then, that I listened to it a lot that summer. But I never really got into the man and his music. So I’ll do a walk through his catalogue and write down any songs I like and thoughts I come across, to be posted at a later date.

 

Happy listening!

Some Thoughts on Ozzy Osbourne

 

1948 - 2025

 

While I was never a real fan of Ozzy per se, I was a huge fan of Black Sabbath, the band that first brought him success in the late 60s and through the 70s. As a teen in the 80s who had absolutely no interest “80s music,” I rebelled by diving full force into such 70s rock bands as Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Who, and Sabbath. I never saw Ozzy live, but I did own most of his CDs with Black Sabbath. I also owned his groundbreaking first solo venture, Blizzard of Oz and his 1991 smash CD, No More Tears.

 

I kinda remember the first time I heard him, sometime around age 13: “Iron Man,” on one of the new classic rock radio stations. I have to say I was floored. Never before in my short musical life had I heard something like “Iron Man.” What a unique tune – deceptively simple, or, rather, a simple riff surrounded by more musically complex “choruses,” solo, and ending. It stuck in my mind for a few years. I also heard the lesser impressive but somehow more popular “Paranoid” on the dial.

 

The winter of my senior year one of my friends lent me his cassette tape of Black Sabbath’s greatest hits. Yes, there is such a thing – and I devoured it. I listened to it nonstop for weeks if not months. My family took a car trip out to Wisconsin and I, with a new driver’s license, took a late night shift behind the wheel and popped the cassette in and listened to the entire thing while the family slumbered in minivan.

 

Somehow I obtained a Black Sabbath songbook. How obsessed I was with that book! In the pre-Internet age, where nobody told you anything unless you paid for a tutor or read it in a magazine (Guitar magazine), the songbook unnecessarily complicated all these Sabbath songs I loved from their first four albums. First, it was in piano notation (not guitar tab). Second, I later leaned Iommi detuned his guitar 1.5 steps (low E string down to C# and all other strings tuned standard to that). Third, the piano notation was in C#, making all the riffs more difficult to play than if it was transcribed in E with a note to detune to C#. So I could not physically play all the songs, whereas now I can, albeit tuned 1.5 steps higher than the record.

 

Back to Ozzy.

 

Ozzy’s persona in the 70s was of a drug-addled unpredictable madman. Eventually his bandmates, fed up with all his excessive drug intake and personality swings, fired him in 1979. He assumed a “Prince of Darkness” persona which may have been shocking back then in the early 80s to Tipper Gore and her crew (I wasn’t too shocked as a teen listening to his solo stuff). But that persona quickly became cartoonish and sometimes buffoonish (to me, at least) only salvaged temporarily by his magnum opus, No More Tears.

 

In the summer and fall of 1991, when my band was playing out and partying and doing the recording studio and writing songs, No More Tears came out and was played a lot. A lot. It blew me away, particularly the eponymous tune. I bought the CD, put it into regular rotation, and became a proselytizer for 90s Ozzy. About a decade later I purchased the only other Ozzy CD I ever owned – his equally phenomenal debut, Blizzard of Oz.

 

Ozzy’s main superhero talent was finding superb guitarists to play with. Iommi is fantastic and was a pretty big influence on my guitar playing as a teen. But Ozzy also brought to the forefront Randy Rhodes, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde. Rhodes is a genius, perhaps the only guitarist to seriously challenge Eddie Van Halen in the early 80s. But I didn’t care for that style of playing. I much more enjoyed Zakk Wylde. If you are into it, go to YouTube and check out some of his solo videos – particularly those of him playing Sabbath songs in a parking lot and those of him doing a guitar solo live on tour. Phenomenal.

 

The wife was into Ozzy’s reality show in the early 00s. I watched a few. It was fascinating, if a little sad. When we learned of his death yesterday, we were – as many were – amazed that he made it to the ripe old age of 76. I texted her reminiscing that we both though he was teetering on the edge of death watching him on cable twenty years ago.

 

I also found it fitting – as just about everyone else in the know – that he died three weeks after the “final” Black Sabbath reunion show, where he performed the entire concert seated upon a black throne. The “Back to the Beginning” show was a benefit concert that took place in Birmingham, England – where Ozzy and the other members of Black Sabbath grew up. Something like $190 million was raised for charity, and part of the take went to Cure Parkinson’s, a disease which Ozzy was suffering from since at least early 2019, and which may have contributed to his death.

 

Well done and good show, old chap.

 

RIP.

 

Music 2025

 

 

This is a new development.

 

So far 2025 has not struck me in any particular literary way. Nothing has really jumped out at me, nor have any themes leapt up and seized me by the lapels demanding attention. No new subjects have overrun my mental Maginot line. No paradigm shifts or reading revolutions. No nostalgia bait hooking me like a spring-loaded cat as I shuffle about candle in hand down the dark, damp, cobwebby corridors of memory. Nothing.

 

Except …

 

Music.

 

2025 has been the year of music for me, so far, these past ten weeks.

 

It all started at Christmas. The Mrs had bought me Geddy Lee’s autobiography, My Effin’ Life. Who is Geddy Lee? Only one of the greatest bassists ever, also known as the vocalist for the band Rush. Rush was one of the first bands I listened to at that very vulnerable age, right after the Golden Age of Science Fiction (when a lad turns eleven and before he turns thirteen). To this day I still remember the first song of theirs I heard – “Tom Sawyer,” to no surprise (it was 1981 and the song had only been out a year). However, I had heard it on my brother’s Walkman, and the way the sounds entered my brain, panning between ears, the new sounds of distorted guitars, keyboards, and an army of drums, ignited a passionate curiosity that still lasts to this day.

 

I put My Effin’ Life into immediate rotation and wrote of it here a few weeks’ back.

 

As I have written about many, many times in the Hopper, Rush was one of my top three bands, especially when I was stumbling out into forming bands, writing songs, playing live, and recording, at home, in a friend’s garage, or in the studio. I did this off and on from about 1986-96, to no great success but plenty of fun. My long-time bass player and drummer, both good pals, were also Rush fans. And when my singer and lead guitarist were not present, we’d run through a good dozen Rush songs to warm up. It was a blast.

 

But I was only exposed to 70s Rush. Their first eponymous album debuted in 1974, and the last album I really listened to, Signals, came out in 1981. For most of the 80s they adopted an 80s sound, which didn’t interest me. In the 90s they adopted a 90s sound, again which didn’t interest me because by that time I was listening to first grunge and then, around 1998, I switched completely to classical music for the following five years.

 

I tell all this to let you know that I made it a little side quest to listen to Rush’s 19 studio albums in chronological order. (The band technically ended in 2015 when drummer Neil Peart retired from touring; Peart later died in 2020.) So I basically exposed myself to ten albums of new music, about nine hours of 90 new songs. Nice!

 

Now, I’m still not a fan of 80s Rush, but, man, did I enjoy most of 90s (and 2000s) Rush. With some help from Patch I made two playlists for my phone – “Rush 80s” and “Rush Minus 5”. I have been listening to this almost exclusively during my walks and a little bit each day as I do my accounting chores for work.

 

“Rush 80s” is 17 songs, 1 hour 29 minutes, of the best to my liking of those four 80s albums.

 

“Rush Minus 5” is a playlist of every song on the last five albums from the band:

   Counterparts (1993)

   Test for Echo (1996)

   Vapor Trails (2002)

   Snakes & Arrows (2007)

   Clockwork Angels (2012)

Each of these five albums is loaded with A and B+ songs. Each usually has a pair of A+ songs. Only one song of all these five albums was not added. This playlist has 59 songs for 4 hours and 59 minutes of music. It is great to play through my Bluetooth speaker while lifting.

 

Then, last month, the Mrs and I went to see the documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin in the theaters. Now, I know it’s essentially a hagiography, but, man, what an outstanding hagiography. I had goosebumps and a lump in my throat listening and watching for those two hours. In anticipation, I had bought a biography of the band, When Giants Walked the Earth, and had read that over the ten days following. This is the first time I did an in-depth deep dive into one of my favorite all-time bands next to Rush. It’s the first written material I’d read on the band and Jimmy Page since reading The Hammer of the Gods forty years ago. Yeah, the long passages of drug excess, groupies, and the occult grew tiresome, but the backstories of the members and the songs and the recording techniques and technical aspects of the tours fascinated me this time around.

 

And on a side note, all this Rush and Led Zeppelin, part-nostalgic and part-new, has not crowded out my quarter-decade interest in classical music. In addition to my Beethoven symphony score I wrote about last month, I also picked up a record of Copland’s greatest works and another of Bach’s organ music, particularly the Toccata and Fugue in Dm.

 

So 2025 is really a musical year for me, something I haven’t truly experienced since 1998 or 1999.

 

Happy listening!
 

N.B. I also pulled my electric guitar out of storage and have been playing and practicing for an hour each Sunday over the past five weeks …

The Ultimate Record Score

 

Who is this dashing young rogue?

 

First, a little background.

 

This Valentine’s Day came and went, flew by with some flair. Patch made us all heart-shaped pizzas Friday night. Mine had pepperonis, which I enjoyed immensely. We watched a show together as a family and had a pleasant evening.

 

What of the Mrs. and I, celebrating our 28th Valentine’s Day as a couple?

 

Well, I had attended last week one night of the Dallas Open tennis tournament with my spouse. She went to college on a tennis scholarship and was once the #2 ranked tennis player in all of South Carolina. So she still has the fire in her belly for a sport I find kinda boring. But I went with her and had a good time, asking all sorts of questions and watching some high-level volleying from about fifty feet away.

 

Her act of self-sacrifice will be accompanying me to the IMAX on Monday to see Becoming Led Zeppelin, the first-ever documentary of a band I’ve consistently been into (along with Rush) for going on 45 years. She kinda knows their stuff, kinda likes Robert Plant’s vocals, kinda appreciates their music. So

 

   Tennis : Hopper :: Led Zeppelin : Mrs. Hopper

 

And, of course, we’re using a generous gift card given to us by my parents to go out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. We plan on going sometime next weekend.

 

Now, I surprised her (not really, but you know) with a bouquet of roses Friday morning. And she surprised me (actually, she did) with a $25 gift card to Half Priced Books, one of my favorite shops down here. Along with used books, they sell used games, comics, DVDs, CDs, cassettes, and records.

 

As part of our Saturday errands, Patch and I went there this morning, and – guess what? Well, by the title of this post alone you know that I scored the holy grail of record collecting, in my humble amateur way.

 

I found this: 

 

It’s a collection of all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies! All nine symphonies on nine records for the incredible price of $19.99. I whispered excitedly to Patch in the store – “This should be going for $50 easily!” So she said with quiet authority, “Dad, buy it.” And so I did.

 

This is the crowning achievement of my 45-item record collection! All of Ludwig’s symphonies in one box set, complete with a laminated fold-down showing what’s on what album and a 24-page large booklet containing

 

   - Notes on each of the symphonies

   - A pictorial history of the composer’s life and times

   - Commentary by the conductor, Josef Krips 

   - A map of Vienna at the time of Beethoven

   - The lyrics in German and English to Symphony No. 9’s “Ode to Joy” hymn

   - A reprinted essay by Beethoven’s first authoritative biographer

 

What an absolute steal!

 

Oh, and by the way, that handsome young rogue is a rendition of the youthful Ludwig van Beethoven.

 

I’ve already listened to the first symphony. All nine records look to be in implacable condition. Since I work from home two days a week I plan on listening to one a day and then some until mid-March, when we fly up to visit my parents in Pennsylvania.

 

Hopper is in heaven!

 

Geddy Lee and Rush

 

For Christmas, my wife bought me this book:

 

 

It’s My Effin’ Life by Geddy Lee, the bassist and vocalist for the Canadian progressive rock band Rush. The band was a trio of three virtuosi musicians (including Alex Lifeson on guitar and Neal Peart on drums) active since 1974, though it first formed in the late ’60s when Geddy and Alex were high school classmates. They’ve released 19 studio albums and a whole bunch of live albums and have sold 42 million of them worldwide. In 2013 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They played their last concert on August 1, 2015, after Peart announced his retirement. In January of 2020 the legendary drummer died of glioblastoma at age 67.

 

As I’ve written about numerous times in these here electronic pages, I’ve been a lifelong fan of Rush. I still remember the first time I heard them: Spring of 1982, the song “Tom Sawyer” piped into my ear drums through my brother’s Walkman. To say I was instantaneously transfixed would be an understatement. Somehow I got the cassette tape of Moving Pictures, which contained “Tom Sawyer,” and I listened to that all summer. I bought a songbook of the album a little bit later, but that defeated my inexperienced fingers at the time. Soon more Rush purchases followed, classic Rush, their earlier 70s masterpieces. “Subdivisions” dominated the FM radio play at this time.

 

43 years later I am still a fan, though to be honest it’s been a while since I’ve listened to them. Once every few months I’d ask Alexa to shuffle Rush songs as I did the dishes. I think I mentioned Lee’s autobiography to my wife when it came out around a year ago, then it slipped my mind. So I was pleasantly surprised when I unwrapped it at Christmas. I set aside my current reading and delved into it. I am almost 200 pages deep (the autobiography clocks in at 507 pages) and to supplement my reading I am doing something like I did when I read the Mozart biography back in May: I am (re)immersing myself in Rush’s music.

 

I am listening to their albums in chronological order. On deck for today is 1978’s Hemispheres, one of the first “albums” I bought on CD around 1989 and listened to about a thousand times before 1990. I’ve re-listened to seven so far: Rush, Fly By Night, Caress of Steel, 2112, All The World’s a Stage (live), A Farewell to Kings, and Exit … Stage Left (live). Some I’ve listened to while walking around the ponds near my house, some while nestled in my reading nook, some at work with the headphones on cranking out spreadsheets. I have seventeen more studio albums and one more live album to get thought, so this will take me to the end of the month.

 

Combining My Effin’ Life with these re-listens has been a hugely pleasant experience. A lot of nostalgia’s been flowing through my mind: voracious listening as a kid, trying to figure out songs on guitar, me and my band mates playing tons of their stuff at rehearsals (particularly Cygnus X-1), even the one time I saw them live in April of 1990. I am now trying to convert my wife and children into Rush fans. Not gonna happen for the little ones (though Patch likes “Xanadu”), but the Mrs. seems open, at least for their music. Rush fans are something like 90 percent male, and it has something to do with the science fiction and philosophic lyrics combined with the progressive rock (unusual time signatures and weird chord progressions) and mostly with Geddy’s, er, unique singing voice. I have but one Rush t-shirt, but this may have to be corrected, and I think the Mrs. will help out more with this end of the Rush experience.

 

Anyway, that’s one of the many things I’ve been up to lately. Perhaps when I finish I’ll write up a post of Rush trivia for any fan who may blunder upon this blog. I dunno. After 1982’s Signals album Rush’s overall sound changed to one more heavily dominated by synthesizers, and as this was when I started playing in bands, I was more interested in guitar-driven music and am not familiar with their mid- and late-80s work. So I am looking forward to listening to that with a new ear, and hopefully finding something to enjoy that I didn’t thirty years ago. I did have a t-shirt I purchased at the concert for 1989’s Presto tour, but I decidedly did not like the album. 1991’s Roll the Bones I bought on CD, and though that was a more return-to-earlier-form kinda thing, only gave it a few listens. Not up to those 70s masterpieces. Same with their final five albums, all borrowed from the library here and there. With a newfound and nostalgic re-appreciation of the band, I am hoping to uncover a lot of hidden gems, and hoping that one turns out to be 2025’s Song of the Year here at the Hopper.

 

An ancient 2011 post by me on Rush, here.

Guitar Strap Height Guide

 

A very true and illuminating peek for non-musicians into the mind of the guitarist:

 

I played seriously in hard rock bands from 1986 to 1996, and my guitar strap journey started at the far right of the diagram, moved quickly to the left, then slowly rose again returning rightward. (Though I always referred to it as guitar strap length.)

 

For reference, Jimmy Page hovers at the far left, Robert Fripp of King Crimson at the far right, and someone like Alex Lifeson occupies the middle of the diagram, with Angus near Jimmy and Steve Howe near Fripp.

 

Gave me a chuckle this morning.

 

Neil Floyd or Pink Young

 

Forgive me a cliché, but –

 

I was today years old when I found out –

 

The song “Breathe,” the first sung song on Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, has the exact same chordal structure as Neil Young’s song “Down by the River,” the side one closing tune on his 1969 record, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

 

Well, almost exactly.

 

Down by the River:

   Em7 to A (four times)

   Cmaj7 to Bm (four times, ending with a D on the fourth)

   G to D to A (three times for the chorus)

 

Breathe:

   Em to A7 (four times)

   Cmaj7 to Bm to Fmaj7 to D9

 

Well, it sounds more similar on my guitar than it looks like on the electronic page here.

 

Man, I wish I knew this back in the day. I was familiar with both songs, but just never made the connection. The guys I hung out with way back then were more into Neil Young than Pink Floyd, though we did manage to see both live the summer of 1988:

 

   Pink Floyd at Giants Stadium, June 4, 1988

   Neil Young and the Blue Notes at Pier 84 in NYC, August 30, 1988

 

As a side note, that was a great summer for concerts. I also saw AC/DC that May at the Brendan Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands and the famous Guns N’ Roses / Deep Purple / Aerosmith concert at Giants Stadium two weeks before Neil Young at the Pier. That was the concert where they filmed the video for “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Though I was probably already sick of the omnipresent overrepresentation of GNR on the radio by then, let me tell you, the vast majority of the crowd was there to see them, not the two dinosaurs of 70s rock.

 

Oh well. Let’s see … what else can I play on my guitar …

 

Funniest Thing I've Heard in a While

 

The album Catalina Breeze by the Blue Jean Committee:

In the spirit of Spinal Tap and The Folksmen of Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer, this “group” and their album spoofs the 70s California easy listenin’ soft rock scene.

The album has seven songs … and is ten minutes long.

Needless to say, I laughed a lot on my first hearing. In fact, I’m laughing now as I write this.

The music and the musicianship is first class. But it’s still parody. And the lyrics, well, there’s everything from sarcasm to witty takes to downright stupidity. It’s funny, and it works, to my ears at least.

My favorite line:

 

Wise man said if you wanna know a man walk a mile in his shoes /

Don’t know ’bout you, but I’m more a barefoot guy

 

Anyway, if you want a chuckle and like this sort of thing, look it up on Apple music or iTunes or YouTube. It’s worth the ten-minute investment.

Mozart

 

Mozart: A Life, by Maynard Solomon © 1995

 

I spent the past five weeks winding my way through a thick biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Why? Well, first of all, Little One spent a weekend of her semester abroad back in March in Austria, specifically Salzburg, a small city whose main claim to fame is it being Mozart’s birthplace. Then a few days later, completely at random and with eerie synchronicity, I spotted the above biography on sale for $1 at my local library. I took it as a sign and put it in the immediate On-Deck Circle. Third, and on a lesser note, I have been browsing through my copy of Schonberg’s Lives of the Composers while listening to my growing record collection and felt like I might want to augment it with a small book collection. And finally, I realized that the only thing I really knew of the great Mozart is what I remembered from that movie Amadeus, parts of which I last saw forty years ago.

 

Anyway, the biography taught me much about the great composer. Generally and invariably Mozart is regarded as one of the Big Three of classical music: Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. In my amateur career as a classical music enthusiast and aficionado, however, I wouldn’t have put him in my top three. I was fairly familiar with his major works and appreciated his crisp, clear, clean compositional style, but it didn’t move me. Would it, after a thorough reading of this biography?

 

I felt the best way to answer this question was to also listen to at least one piece by the maestro every day. All in all, I listened to 45 compositions while working my way through the biography.

 

I did a little research before starting the book. Mozart: A Life was a finalist in the Pulitzer Price biography category. Solomon himself founded Vanguard Records and taught at Julliard, in addition to several Ivy League schools. He also authored a similar biography of Beethoven. Skimming through it I saw numerous pages of musical scores, so with excited anticipation I dove in.

 

And was kinda disappointed. Overall, if pressed I’d give the book a B+. True, I left feeling that I knew Wolfgang; it filled in a lot of gaps from my sparse knowledge of his life and I gained a working knowledge of his, er, work. But right from the start and running almost through the entire 519 pages was Mozart’s oppressive, domineering, often misguided father Leopold. Mozart was a child prodigy, a virtuoso on the keyboard and quite adept at the violin, who began composing at age 5. His father, a middling composer himself whose abrasive personality failed to secure him a prominent position in any of the courts of Europe, saw in the boy a means to bring fame and financial success to the family. Mozart’s older sister was also a virtuoso in her own right, and Leopold had them touring northern Europe and Italy several times as children, performing before royalty and the upper classes. So the biography devoted a hefty chunk to psychoanalyzing our hero.

 

(And I realized that Mozart’s best 20th-century analog – and it’s not a perfect comparison – would be to a certain extent Michael Jackson.)

 

Solomon also devotes a crazy amount of space on Mozart’s finances – how much he earned per performance, how much he earned per year, his expenses, Leopold’s finances, the family finances, the finances of the family of Mozart’s wife, Constanze Weber, and how much composers and musicians earned at the time and in which city in service to which prince. It was all so distracting and ultimately meaningless. Mozart lives on for his music, not for the amount of ducats, florins, kreuzers, or louis d’ors that flowed through his coffers.

 

In fairness, Solomon does devote three entire chapters, one in each Part, to Mozart’s compositions: Chapter 8, “A Composer’s Voice”, Chapter 24, “Fearful Symmetries”, and an analysis of his opera in the ultimate chapter, Chapter 32, “The Power of Music.” All well and good and interesting. I’d like to re-read these three chapters in the future. But I think I’d like even better (and perhaps this exposes my lack of familiarity with Mozart’s works) is a more chronological approach where each major work is explained in terms of how Mozart’s mastery evolved and the effect each had upon the zeitgeist.

 

One thing I learned almost immediately, and the one thing I’d like you to take away from this post, is that the award-winning 1984 film Amadeus is a complete work of fiction. It’s based on nearly two-hundred-year-old speculation that grew into its own mythology. Just about every detail about Amadeus is incorrect, save for the fact that Mozart was an 18th-century composer who married a woman named Costanze and another composer named Salieri existed around the same time. Even the movie’s writer and director called it a “fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri.” One of the first things I did with Solomon’s biography was turn to the Index and look for Salieri. His name appears on 9 of the book’s 519 pages.

 

So did my opinion of Mozart change during and after reading Mozart: A Life and sampling his works on a daily basis? You bet! As stated above, I always felt his music to be crisp and clean, “pure” like water from a cold mountain stream, meandering in and out and around in the ether yet always resolving itself into the perfect notes (chords) needed at the perfect moment. Sublime. I made a conscious decision to move my focus around the music beside simply the melody, to study the undercurrents, the tempos and harmony, the internal counterpoints and countermovements, the emotions that these meanderings brought up within me. It’s hard to put into words (and now I have a little bit more sympathy for Mr. Solomon). But I enjoyed the exercises and I found myself enjoying the pieces I listened to.

 

The works I loved the most?

 

Andante (second movement) from Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, K. 16

Serenade No. 13 in G, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, K. 525

Andante (second movement) from Symphony No. 36 “Linz”

Serenade No. 10 in B-flat, K. 361/370a, II: Adagio

“Haydn” String Quartet No. 18 in A, K. 464, III: Andante

Cosi fan tutte, K. 588 Act I: Overture

Divertimento No. 17 in D major, IV, K. 334

Divertimento No. 17 in D major, VI, K. 334

Piano Sonata No. 3 in B-flat, K. 281

Symphony No. 29 in A, K. 201/186a

Violin Sonata No. 18 in G, K. 301

 

Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 and died on December 5, 1791, at the age of 35. He died most likely of a combination of rheumatic fever and the medical (mal)practice of the day. He was not poisoned by Salieri.

 

[N.B. 1 – Other notable Salzburgians include Paracelsus, 16th-century physician; Christian Doppler of the Doppler effect; the Von Trapps of Sound of Music fame; Herbert von Karajan, noted conductor of whom I own many of his orchestral CDs; Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism; and Joseph Haydn’s younger brother, Johann Michael. Mozart was an acquaintance of the older Haydn and, while not exactly buddies, they did meet several times and held mutually high opinions of each other.]

 

[N.B. 2 – “K” numbers stand for Köchel numbers (pronounced between “kohshell” and “kershell” and are an attempt at a chronological catalogue of Mozart’s work published in 1862 by the man whom it’s named after. Since then it’s been revised six times, the last edition in 1964; when two K numbers appear after a work by Mozart the first represents the first edition Kochel number and the second the number of the sixth edition. The original catalogue ran up to 626 works.]

 

For those keeping score at home (and as a reference for Future Me):

 

Mozart works I own –

   Best of Mozart (CD bought May 1992)     

            Serenade in G, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, K. 525

            Symphony No. 29 in A, K. 201

            Symphony No. 41 in C, “Jupiter”, K. 551

            Overture to “The Marriage of Figaro”, K. 492

            Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, K 216

   Masters of Classical Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (CD, Christmas gift 1993)

            Eleven miscellaneous short pieces

   Mozart: The Last Five Symphonies (CD bought August 1999)     

            Symphony No. 36 in C, “Linz”, K. 425

            Symphony No. 38 in D, “Prague”, K. 504

            Symphony No. 39 in E-flat, K. 543

            Symphony No. 40 in G-minor, K. 550

            Symphony No. 41 in C, “Jupiter”, K. 551

   Mozart: Kronungsmesse (Record, Christmas gift 2022)

            Coronation Mass No. 14 in C, K. 317

Motet “Exsultate, Jubilate”, K. 165

Great Mass in Cm, K. 427

   Obras para piano a cuatro manos (Record, birthday gift 2023)

            Sonata in B-flat for Piano Four-Hands, K. 358

5 Variations in G, K. 501

Fantasia in F minor for a Mechanical Organ, K. 608

Piano Sonata in C for Four-Hands (doubtful), K. 19

   Soundtrack to the movie Amadeus (Record bought May 2024)

 

Selections of Mozart’s work I listened to while reading the biography:

   Symphony No. 41 in C, K. 551 “Jupiter”

   Horn Concerto No. 1 in D, K. 386b (K. 412/514)

   Horn Concerto No. 2 in Eb, K. 417

   Horn Concerto No. 3 in Eb, K. 447

   Horn Concerto No. 4 in Eb, K. 495

   Symphony No. 39 in Eb, K. 543

   Symphony No. 40 in Gm, K. 550 “Great G minor Symphony”

   Clarinet Concerto in A, K. 622

   Coronation Mass No. 14 in C, K. 317

   Clarinet Quintet in A, “Stadler”, K. 581

   Symphony No. 36 in C, “Linz”, K. 425

   Symphony No. 35 in D, “Haffner”, K. 385

   Symphony No. 38 in D, “Prague”, K. 504

   Serenade No. 13 in G, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, K. 525

   Idomeneo, re di Creta, Acts I and II, K. 366

   Piano Concerto No. 20 in D-minor, K. 466

   Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, K. 467

   Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, K. 16

   Serenade No. 10 in B-flat, I-IV, K. 361/370a “Gran Partita”

   Marriage of Figaro Overture, K. 492

   Piano Sonata No. 12 in F, K. 332/300k

   Piano Concerto No. 20 in D-minor, K. 466

   Piano Sonata No. 1 in C, K. 279

   Piano Sonata No. 2 in F, K. 280

   Piano Sonata No. 3 in B-flat, K. 281

   Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, OT and part of Act I

   Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, continuation of Act I

   “Haydn” String Quartet No. 14 in G, "Spring", K. 387

   “Haydn” String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, K. 421

   “Haydn” String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat, K. 428

   “Haydn” String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat, "The Hunt", K. 458

   “Haydn” String Quartet No. 18 in A, K. 464

   Cosi fan tutte, K. 588 Act I: Overture

   Side One of “Amadeus” Soundtrack

      Symphony No. 25 in G minor, “Little G minor Symphony”, I, K. 183

      Serenade No. 10 for Winds in B-flat, “Gran Partita”, III, K. 361

      The Abduction from the Seraglio, Turkish Finale, K. 384

      Symphony No. 29 in A, I, K. 201

   Divertimento No. 17 in D major, I-III, K. 334

   Divertimento No. 17 in D major, IV-VI, K. 334

   Piano Sonata No. 3 in B-flat, K. 281

   Piano Sonata No. 10 in C, K. 330

   Piano Sonata No. 13 in B-flat, K. 333

   Symphony No. 29 in A, K. 201/186a

   Don Giovanni, Overture, K. 527

   Violin Sonata No. 24 in F, K. 376

   Violin Sonata No. 18 in G, K. 301

   Violin Sonata No. 21 in E-minor, K. 304

   Requiem in D-minor, K. 626