Mozart, Making Fun

I AWAKENED at four as usual, to feed the cats. labor Day, no work today. The two males ate, but tHE female did not.She seemed to have awakened from a deep sleep. She finally ate, sleepily. When blissfully I returned to bed, she insisted on laying on top of me. She often does this, but this time she did it insistently, keeping me awakw with her contented purring. On the radio i identified a piece by Mozart which I had never hear d before, a weird piece, discordant, out of key, with a simplistic, stupid melody, as if he had composed on a bad day. Then, as Mandi laying purring on my chest, classical narrator pet Vandegraff explained that Mozart, astonishingly prolific, and that some of his work had been ignored, such as this weird sounding piece just completed. It was brought to life by some musical antiquarian, and recorded by an ensemble assembled for the purpose. Mozart, it seems, was making fun. In his day, just like our own, amateur musicians, good and bad, were ubiquitous. He was making fun of the bad ones, of whom he apparently had grown tired. Then, as now, songwriters and composers were everywhere, some good, some bad. Mozart in this crazy sounding piece was making fun of the third and fourth rate composers who filled Vienna and the rest of Europe. This, musicologists had deduced from his letters and what he was reported to have said to other people, particularly his musical friends like Franz Joseph Hayden. Mozart was, we know, like most geniuses, a complicated character. Fun living, a real party animal, he could also be bitingly cruel and aloof. and his fan base was fickle. In Vienna, and in his hometown of Salzburg, he was in and out of favor like some shifting, whimsical wind. Only in Prague was he uniformly, steadfastly beloved, and he loved Prague back, devoting a symphony to the city. A prophet, but not in his own land., but only away from home. He was quite sensitive to what other people thought, what they said and wrote about his work. So, he responded. Responded by belittling those with less talent than he. God, what an asshole. Heavens, how human he was. The more brilliant people are, the more likely they are to see others as idiots. The more creative, the more likely to cheat, to break the rules, to fail to conform. Mozart deserves credit on all accounts.