Mozart

It's pretty silly how good Mozart was. His style was so specifically pigeonholed into a tiny piece of the realm of musical possibility, and yet he composed music that encompasses the entire realm of human emotions, and is incredibly diverse. Composers who came after him, who had all of the possibilities of 19th and 20th century innovations in music, can hardly be said to have done a better job of capturing human emotion than Mozart. In a way, Mozart was more of a skilled craftsman than an innovator. Unlike Beethoven, who unleashed an entire new style of music on the world, Mozart focused instead on the beauty of his music, and honed his style to a tight, consistent package. The beauty of his music is so much more subtle than that of Beethoven; he breaks the rules specifically and sparsely, which makes the breaks in the pattern even more surprising and more beautiful. Perhaps, at the end of every period in music, a composer (or group of composers) will come in and summarize that genre, creating masterpieces out of experience rather than experimentation

What I've been listening to today:

Symphony No. 40 in G Minor- Mozart

Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major- Mozart

Ceremony of Carols- Benjamin Britten