Mozart and Modern Research

Extract

The Mozart Celebrations of 1931 do not seem to have created much stir, perhaps because there is no very compelling magic in the numbers 175 and 140—for it was, you will remember, the 175th anniversary of the composer's birth and the 140th of his death—but it produced, as all such occasions do, a considerable crop of literature, good, bad and indifferent, the perusal of which must have caused many readers besides the present lecturer to reflect on the great change that has taken place in critical opinion about Mozart in recent years. The simple nineteenth century view which saw in Mozart the supreme master of formal beauty, and tended to take for granted the elements of which that beauty is made up, has given way to a spirit of inquiry which will take nothing on trust, and seeks to find out exactly what we mean by the Mozartian style before appraising it in general terms.