When the world seems to be falling apart, people look for something to lean on. “Now, more than ever, when the world is plagued by crises and at risk of being torn to war, the desire for unity is growing,” says Evelyn Meining, artistic director of the International Film Festival of America. mozart festival wurzburg.
Throughout history, the genius and beauty of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music has often provided comfort in times of crisis – and it continues to do so today. “As a musician, he is a role model, especially when there is a sense of over-excitation and polarization,” Meining told DW. That’s why this year the motto of Germany’s largest Mozart festival is “Evoked Beauty: Mozart the Idol.”
mozart as an icon of modernity
The festival’s opening concert featuring the Mozarteum Orchestra Hamburg showed how powerful and inspiring Mozart’s music can be. The Austria Orchestra performs Mozart’s final symphony in G minor.
The program also included modern works by Maurice Ravel and Sergei Prokofiev, both of whom admired Mozart.
Ravel praised Mozart as “the idol of a bygone age”. According to Evelyn Meining, “He shared Mozart’s view that music should enchant.”
Ravel’s work “Le Tombeau de Couperin” pays tribute to the Baroque composer François Couperin. Meining explains, “It is a musical work of beauty, characterized by clarity, elegance and melodic linearity, just like that of Mozart.”
Ravel composed this piece between 1914 and 1917 during World War I and dedicated it to friends who had died in the war.
Sergei Prokofiev also admired Mozart’s classical symphonies for their beauty. He wrote his Second Violin Concerto in the mid-1930s. Upon returning from exile, he arrived in Russia under Stalin’s rule, in which mass arrests and atrocities were being carried out against the people. A striking proof of this is his Violin Concerto, performed as soloist by the Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang, who captivated the audience with the beauty and expressive power of her performance, from its delicate opening to its stormy finale. He was celebrated with loud applause.
mozart as hero of crisis
While Mozart’s music is today often considered beautiful and light, it is carefully calculated and often difficult to play. For example, citing its increasingly dissonant sounds and musical complexity, Evelyn Meining says, “In his time, Mozart’s music repeatedly confused, even incensed, and overwhelmed people.”
After Mozart’s death (1791), his wife Constanze elevated him to the status of a genius. “He was revered as a national spiritual figure, someone on whom people could agree in a time of national division.”
At the beginning of the 19th century, the old feudal system in Europe had collapsed following the Napoleonic Wars. The citizens wanted independence and national unity, while the prince wanted to restore autocratic rule.
In the 20th century, after the collapse of old Europe due to the world wars, Mozart became an object of longing. “Many artists and intellectuals were searching for something that symbolized restraint, order, and humanity that would provide them with stability in a time of decadence and terror.” Meining says, “Mozart brought light to those dark times.”
connecting with mozart
Solo violinist Tianwa Yang still looks to Mozart and his music as an ideal: “For us musicians, he is someone who is not of this world. Someone from another universe.” Still, she says, no one should be struck with awe in the presence of this statue. “When you listen to music and like it, you feel close to the musician and think you understand him, which may not be true. But there is a certain connection with him when playing music, and that’s what matters.”
This year, Tianwa Yang is the featured artist or “Artiste Etoile” of Mozartfest. She not only presents the classics, but she also focuses on contemporary music. It was for Yang that the renowned composer and clarinetist Jörg Widmann specifically wrote Etude No. 7 for solo violin, also known as the Jupiter Etude. He also frequently returns to the classics, this time with Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. Like the G minor Symphony, it ranks among Mozart’s most famous works. The work will be exhibited for the first time in Wurzburg on 26 June.
Using humor to remove Mozart from his position?
As a role model, Mozart is not above reproach, and his music can be made accessible even to young people.
In his comic lecture-performance “Nothing Is Sacred”, German-Turkish-Armenian composer and writer Mark Sinan exposes the mechanisms of power, culture and history that lie behind the untouchable “saints” of music history: Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. He moves a little away from his seat.
Thanks to his German father, Sinan became familiar with the classics from early childhood. Together with the Eliot Quartet, he interrogates these musical giants. “And through his non-European background, he connects his questions to society’s current reality of migration,” says artistic director Meining. “He’s interested in what the musical history of other countries looks like.” Nevertheless, Evelyn Meining revealed that Mozart would survive in the end and would not be removed from his position.
This article was originally written in German.