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Classical Music Was Once Revolutionary
Everyone would agree that music nowadays is one of modern global civilization’s central, attention-grabbing, and brightest cultural and political drivers. Contemporary music serves many purposes, from self-reflection and sharing one’s feelings and experiences to criticizing politicians and promoting ideas of diversity and inclusion. According to Bello and Garcia, it was digitalization that “has led to more diverse cultural markets.” There was perhaps only one similar period when musical works were as sensational in terms of civilization and culturally influential as today’s one, which is the classical one.
Musicologists and historians call the historical period lasting about a hundred years from the middle of the 18th century the classical one. It looks and sounds ironic because the new classical movement and genres were groundbreaking and revolutionary for those times. It is noteworthy that “at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Europe still adhered to the style known as Baroque.” The preceding cultural and musical eras were steeped in settings of monarchies, cruel empires, haughty emperors and nobility, and ostentatious wealth.
Then the revolutions of 1848 took place on the European continent. According to historians, “the shift in focus away from doctrine and dogma toward a more liberal … attitude” happened. Such traditional and obsolete concepts as over-religiosity, the old hierarchy, and the previous god-like status of rulers were culturally and even physically destroyed. The new ideals were freedom, individualism, civil and national equality, and independence. Along with political and cultural innovation, novel composers came with unique creative ideas and perspectives, and Mozart was among them.
About Mozart
Mozart was one of the classical music wave’s most talented and influential pioneers. It would be fair to compare this world-famous and still revered musician with the mythological Icarus, as their life paths and fates are similar. One critical similarity is that both Mozart and Icarus were introduced to their life’s work and developed their talents through their fathers. In the case of Icarus, it was Daedalus, and for Mozart, it was Leopold. Mozart’s father was a violinist, which alone provided an excellent learning platform for the young composer. When he was introduced to the works of Bach and Haydn, Mozart even mentally imagined himself to be their student. The former was the creator of the late Baroque style, and the latter was already an established classical composer. Such a significant and multifaceted educational background explains the complexity, emotional diversity, and layered structures of Mozart’s compositions.
The combination of his knowledge, mindset, unimaginable natural talent, and historical context doomed him to success. The European public immediately praised his works, but gradually they began to criticize him slightly with each new performance. According to experts, Wolfgang knew what aspects of his work the audience criticized. Moreover, the audience misunderstood some elements of his performance every year. Today’s music experts and critics again regard Mozart as a genius who reached the peak of classical composition and then passed away too soon. Such a comeback in perspective may be because the current generations of musicologists and cultural experts have more knowledge about music as a civilizational phenomenon and can evaluate it with less subjectivity. Moreover, almost everyone has heard at least one of his compositions or parts via media and entertainment.
Bibliography
Bello, Pablo, and David Garcia. “Cultural Divergence in Popular Music: The Increasing Diversity of Music Consumption on Spotify Across Countries.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8, no. 182 (2021): 1-8.
Simon P. Keefe, ed. Mozart in Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Van Boer, Bertil. Music in the Classical World: Genre, Culture, and History. New York: Routledge, 2019.
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