FEBRUARY 2006

Celebrating Mozart's 250th Birthday
by Andrea Olmstead

Mozart would have been 250 years old on January 27, 2005 . His music is, however, timeless. Considered pure and perfect, it gives us beauty and consolation. Other composers are perhaps best qualified to judge: Wagner called him “music’s genius of light and love,” and Schumann described the G Minor Symphony as a work “of Grecian lightness and grace.” Nicolas Slonimsky wrote of the “supreme Austrian genius” whose “works in every genre are unsurpassed in lyric beauty, rhythmic variety, and effortless melodic invention.” An infant prodigy, Mozart was doomed to die young. His operas, nevertheless, demonstrate the quality that touches us: All possible human emotions appear fully realized. Mozart was completely human and simultaneously lived up to his name, Amadé, “Beloved by God.”

Ms. Olmstead is Handel and Haydn Society’s Christopher Hogwood Research Fellow for the 2005-2006 Season. She also serves as moderator and host for all pre- and post-concert discussions.

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