Conductor Discusses Mozart

A noted classical music conductor told an overflow crowd in the Mather House Senior Common Room Tuesday that, despite the attention paid to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart last year, opportunity for serious study of the 18th-century composer remains.

In a lecture titled "Making Sense of Mozart," Christopher Hogwood claimed that the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mozarts death had effected public perception of the composer and the performance of his music.

Hogwood, the artistic director of Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, criticized the way in which the "Mozart industry" has placed the composer on a pedestal as a cultural icon.

Hogwood said the deification began with the 1984 film Amadeus, which he termed "an entirely unhistoric piece of fiction."

Hogwood said that Mozart's elevation to the status of cultural hero has hampered attempts to study the composer and his music from a critical perspective. Hogwood also maintained that the recent conception of Mozart as a universal genius has dominated earlier evaluations of the composer.

Modern listeners should question whether "Mozart was the best at absolutely everything," Hogwood said.

Hogwood said he played excerpts from several well-known Mozart compositions in order to teach the audience how to think about modern deviations in instrument construction, performance technique and social context of musical performance.

"A lot of things that we take for granted in Mozart were in fact different in his day," Hogwood said.

According to Hogwood, the one bright spot in last year's festivities was the public scrutiny of the composition Mozart's Requiem, which he left unfinished at his death November 7, 1791. Hogwood said the inquiry involved general listeners in "specialist concerns," including attempts to complete and reconstruct the requiem.

Hogwood concluded his speech by saying that "the year was perhaps worth it," but that there are "many books yet to be written and many questions to be asked."