BEETHOVEN VS. MOZART

Beethoven vs. Mozart



Beethoven vs. Mozart

Beethoven and Mozart: Two Great Composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig Van Beethoven are two of the most well know and respected composers of all time. Over one hundred and fifty years after their lives their music is still studied, enjoyed and respected. These two great composers had different styles of composing music, and performing. Mozart and Beethoven were both born with extremely rare gifts of musical ability and displayed them early on in life. Mozart was a child prodigy. By the age of five he was able to reproduce a melody played to him on the piano. He was also able to play the violin extremely well. It didn't come quite as naturally to Beethoven. He was not the prodigy that Mozart was as a child. When Beethoven was born, Mozart was already a well know composer. His father forced him into practicing the piano for hours a day and punished whenever he made a mistake, hoping he would become the next Mozart. He also felt if he was to become good enough he could earn an income to help support the family. Neither Mozart nor Beethoven had good relationships with their fathers.

Both composers are worthy of the title "genius", yet Beethoven's genius, as I am to claim in this abstract, is more universal and thus more profound of the two. In a few epithets, the bulk of Mozart's creation can be described as lightweight, springy and delightful, often evoking soothing and calming effects in the listeners. Undoubtedly, he reached unprecedented heights of proficiency in aiming at this particular sensory sphere and expanded its boundaries to a truly cosmic scale. But Mozart's music is purely entertaining, and, as such, it rarely crosses to the intellectual and more demanding realms of human perception; this ...