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Louis Proyect wrote
Their audience, then, knew what Da Ponte and Mozart were getting into.
Joseph II was never going to tolerate explicit revolutionary language,
and Da Ponte softened it considerably in devising his libretto. But
Mozart deepened it again with his music, giving three dimensions to
two-dimensional characters by granting them real-life emotional
complexity. Instead of political force, they get emotional depth, and as
real people, their fates once again acquire political force.
full: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/mozart-grace-notes/
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That was part of the genius and beauty of Mozart, who wrote his first
symphony at age eight. Reminds me of the narrative, as I recall it
from reading the book long ago, of coming back across France toward
central Europe after the first World War on a train loaded with
refugees, peasants who after fleeing the ravaging of their homelands
were being forced back to their villages and countryside to a hopeless
future, with their lands having been taken by the banks and rich
landlords who profited from war. The narrator looks at the children of
the refugees. Their eyes are bright and still full of hope and
expectation, their demeanor full of activity and mischief. Then he
looks at the returning peasants. Their eyes are dull and listless,
their shoulders slumped and motionless, their cheeks hollowed and
ashen. He writes: “What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor
the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of
Mozart murdered.”
And no change: they are murdering the Mozarts.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
<https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1198592>
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