Richibi’s Weblog

                       

        “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” (1818)

 

                 Caspar David Friedrich

 

                       _____________

                       

by now, if you’ve been listening,

you’ll probably easily tell your

Chopin from your Mozart, even

without looking

 

if not, the one who isn’t Mozart

is Chopin, the one who isn’t

Chopin is Mozart, cause you’re

likely to recognize the one if not

the other

 

here’s Mozart’s Piano Sonata

no 16 in C major, K. 545, from

1788, which even Mozart

deemed “for beginners”, but

its very elementary qualities

suit, here, my purposes

 

here’s Chopin’s Piano Sonata

no 3 in B minor, Op. 58, 1844,

some sixty years later, the

epitome of the Romantic Era

 

Mozart is Classical, the foundation

of the shape and sound of music

in the West, think of Oriental music,

Chinese, for instance, opera, as an

alternative inspirational direction

 

he sets, along with Haydn, incidentally,

the parameters of Western music, I

call it its grammar, tempo, tonality,

and repetition, its hallmarks, its sine

qua non, as we say in Latin, its trinity

of imperatives, its without which there

would be no Western music as we

know it

 

Romanticism, after two revolutions,

the French and the American, comes

along to turn all of that into literature,

prompted by the spirit of democracy,

the first expressions of it since Caesar,

Ancient Rome, where earlier,

everywhere, kings had ruled, and by

extension, even more autocratically,

the Church, for monarchs had

received, morally, and consequently

politically, from it, their mandates

from God

 

one man, one vote, even theoretically,

upended that entire metaphysical

construct, therefore Romanticism

 

everyone had a voice, everyone had

a story, the birth of the individual,

and of, by extension, human rights,

for better or for worse, see above

 

therefore Chopin

 

listen, Chopin is the new Jesus,

prophet, but for a new age 

 

stay tuned

 

 

R ! chard