It was an all Mozart night. Led by guest conductor Roger Norrington, the
orchestra performed Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music, the Posthorn Symphony
(with authentic posthorns), and the Symphony No. 36 in C major (the Linz
Symphony). The music was wonderful, and Norrington was a kick, conducting
with neither a podium nor a baton. He just wandered into the front of the
orchestra and used his hands and full body to draw passion from both the
musicians and the audience.
As much fun as all that was, however, what inspired me to write this
jotting is the story of how Mozart wrote the Linz Symphony.
Wolfgang and his wife Constanze arrived in Linz, Austria on the morning of
October 30, 1783. They had come for a three week visit with Count Johann
Thun, an old friend of the Mozart family. When they got to Linz, they were
met at the city gates by a servant of the Thun household who told them
that a performance of Mozart's music was scheduled for November 4.
There was only one small problem: Mozart hadn't known about the concert
and had no music with him. So, genius that he was, he simply wrote a new
symphony for the occasion, four movements of deliciously complex music, in
only four days, a record even for Mozart. And he had to leave enough time
to have scribes manually copy the full score into the sheets needed for
each instrument, and for a rehearsal.
Frankly, I don't understand what the big fuss was all about. Why didn't
Wolfgang simply pull out his cell phone, call his admin back in Vienna,
have him pull some old scores off the shelf, and fax them to Mozart at the
Count's house? Or, better yet, Mozart could have hooked up his laptop
computer to one of the Count's printers and downloaded what he needed from
the CD-ROM that I'm sure he always carried with him.
Well, I guess that in 1783 (nor in 1983, for that matter), they didn't
have cell phones, or fax machines, or laptop computers, or CD-ROMs. So,
lacking the technology that would have enabled him to use some existing
music, Mozart instead had to write a new symphony, for the residents of
18th century Linz and for the rest of the world for all of time.
What might necessity force us to invent if we didn't have our technology
to fall back on?
Joe Podolsky
--JOE_PODOLSKY@HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>