#mozart

If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#mozart #opera #shakespeare #verdi #wagner

Mozart, who was buried in a pauper’s grave, was one of the greatest successes we know of, a man who in his early thirties had poured out his inexhaustible gift of music, leaving the world richer because he had passed that way. To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success. ↗

— Eleanor Roosevelt

#life

Strauss! Oh yes, he was so-so. He wrote pretty music- The Blue Danube and Tales from the Vienna Woods. But what is that compared to Mozart?' Suddenly, Bess and George spotted Nancy coming towards them. 'Nancy!' the cousins chimed simultaneously and raced toward her. 'I see our bus driver is still at it.' Nancy grinned. 'All the way from Salzburg." George groaned. 'Did he run off the road again?' 'Not once but many times,' Bess said. 'It was awful. Once he got so angry because someone compared Beethoven to Mozart that he actually stopped the bus, ran outside, and shouted into the valley, Beethoven is a bore. Mozart is sublime. Over and over. The professor had to go out and drag him back to the bus. ↗

— Carolyn Keene

#humor #mozart #nancy-drew #music

Mozart often wrote to his family that certain variations or sections of pieces were so successful that they had to be encored immediately, even without waiting for the entire piece to end. ↗

— Emanuel Ax

#end #entire #even #family #had