Mozart: Sonata in C Major (9:30)

Mozart was born on this day January 27 in 1756. This Sonata was composed 1788 – 236 years ago, three years before his death at age 35. Although the piece is well known today, it was not published in Mozart’s lifetime and first appeared in print in 1805.

A typical performance takes about 11 minutes, but I think I play the second and third movements a little faster, so it clocks in at 9:30. Because we all seem to have shorter attention spans, I’ve been trying to keep my recordings to under 3-4 minutes, but this complete sonata is so delicate and beautiful that I was compelled to record all three movements. It’s well worth a relaxing 9-minute 30-second listen. I realized that there were so many notes, that I didn’t need to use the damper pedal at all, and doing so allows us to hear the left-hand harmonic themes more clearly, especially between 3:53 and 4:07.

According to Wikipedia, “Despite his short life, Mozart’s rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works of virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture. Even Beethoven was in awe of Mozart!

Einstein once said that while Beethoven created his music, Mozart’s ”was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.” Einstein believed much the same of physics, that beyond observations and theory lay the music of the spheres – which, he wrote, revealed a ”pre-established harmony” exhibiting stunning symmetries.

In his struggles with extremely complicated mathematics that led to the general theory of relativity of 1915, Einstein often turned for inspiration to the simple beauty of Mozart’s music. ”Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music,” recalled his older son, Hans Albert. ”That would usually resolve all his difficulties.”

Happy Birthday, Mozart!

Enjoy,

Dr. Weiss

Related Posts:

Fantasia in D Minor (4:31) – Mozart

Minuet in F (0:59) – Mozart

Theme from Symphony in G minor (1:31) – Mozart