The Mozart Conspiracy

Micromegas

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Micromegas
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No, I'm not talking about the "Mozart effect." This is something much more sinister.

Google "Robert Newman Mozart Myth" and you'll see a bunch of discussions started by this tireless and tiresome conspiracy theorist in his travels about the message boards of our not-so-new millennium. Robert Newman is a guy in England who makes dramatic allegations about Mozart. Namely, the man was a Freemason stooge who never composed a note:

I am sure (and have much supporting evidence) that the musical career of Mozart was almost entirely manufactured, falsified, even from the time of his childhood onward by the fraternities of the Holy Roman Empire, this involving the supply to Mozart (even after his death in 1791) of music he never composed but which, being published and performed in his name as 'evidence of his genius', eventually, led to a Mozart-dominated musicology, the hijacking of historical reality, the destruction of musicology itself, and the control of what is taught and believed on music in this important period of musical history. The musical evidence (from manuscripts etc etc) is now very clear. And other researchers are increasingly agreeing with this view.

This is garden variety delegitimization. He calls mainstream Mozart scholarship "corporate mythology" and "a fairy tale," even though (naturally) he mines the works of legitimate Mozart scholars for factoids that supposedly support his bizarre theory.

The Jesuits/Freemasons, he claims, had to come up with a homegrown Austrian genius (he also questions the authorship of the works of Haydn and Beethoven), so they presented this supposed child prodigy as a prolific musical giant. The real composers of his works were people like Sarti, Vanhal and Myslivicek: successful composers in their day, but unknown now. This also served to dumb down musical history, presumably so the musical historians would have less names to remember. He refuses to answer the many questions his strange claims raise, or to provide anything resembling evidence supporting the ideas he expounds.

Seemingly on the brink of publishing his explosive, controversial Mozart exposé for the past five years, Robert Newman has been kicked off some half a dozen classical music message boards for his predictable lack of civility and his aversion to rational dialogue. He may be a crackpot, but he's a crafty debater: he has an enormous storehouse of ominous-sounding factoids, and always tries to make the "defenders of the Mozart Myth" assume the burden of proof.

Always something new under the sun in Conspiracy World, right?

-Mike
 
I view this with the same attitude I view the somewhat less conspiratorial claims that William Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him.

Who the F*** Cares!!!.

Appreciate the art for what it is. 300 + years later the identity of the actual creator of the art is so insignificant compared to the value of the art itself and how it has influenced later generations of artists.

Let us assume for the moment that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in fact did not write a single note of music. That has no bearing on the cultural value of the body of work we currently have access to that happens to be attributed to the man.
 
As a huge Mozart fan, this is a new one on me.

As it stands, however, it's a pile of assertions. I appreciate you can't post links yet (why not do a bit of pointless post-count boosting in Community?), but you can manage it if you disguise them so that the software doesn't automatically parse them. So it would be helpful if you could provide some sort of reference so we can get some idea if he's backing these assertions up in any way.

How does he explain Mozart's well-documented improvisation abilities, for example?

Rolfe.
 
Plus ... if Mozart didn't write that music, somebody did, and it's amazingly good stuff. I mean, if Mozart wasn't the genius, then someone else was. Don't give me the Wanhal, Salieri rubbish - you only need to look at Mozart's mature work to see how he was in a whole different class. When you find counterpoint as complex as in the Jupiter symphony in one of his contemporaries let me know.

Oh, and why would anyone bother to create a conspiracy of musicologists, for heaven's sake?
 
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Maybe ROland Emmerich, who recently graced the world with "2012", should change his upcoming film about how Shakespere was just a front with a film about Mozart.
 
sleepy_lioness said:
Plus ... if Mozart didn't write that music, somebody did, and it's amazingly good stuff. I mean, if Mozart wasn't the genius, then someone else was. Don't give me the Wanhal, Salieri rubbish - you only need to look at Mozart's mature work to see how he was in a whole different class. When you find counterpoint as complex as in the Jupiter symphony in one of his contemporaries let me know.

Oh, and why would anyone bother to create a conspiracy of musicologists, for heaven's sake?
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Exactly. The body of work has sufficient internal consistency to be self-evidently the work of one person. You can listen to a piece you're not familiar with, and know who the composer is just by the idiom. And it's an idiom of such genius that it's ridiculous to claim this was hack-work by a committee of conspirators.

And we're supposed to believe that these second-raters were capable of writing works of genius, but were quite happy to fade into obscurity and let a foul-mouthed brat take the credit? If any or all of them were capable of writing something like Le Nozze di Figaro, how come they didn't do it under their own names?

Rolfe.
 
Not to mention the actual amount of forgery that would be needed to produce the thousands of pages of original manuscript in his handwriting that exist in libraries all over the world ... (I've personally held one complete ms), including signatures, jokes (such as smiley faces looking backwards instead of repeat marks) and so on. And his and his family's letters. And the eye-witness testimonies of him giving performances. And so on.
 
I love the way that Newman talks about the "Jesuit/Freemason" conspiracy. Like the Jesuits and the Masons were ever real buddy buddy........
 
Rolfe said:
Exactly. The body of work has sufficient internal consistency to be self-evidently the work of one person. You can listen to a piece you're not familiar with, and know who the composer is just by the idiom. And it's an idiom of such genius that it's ridiculous to claim this was hack-work by a committee of conspirators.

And we're supposed to believe that these second-raters were capable of writing works of genius, but were quite happy to fade into obscurity and let a foul-mouthed brat take the credit? If any or all of them were capable of writing something like Le Nozze di Figaro, how come they didn't do it under their own names?

Rolfe.
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You know what's cool? Having someone in the forum with the knowledge to be able to answer posts about music history conspiracy theories. Seriously. Bet'cha never thought you'd be bringing your knowledge to bear in this subforum, did'ja Rolfe? :D
 
sleepy_lioness said:
Don't give me the Wanhal, Salieri rubbish - you only need to look at Mozart's mature work to see how he was in a whole different class. When you find counterpoint as complex as in the Jupiter symphony in one of his contemporaries let me know.
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What Newman always asks is where Mozart learned such jaw-dropping technique. Leopold, he claims, was just a violin teacher and assistant Kapellmeister.

-Mike
 
ElMondoHummus said:
You know what's cool? Having someone in the forum with the knowledge to be able to answer posts about music history conspiracy theories. Seriously. Bet'cha never thought you'd be bringing your knowledge to bear in this subforum, did'ja Rolfe? :D
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Mmm, my expose of Prokofiev's attack on Stravinsky in Alexander Nevsky was done in the Arts section of the forum.... :)

Rolfe.
 
Micromegas said:
The Jesuits/Freemasons, he claims, had to come up with a homegrown Austrian genius (he also questions the authorship of the works of Haydn and Beethoven), so they presented this supposed child prodigy as a prolific musical giant.
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The most prolific and common form of CT argumentation is argument by "who benefits?" Of course, we know that arguing this way leads to tons of misleading conclusions because assumes we can find the perpetrators behind every world event by using its (flawed) logic, but this CT doesnt even make any sense in the "who benefits?" context.

How does freemasonry benefit from a vast global conspiracy to make up Mozart's musical genius? How do the Jesuits benefit? Neither of these things have absolutely anything to do with what freemasonry or the jesuits actually do and there is no benefit to them for doing it.

When a CT fails even using CT logic, you KNOW its nutty...
 
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Thinking about it, there's a tiny grain of truth, as with just about all conspiracy theories. There was a lot of debate going on in musicology a decade or so back (probably still is) about composer biography and how it affects how we hear the music. Mozart was generally held up as the classic case. An awful lot of what we think we know about his life is hagiography made up in the nineteenth century. You can trace the early biographical writings about him, from about 1800 onwards, which gradually formulate the concept of the child genius with a direct line to God, the blissful lack of effort with which he composed, visualising whole pieces in his head before he wrote a line (we know this one isn't true because we have his sketches and rough drafts), the Requiem myth (untrue) and, later, his alleged promiscuity (almost certainly untrue) and noble death in poverty (definitely not true). There are definitely questions to be asked about how we imagine an eighteenth-century figure through the lens of nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideas about music and creativity.

But none of this means he didn't exist, and didn't write some of the most amazing music in the world, like, ever!
 
I used to do some research for an eminent Mozart scholar, and I've just remembered that this guy was JEWISH!!

So it must be a conspiracy. I don't know if he was a Jesuit or a mason, though.
 
sleepy_lioness said:
Plus ... if Mozart didn't write that music, somebody did, and it's amazingly good stuff.
Click to expand...

Rolfe said:
Exactly. The body of work has sufficient internal consistency to be self-evidently the work of one person.
Rolfe.
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I have no doubt that only Mozart could have written his greatest works--late symphonies, piano concertos, operas, later string quartets.

But if I were a conspiracy believer, I'd try to make my case with some less distinctive pieces, maybe some woodwind quartets, or something.:)

now I'm listening to Serenade in E-Flat K.375 for 2 Clarinets, 2 Horns, 2 Bassoons (and Double Bass)

some nice touches, but would I be sure this was Mozart?

and the sextet in Eb, K. 183--here I wouldn't be sure at all.

eta2: any Mozart beats Ignaz Pleyel. yawn.
 
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The Mozart Conspiracy?

Sounds like a failed Robert Ludlum novel.
 
Incidentally, Robert Newman's favorite tactic is to point out instances where compositions were mistakenly attributed to Mozart and then later established to be the work of other composers. For instance, Mozart made study scores from the work of others for his own use.

His logic seems to be the same as if I said, Police have found counterfeit money, therefore all money is counterfeit.

But if his conspiracy theory were true, why would musicologists ever bother removing items from the accepted catalog of Mozart's works? If there's a huge historical plot to show what a prolific genius Mozart was, what would be the benefit of admitting that any works have been falsely attributed to him? Wouldn't we expect to see the list of attributed works growing, as more and more of this manufactured material enters the market to enrich the Mozart industry?

-Mike
 
Rolfe said:
Exactly. The body of work has sufficient internal consistency to be self-evidently the work of one person. You can listen to a piece you're not familiar with, and know who the composer is just by the idiom. And it's an idiom of such genius that it's ridiculous to claim this was hack-work by a committee of conspirators.

And we're supposed to believe that these second-raters were capable of writing works of genius, but were quite happy to fade into obscurity and let a foul-mouthed brat take the credit? If any or all of them were capable of writing something like Le Nozze di Figaro, how come they didn't do it under their own names?
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Obviously, the unknown composer of genius who actually wrote "Mozart's" music was such a devoted and fanatical Jesuit/Freemason that he fell in willingly with the Jesuit/Freemasons' cunning plot to make it seem as though there existed a Jesuit/Freemason composer of genius, namely Mozart.
 
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