Why no more composers like Mozart?

I have always been enthralled by his music. His composing genius. I try to imagine living in that time with so much brilliance.
Does anyone know the answer to this?

@averagejoe1 said
I have always been enthralled by his music. His composing genius. I try to imagine living in that time with so much brilliance.
Does anyone know the answer to this?

There's no money in it.

It's not popular.

It's also not something anyone alive today has a burning desire to do, or we would see it.

@averagejoe1 said
I have always been enthralled by his music. His composing genius. I try to imagine living in that time with so much brilliance.
Does anyone know the answer to this?

Mozart is one of a kind, we can't just "get" a genius somehow.
Plus Mozart was groomed in his strength, something we (at least in Europe) don't do very much. If Mozart had been born to some mountain farmers, we might never have heard about him...but he was the child of Leopold Mozart (who would be more famous in his own right, wouldn't it be for his genius son).

If you go to chess you find the story abozt the Polgar daughters, whose father set out to prove that everyone could be a great achiever (and Susan and Judit definitely did very well).

Two very good answers. Just watched In Search Of Mozart on Pluto, very well done. Ill look the 2 chessers. Always been interested in genius.
Haydn said Mozart’s music was very simple for children to understand, but too complicated for adults

Just think, somebody back in the late 1700s was thinkin', "Now, why don't we have somebody like Jimi Hendrix!"

On second thought...prolly not...

It's just the alcohol talkin', y'all...

@Liljo
Yeah, we know about Al, Al Cohol, he CAN be nice.....

@sonhouse said
@Liljo
Yeah, we know about Al, Al Cohol, he CAN be nice.....

He gettin a little help tonight, House Man.

@Liljo
CITIZENS ARREEST CITEZENN ARRESSTT.....

@ponderable said
Mozart is one of a kind, we can't just "get" a genius somehow.
Plus Mozart was groomed in his strength, something we (at least in Europe) don't do very much. If Mozart had been born to some mountain farmers, we might never have heard about him...but he was the child of Leopold Mozart (who would be more famous in his own right, wouldn't it be for his genius son).

Also, we don't get composers like Mozart any more because his style of music went out of fashion, and did so soon after his time. That's why the next generation we had composers like Beethoven, and after that composers like Brahms, and then like Ravel.

And now, like Karl Jenkins. Composers are still made, it's just that we don't hear of them a lot. I'm not sure a lot of people in 17th-century Europe would've heard of Bach - except in the same kind of circles that nowadays listen to what we now call classical music. Sure, Bach was famous among musicians and courtiers. But farmers and labourers? I doubt it. The people who now listen to pop music would, back then, have listened to the town musicians; those who would have gone to Mozart concerts would today go to Jenkins, Macmillan or Rutter.

(And media-strong composers like Howard Goodall and Eric Whiteacre are doing very well even if you measure success by common fame, of course.)

Long ago in the 1970s I was a student in a musical appreciation class conducted by Felix Werder, who as a disciple of Schoenberg wrote dreadful atonal stuff not meant for ordinary people. At the time he was still actively composing.

In his emphatic and rigid opinion Bach was the first and Mozart the last of the really great composers, although his list of greats extended from Palestrina to Prokofiev. I found his opinion interesting given the style of his own music compositions.

@kewpie said
Long ago in the 1970s I was a student in a musical appreciation class conducted by Felix Werder, who as a disciple of Schoenberg wrote dreadful atonal stuff not meant for ordinary people. At the time he was still actively composing.

In his emphatic and rigid opinion Bach was the first and Mozart the last of the really great composers, although his list of greats extended ...[text shortened]... strina to Prokofiev. I found his opinion interesting given the style of his own music compositions.

My musical appreciation ranges from A to Z.

Allman Brothers to ZZ Top.

too many jazz people

wchopin 🙂

@AverageJoe1

I think the internet and computers have something to do with it. If Mozart had YouTube and candy crush he may be not have composed an opera at 12 years old. Just a theory ...

Also, I saw an amazing violin concerto composed by Michael Simpson this weekend, a man born in 1988, six years my junior.

@averagejoe1 said
Two very good answers. Just watched In Search Of Mozart on Pluto, very well done. Ill look the 2 chessers. Always been interested in genius.
Haydn said Mozart’s music was very simple for children to understand, but too complicated for adults

re: your last sentence
One could almost say the same the same thing about the Beatles.