Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, I came across this (much less contentious) snippet in my daily bathroom calendar, and I thought I would paraphrase it for all the world because it's kind of cool (in a non-contentious kind of way).
Back in the 1780s, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were the undisputed preeminent composers and pianists of the day. Haydn, the elder statesman of the two, challenged the upstart Mozart to compose a piece of piano music that he, Haydn, could not play, but that Mozart could, and he sweetened the deal with the promise of a good meal and several bottles of champagne.
Mozart's response was an apparently simple little ditty, but one that involved a progressively wider divergence of the two hands, the left towards the bass notes and the right towards the higher tones. Then, Mozart inserted a single note right in the middle of the keyboard.
Haydn was dismissive, saying that of course it was impossible to play, but Mozart claimed that he most certainly could, and he proceeded to perform the piece. When he reached the supposedly impossible section of the music, he played the disputed middle note with his pointy little nose, thus winning the bet and ensuring his place in bathroom calendars throughout the world.
What a wag was that Wolfie!
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