Copyright © 1999 by Mad Teddy
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-1791
I'm not really a major fan of Mozart's music. I recognize the fact that this
boy genius produced an enormous musical output during his short and
turbulent life; but I can't get inspired by much of it. To my mind, there's
far too much repetition of particular musical figures; a lot of his music
sounds quite cliché to me. (I've gone on record as having described much of
it as "variations on twiddly bits".) Futhermore, some of those tricks
appear to have been lifted almost verbatim from the work of older composers,
Joseph Haydn
in particular. (I'm not a great fan of Haydn either, truth be told!)
Sacrilege? Heresy?? Try this for size: from the small amount of
Salieri's
music that I've heard, I find him to be a more interesting composer. So
there!
HOWEVER
There are a few pieces by old Wolfgang Amadeus that I think are pretty
special, notwithstanding what I've just said. I like several of his piano
concertos; two in particular stand out: No.20, K.466; and No.21, K.467 (the
second movement of which is well-known as the "Elvira Madigan" theme - how
could anyone not love that, even if it has suffered from overexposure these
last four decades because of that film?).
But the best Mozart piece of all, in my extremely humble opinion, is his Ave
Verum Corpus. It has an interesting structure, including unusual modulations
- the sort of thing which I find very appealing. It has "soul".
At matriculation college, I joined the college choir. We sang an English
translation of this gorgeous piece at the local Competitions; I seem to
recall that we got an Honourable Mention (which probably means we came
fourth). But the tune has stuck in my head over the years, and I'm always
delighted to hear it played on the radio.
My arrangement is below. I've used a violin ("String Ensemble 1", actually)
for the soprano part; a flute for the alto; a viola ("String Ensemble 2")
for the tenor; and a cello for the bass. (I sang the bass part in our
college rendition of the piece.) For accompaniment, I used "Electric Guitar
(jazz)".
I'm not altogether happy with the sound; it doesn't flow as smoothly as I'd
like. I might have another go at it someday. But this will do for now.
Here's a link to the midi file, avcorpus.mid:
Mad Teddy's arrangement of W.A.Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus"
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