Joe Queenan's A-Z of classical music

These fabulous articles written by Joe Queenan for the Guardian were recommended by my Dad. Enjoy. You'll be glad you did. I have put two of them below. The rest can be accessed by clicking here.

A is for... Amadeus (Mozart)
Most of what the public knows about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart it knows from watching Milos Forman's bouncy, irreverent, factually absurd 1984 biopic. This is the Academy Award winner that briefly made Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham famous, before the public came to its senses. Forman, reworking Peter Shaffer's ingenious play, depicts Mozart as God's cruelest joke: a vulgar simpleton obsessed with bodily functions who has inexplicably been blessed with the ability to write a catchy tune.

The truth is more nuanced. Mozart was absolutely brilliant, the most talented artist in human history, doing more things well in a shorter lifetime than Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Picasso, Bono. He was a fabulous pianist, an amazing conductor, a superb violinist. He wrote the most sophisticated operas the world has ever known - cerebral compositions in an art form dominated by sappy cornballs - at least a dozen gorgeous symphonies (his early work does not count; he wrote his first symphony at age seven), truckloads of concertos for piano and violin, and haunting chamber music that will be performed up to and including Armageddon.

His Requiem, unfinished, surpasses any Requiem that is. There is no one alive today who is even vaguely in the same weight class as Mozart, nor has there been since Wagner died. And Wagner was only vaguely in the same weight class.

Arguably bringing more sheer beauty into the world than anyone who ever lived, Mozart was rewarded by the fates with a preposterously unhappy life. His childhood was sabotaged by his musician father, who pimped him out as a juvenile circus act; his aristocratic employers showered their wealth and praise on butchers and charlatans; he married badly; he was constantly in debt; he had bum kidneys. He was short, his hands were stubby, and, oh yes, his face was marred by smallpox. He died at age 35, and no one knows where he is buried. Anyone who believes that life is fair should try being born in Afghanistan or study the life of Mozart or just go straight to hell.

B is for... (Ludwig van) Beethoven
Every musician who thinks he is god's gift to the world can thank Ludwig van Beethoven - who actually was God's gift to the world. Before Beethoven, the rich and the stupid, who were usually one and the same, decided what got written and when it got performed - usually at the king's brunch; after Beethoven, musicians stopped being flunkies and got to call the tune. Beethoven was the first composer to write first and ask questions later; the whole notion of the tormented artist shaking his fist at a cruel and very possibly idiotic universe originates with him. Rock stars, with their pre-fab, off-the-rack personas, may not owe all that much to Beethoven's art. But they owe everything to his attitude.

Like Mozart, Beethoven wrote an enormous number of pieces that no one has come close to equalling. Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Shostakovich and Strauss all wrote majestic symphonies, but none of them equal the power and drama of Beethoven's Third, Fifth, Seventh or Ninth. Beethoven's sonatas are still the gold standard by which all pianists are measured; and his string quartets, written almost 200 years ago, still sound harsh and demanding, even to modern ears. Unlike most of his predecessors, whose music was sweet but harmless; Beethoven's music is generally dark and daring; unlike many of his descendants, whose music is intellectually challenging but unlistenable, Beethoven's music is haunting, sublime. As for minimalists like Philip Glass and John Adams, were Beethoven alive today, he would smack them.

Like Mozart, Beethoven was rewarded for his innumerable gifts to mankind by enduring a thoroughly miserable existence. Unlike the self-monauralizing Van Gogh, who could always fall back on that spare ear, Beethoven lost his hearing while he was still young, resulting in some rather wild conducting performances after he went deaf. Coarse, maladroit, hard to get along with, unsuccessful in love, Beethoven was still evolving as a composer when he died in his fifty-seventh year. None of us will ever live to see a 57-year-old composer who is not washed up. And yes, that includes Dylan.