My favorite movie of all time is Amadeus, the 1984 film adaptation of the play by Peter Shaffer. (Not the R-rated “Director’s Cut” version, please, but the PG-rated original release.) It’s not historically accurate in many ways, but so what? It is permeated with the glorious, glorious music of Mozart. And I have to believe that Tom Hulce’s portrayal of the this incredibly gifted but often troubled genius is very close to what the real man was like. So many great scenes.
I love the one in which Mozart is practicing with a couple of the soloists in his opera “The Marriage of Figaro” and keeps saying, “You’re late” as the performers fail to come up to his exacting standards. Another wonderful line which I’m just sure Mozart must have said: “I’m a vulgar man, your majesty. But I can assure you that my music is not.”
(Don’t you find that there are some things in your life that you simply will not compromise on? I’m not talking here about moral principles or religious beliefs but about your passions and talents. There are shortcuts I won’t take about the food I serve, for example. It’s not that I’m such a great person, believe me. I just cannot serve store-bought cookies and kool-aid at a reception. It would kill me. I was reminded as I wrote this of a quotation from Gaudy Night, that great novel which I hope you have read or are planning to read, a conversation between the main character, Harriet Vane, who is a novelist, and a professor at Oxford University:
One can’t be pitiful where one’s own job is concerned. You’d lie cheerfully, I expect, about anything except—what?’ ‘Oh, anything!’ said Harriet, laughing. ‘Except saying that somebody’s beastly book is good when it isn’t. I can’t do that. It makes me a lot of enemies, but I can’t do it.’ ‘No, one can’t,’ said Miss de Vine. ‘However painful it is, there’s always one thing one has to deal with sincerely, if there’s any root to one’s mind at all.)
Anyway, the last part of the movie centers around the Requiem, the composition Mozart was working on when he died. (If you want to know more about that piece, be sure to follow my posts over on the “Behind the Music” blog. Since I originally wrote here time has moved on, of course, so you’ll have to do a search for “Mozart Requiem.” I think I ended up with six or seven articles about this masterpiece.) I can still remember seeing the movie for the first time and experiencing the heart-stopping moment at the conclusion of the “Lacrimosa” section, perfectly timed to coincide with the landing of Mozart’s body in the pauper’s grave with the powdered lime rising up above it. (Not that he was really buried as a pauper, but never mind.) I saw the movie four times in the theater, reveling in the Dolby sound blasting at me from all directions, and have watched it a number of times since.
So when it was announced that the Cherry Creek Chorale would be singing the Requiem I was overjoyed. What an incredible privilege to actually perform something that I love so much! I guess I sort of thought that since the music was in my head it would also come out of my mouth, but I’d never actually sat down with the score. As we barreled through it at our first rehearsal this past Tuesday I found myself totally lost in many places. Whew! I realized how much work I had to do, much of it just slogging away at the 16th-note runs. Here’s the thing: If I really love it, I’ll be willing to do the work. But the love isn’t a substitute for the work but the inspiration for it. And if you won’t put in the time to get something right, maybe you don’t have the passion after all. I will let Miss de Vine have the final word on this:
If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller.
PS. I went back and looked up the Mozart burial scene, which isn’t exactly as I described it above, but pretty close. Take a look.