We don't talk much about classical music here,but you got to admit that he was a musical genius. I don't think he ever wrote a bad piece of music in his short life.

" Born in Salzburg (today part of Austria), the boy Mozart was instantly recognized as a wunderkind. A musical child prodigy, he began learning the piano at the age of four and played it brilliantly by six. He was brought by his musician-teacher-father Leopold on a grand tour of Europe's musical capitals and had been to Vienna, Paris, London and Italy by the age of 13. He was shown off (or exhibited, if you prefer) to important dignitaries such as the Pope and Empress Maria Theresa. Naturally gifted, he could read and play musical scores on sight and was capable of writing down the entire score of a complicated work after just hearing it a few times. He also had an exceptional knack at improvisation and was composing original work from the age of six. He wrote his first symphony at the age of eight, his first opera at twelve and conducted twenty performances of that opera at 14."

What is your favorite Mozart piece?

I like a lot of his music, but he tended to go overboard with the fancy endings on some of his pieces. Seriously, though, I can't argue with 250 years of fame & popularity.

Apparently, Mozart had trouble being considered one of the "help" in a royal family who employed him,so maybe he did have some psychological problems.

The BBC produces some excellent TV programs;I've not seen the one about Mozart here in the USA. I would like to see it.

I'm not a big Motorhead fan,but how about Metallica and Mozart ;) or, the Beatles and Beethoven? I think there is room for a wide variety of music.

I'm just a dilettante fan of classical music and don't claim to know much about it (I'm just glad I can enjoy it!), but I consider Mozart a genius and one of the most extraordinary humans whose existence has ever been documented. Yet, he had to make a living, and there were no government grants back then, to support "the arts". So he got by on the patronage of the royal class. Imagine being in his position and having one's work judged and criticized (and paid or or not) by these patrons whose only authority over him was their "royal birth". Yet they were the arbiters of "taste" and "quality".

For him to have disliked that sort of control over his work would hardly, to me, define "psychological problems". It seems entirely normal human nature, assuming it was true, and probably quite justified. And, if you look at Mozart's operas, social injustice is a theme through many of them...the common man may fight the ruling class but he rarely wins in the end; he has to get by on his cleverness.

Used in an ironical sense to mean legitimate, and therefore, in reality, spurious and not at all legitimate. Assumes common knowledge of the inherent Simpsons reference.

I believe this term originated in the Animated Television Series "The Simpsons"

Edna: Embiggens? I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield.

Ms.Hoover: I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word.

But, hey....thanks for the explanation, LOL!

(By the way, I'm kidding... the little TV I watch, while vacationing briefly at hotels, consists of hunting down Simpson's reruns! Obviously managed to miss that one, though.)

But, you know, I'm still reeling from the juxtaposition of Mozart and Paris Hilton apparently within the context of the same conversation...