Mozart 'Dissonance' Quartet K.465 - 1st Movement

[ZacharySchroeder]

1:10 Awkward

1:29 There it is again

[narfplate]

That intro nearly moved me to tears.

[handsomechuck1]

It's important to remember that dissonant does not necessarily mean jangling or unpleasant. For example, the interval of a fourth is often considered dissonant according to traditional practice; but playing a fourth on the piano doesn't make everyone the room think,"Oh, that sounds really discordant."

[LeFrigirator]

you can't help but smile

[Cybugged]

I used to play this piece, until I took an arrow in the knee.

[musicfanBRA]

For one minute and 40 seconds Mozart was transported to the 20th century...

[magroxursox97]

I Love the Allegro part....Its so fun to play!!!!...i got a violin hickey from practicing this movement so many times!!!...i've only been playing for 3 years and im a freshman this year so its a little hard to understand all of the comments..haha:D

[TCharlieA]

Classical music listed by greatness:

1. Everything by Bach

2. This song

3. Everything else

[Kdzification]

@TCharlieA Music is an art and a science. U can't list.

[amistrymister]

this is the best mozart i have ever heard. it's nice. not like most mozart, which is boring.

[TonicMike]

@amistrymister Check out the violin concerti by Mozart, you might like those too.

[amistrymister]

@TonicMike i've played oboe in his 5th. it's cool. i hate that im opening up to this music. before, i refused to listen to anything written before 1950 whilst people are the opposite.

[TonicMike]

@amistrymister The divertimenti for chamber orchestra are absolutely fantastic too. They're like the buttery-creamy deliciousness of the Classical Era. Unfortunately so many groups play it too slow and make it sound boring. I heard the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play them live and they didn't hold back at all. It was amazing. Mozart wrote them when he was 16, people need to learn to push it.

[toogoodbw]

it probably should be noted Mozart saw the 4th as dissonance. I believe most composers of the time saw the 4th as an imperfect consonance with a few arguing that it is a perfect consonance. What is the modern view of the fourth? Any music majors?

[olopcall]

this intro is amazingly great

[TheWitnesserer]

Feels like a storm is on its way. Or maybe a war.

[ThatOneDude88]

Moderation is subjective. 

[iloveredsox7020]

fukin brilliant... loveley intoduction.. but i wish he wouldhave continuede it more throught out the song.. this is just brilliant.. fuking-A.. its just .. idk.. indescribable.. a true genious.

[skibofilms]

Great audio

[javilack]

yeah Mozart was drunk...Big time

[guitargary75]

This is music that is based on the Masonic ideal of chaotic darkness moving into light. Mozart the Mason!

[Resistance2Socialism]

@guitargary75 Mozart wasn't even a Mason when he composed this piece.

[guitargary75]

@Resistance2Socialism

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was twenty-eight years of age when, in the autumn of 1784, he joined a Masonic Lodge. This quartet was completed on January 14, 1785. So you have failed and are WRONG!!!!

[cjdarnieder]

Good thing dissonance is in quotes.

[nowhereman0918]

Influence of Bach is found in this piece.

[jllifelife]

j'aime particulièrement le début de ce 1er mouvement. et dire qu'il y a des gens qui disent que la musique de Mozart n'est pas profonde.

[atirisdes]

he was on LSD when he wrote the first 1:30 mins

[eyeslikeezera]

@atirisdes LSD wasnt even known about untill the 1960s, its more likely he was smokeing some pot

[Piccinels]

@atirisdes No LSD for Mozart. He just felt limited by the tonal system. XVIII century does not allow LSD :D

[Sviolinist]

Man that was played really well.

[lovesGenet]

finally I am hearing this wonderful music. WOW. everything here is marvelously played! After the exposition .WOW! I wonder which quartets Beethoven admired! So, now back to ,Sciarrino ,Ferneyhough, Birtwhistle, Toovey ,Tower etc,. Music that is TODAY!

[aslanbc]

don't clap between movements...

[hsviolinplayer]

You guys did a great job! I'm playing this with my quartet (minus the 2nd movement, unfortunately) and we listen to this recording and follow along in our parts if we're unsure about how to play a particular section. Thanks for setting a great example! :)

[Grothmanus]

music cannot exist without dissonance. without it, we are left with something dull and uninteresting. you may not know it, but dissonance is happening all the time in music. this opening is very dissonant for the classical era. it sounds much more reminiscent of early twentieth century music. i am a lover of modern music and i find it quite silly when people say they hate the "classical" music of our own period and especially so when they bash concepts as old as dissonance.

[verklaertenacht]

very beautiful!! bravi!!

[justin10292000]

The opening of this amazing piece is a perfect example of music that demonstrates one cannot put the great composers in a stylistic box. We do so to an extent for the sake of study, but in actuality, great composers simply create(d) great art, period. Even though, for the sake of study, we place Mozart in the Classical Period, the opening of this movement is at least Late Romantic if not Early Modern in its sound and sensibility. What genius ahead of its time!

[VinciLit]

@justin10292000

I'd call him fucking postmodernist!

[CecilTheSeaMonster]

@justin10292000 Don’t forget, Darwin loves you! 

[justin10292000]

@CecilTheSeaMonster So you believe Darwin still exists somewhere?

[mozzrt]

It's not the most beautiful stringquartet ever composed - Mozarts K575 and Beethovens op.130 are 'prettier' - but no stringquartet beats this for sheer geniality. Like the other Haydn Quartets it has also a glorious sense of humour.

[VinciLit]

The first movement was so beautiful that they couldn't refrain from applauding or wtf?

[TheWall2000]

@VinciLit It's normal practice NOT to applaud between movements of the same work... Those who did applaud are not familiar with classical music performances. lol

[VinciLit]

@TheWall2000

no shit?

[TheWall2000]

@VinciLit its true believe me

[VinciLit]

@TheWall2000

I still can't. i'm sorry.

[pieguyfry22]

@VinciLit sarcasm is funny ^_^

[blanchard75008]

superbe

[elmalyuyu]

EXELENT!!!!  gracias!!

[Erdbeerhaufen]

jaja... mozart war entscheidend fürs musikabi 2010... wollte ich nur mal gesagt haben!!!!

[AlamoCityCello]

excellent!

[Caramellatta]

Really beautiful performance! You guys not only play- you truly converse with one another. I love it.

[otsukenagasaki]

@achan1058: This is EXACTLY what I noticed the first time I listened to it... It had the effect of a bomb in my stomach haha O.O I so freaking love Shosta ^^ ..

But this precise quartet is fabulous :)

[achan1058]

The DSCH motif appears in the introduction. I guess someone is trying to be Dmitri Shostakovich.

[gagagoogoo]

really?

huh, i thought shostakovich was born maybe 150 yrs after this quartet's been composed

[achan1058]

@gagagoogoo: That was meant to be a joke. Besides, in Shostakovich's 8th quartet, he follows the melancholy with a fanatical movement that screams despair, unlike the sunny movement here.

[ComposerCharlie]

@achan1058 This would be remarkable indeed considering Mozart was born well over a hundred years before Shostakovich.

[ilkinond]

@achan1058 Is it really DSCH? It certainly could be the beginning of a Shostakovich quartet, but is DSCH or transpositions thereof really heard?

[achan1058]

@ilkinond It is really D, Eb, C, B. The exact notes, not transposition, at 1:00 and 1:08.

[ilkinond]

@achan1058 Well, there you go... Isn't it also true that the Tristan chord is to be found somewhere in the Hammerklavier sonata - in transposed form I think - but anyway, interesting by-the-bys...

[zanetkaelise]

man i had a blast performing this. we took the adagio a little slower then these guys though :)

great piece, this group did it major justice.

[button88001]

i played this when i was still in high school

[theromanpraetorian]

wow----this could be the 2nd mov. of beethoven's GROSSE FUGUE!!!!! I LOVE MOZART.... he is the gift of god

[jezmuff]

What is that even supposed to mean?

[theromanpraetorian]

how stupid of you.... i guess u havent heard GROSSE FUGUE yet........quite revolutionary

[fustigamatti]

it is 2 much stupid to define "voice of god" (which one?) someone who was almost an atheist.... besides a mason

[2009xellos]

No, Mozart was not an atheist, (There are atheist geniuses of course) consult the wiki article: "Mozart and Roman Catholicism",

Google this

"I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion." -W.A.Mozart

[CARNFORTH]

A lovely unforced natural Mozart sound

[RX1986]

bravo...beautiful!! :) lovely music.

[TorgeirFausken]

This is Mozart avantgarde at the greatest!

[miiicklyn]

mozart's music was really forward looking, who would've guessed this is mozart. sounds more schubert-ish!

[comic4relief]

It really is interesting, isn't it? You ought to try something of Mozart from a little later, a string quintet (Kv 593 or Kv 614) or something of that nature. ---- maybe it's actually more "in the moment"

[SeanMan87]

This is the pinnacle of Mozart's quartet writing. It is part of the 6 "Haydn quartets" Mozart wrote for his friend, Haydn.  It is one of the later quartets.

[comic4relief]

Is it? The one in d minor, you mean? By 'pinnacle' do you mean that you consider it the best one?; more worthy than the quintets I mentioned? Do you find that the 'dissonant' beginning actually has a rather palpable shape or logic?

[mothershipjellyfish]

Follow along with the score. The dissonant intro is highly logical. The motific integration is total--there is nothing "coming at you out of the blue". Perhaps you don't like dissonance? That doesn't make one of the greatest composers in history illogical. ;) It's a shame Mozart felt he could only experiment like this in an introduction. What would Mozart have written if he was free to discard tonality?

[comic4relief]

You seem to misread me, or to read too much into what i said. I meant simply to pose the simple question: does one find it logical? I don't necessarily find dissonant or illogical.

[comic4relief]

Again, I say, you misread me. Objectively (or whatever) one should not call this highly dissonant -- Mozart-dissonant perhaps. Nor it is totally outside the realm of describable chord progressions... At any rate, being quite logical is actually what makes it work. Forgive me, but you seem to be muddling two terms which scarcely should be interchangable.

[CosmicDamian]

@mothershipjellyfish That's interesting, are you suggesting Mozart bound himself to tonality for fear of being ostricized?

[chrismuscaroler]

@CosmicDamian I would, if I were him. Especially when social and/or musical ostracism meant being put out of a job.

[javilack]

@mothershipjellyfish You and 18 people sir are out of their minds. If he had the freedom to discard tonality he would accomplish little less than an improved Gesualdo of the Classical period.

[BloodofSpartans]

@mothershipjellyfish Remember what Prokofiev said: dissonance is only useful in moderation. We have to accept that a song needs to be MOSTLY harmonic for it to please the ear.

[Grothmanus]

@BloodofSpartans prokofiev was a great composer, but his philosophy on music is too rigid. consonance does not necessarily mean pretty and dissonance does not necessarily pertain to its opposite.

[toogoodbw]

@mothershipjellyfish Maybe the introduction was the result of a conversation with Haydn. I know that both followed Gradus Ad Parnassum in their compositions. Perhaps the intro was a result of a discussion about dissonance. Maybe Mozart was trying to show Haydn that you don't have to follow all the rules about "resolving" dissonance. It also could have been a kind of joke. I wish I could have been in the company of Haydn and Mozart.

[RodrigusVI]

Its interesting to see what mozart felt like dissonance :P today that music is totally peaceful, and wouldnt be seen as disonance at all :)

[crustyanj]

It's dissonance in the theoretical analysis of the piece. Also, "dissonance" is referring mostly to the first minute that you hear because it is the most memorable, distinct part of this piece.

[handsomechuck1]

Yeah, sort of like Haydn's 100th symphony, which supposedly evokes the horror of war. May have been shocking in the 18th century, but nowadays we are so accustomed to being bombarded constantly by so much awful, loud noise of all kinds that it doesn't even register when we hear it.

[rp1703]

Sounds late romantic... As I am not an expert in late romantic music, you could sell the first part as late Brahms string quartett to me. Very nice.

[MrLandale]

I want to comment here, but I don't know what to say... I just love this music!

[Coixxman]

Nice contrast on Mozart's quartet

[hypnofon]

this is not music from the past...

...this come from the future!

K 465!

K 581, larghetto from

clarinet quintet

(sonic music, really)

[pseudoalpha4real]

i love this piece, one of my favorite mozarts and really, favorite of anything. the cello was a little quiet for my liking.

[defsownds]

Fucking beautiful. It blows my mind how someone can sit down with a piece of paper and compose something like this. I cannot wait until I go to a music college and understand so much more about the mechanics of music.

[elgatosucio]

i downloaded this performance to a dvd. It's impecable and very exrpessive. I'd like to know more about the string quartet. Any more recordings? Thanks.

[dreamcatcher58]

They ARE great! . If you really want to see how versatile they are, you should have seen their performance with "The Toxic Airborne Event" on the David Letterman show (April 14th). Absolute perfection!

[anathespana]

is this piece very hard? :)

[breezyneazy]

awesome!