MUSIC and POLITICS

(this is some information that I received from Dr. Michael Ballam, this information is unedited notes of Dr. Ballam, hence there are the spelling error and typos. It is my intent to not edit them for the purpuse of not risking to change the meaning of the text. It is my desire to inform you of these errors so as to not take away any credibiliy from Dr. Ballam because of possible impressions that these mistakes may have on people to lower his credibility.)
MUSIC and POLITICS
Mozart and the French Revolution In May of 1786 Le nozze di Figaro was first performed in Vienna. Based on Beaumarchais’ play Le Mariage de Figaro written in 1778, but not performed until 1784 due to censorship in Paris, Mozart’s musical setting had even greater impact. The story deals with class systems, the service class and the noble class. Louis XVI commented on Beaumarchais’ text after reading it by saying, “It is detestable , it can never be performed , you would have to destroy the Bastille for the presentation of the work not to be a dangerous nonsense”. Little did Louis know that this work would ultimately be the beginning of his undoing. Mozart’s musical setting of Baumarchais’ play shocked the pretentious Viennese with the opening scene where we find the servant Figaro counting off numbers: Cinque (five), dieci (ten), venti (twenty) trenta (thirty)... Figaro is measuring his apartment with the anticipation of the arrival of a new double bed. He is about to be married to Susanna. It is hard to know if it was the sexual implications of the opening, or the fact that a serving class was a leading character in the drama, but for whatever reason a number of the Viennese public took offense. That was fine with Mozart, who was about to make an extraordinary statement about the class system! It is difficult from our late 20th century perspective to understand how something as seemingly innocent as measuring for a bed would create controversy. We see it as an everyday occurrence in fact, not long ago, I passed one of my neighbors measuring the back of a pick-up truck with a double bed sitting on the lawn beside it. Knowing the people, I realized it was the wedding day of one of their sons who was preparing for the nuptial bed by moving it from his childhood home to a new domicile. As I drove past, the strains of Mozart’s overture to Le Nozze di Figaro went through my mind. But, one must think back to the end of the 18th century, where opera was traditionally about gods, goddesses, kings, queens, certainly not servants measuring apartments for beds! It was too commonplace a plot for the arrogant aristocracy who were attending the opera hoping to further their climb to the top of the class distinction. The opera asks a very salient and for some, bitter question about nobility. Is one noble based upon ones station by birth. Does wearing silk and satin, or donning a powdered wig, or living in a sumptuous dwelling assure that one is noble?. Mozart did not think so. He was implying, as was Beaumarchais, that nobility is an earned quality that comes from within. It is not an accident of birthright or purchased by whim of fortune. Figaro exposes the class distinction in all its harassment and tyranny. That is suspect was a tougher pill to swallow for the aristocracy than Figaro measuring for his bed. Beumarchais’s play had caused people to the people to think about three important rights: Liberté (liberty), Equalité (Equality), and Fraternité (brotherhood). These are three human rights which we take for granted since Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) penned the phrase inalienable rights into the declaration in July of 1776. The french, however, were not beneficiaries of these rights at the end of the 18th century, and looking at the condition through the paradigm of Nozze di Figaro, the answers were not acceptable. It would launch in a matter of three years, the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, causing Louis XVI and his Marie to be ultimately disposed and executed in 1793. It is not likely that this was an overt attempt on the part of Mozart, since he lived in a sort of demi-world, teetering between the realm of high aristocracy, having grown up in the courts and kingdoms of Europe, and the poverty of his own station in life. He had actually been bounced upon the knee of the Empress Marie Therese and played with Marie Antoinette at Versailles. What a confusing contradiction, that must have been for him. Nevertheless, he was very clear in his personal belief about the native equality of man. This was not the first time Mozart had overstepped the bounds of propriety with his operatic works. In 1780, he came to Vienna due to a commission offered him by the Kaiser himself to write an opera. Mozart had chosen to write an opera based upon historical account of Pasha Selim of Istanbul (Constantinople), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio). The plot was much too sensational, dealing with a harem, and the “barbaric” Turks. Interestingly, Mozart eventually depicts the Pasha Selim, the so-called barbarian in the minds of the Viennese as the most noble of them all. The Pasha ultimately exercises forgiveness recognizing that it is a higher law than revenge. Mozart further offended some of the privileged class by insisting that the work be performed as a Singspiel (a singing play), performed in the vernacular (language of the people). Opera was traditionally used in Vienna as a means of separating classes. The nobility or privileged class proported to speak Italian, the language of high culture, and thereby enjoyed the distinction it afforded them. If the opera were performed in a language that all could understand, this distinction would be blurred or even evaporate. This kind of snobbery is one of the ignoble elements in the history of opera as an art form. Would that it could be eliminated forever. The revolutionary ideals of France in the late part of the century were echoes of similar thoughts decades earlier in America. The Continental Congress which met in the sweltering heat of Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 were asking the same questions about liberty, equality and brotherhood. The question of taxation without representation came to be a hard pill for the people of the American Colonies to swallow. When the crown of England was finally viewed as a form of tyranny, and ultimate separation determined, Thomas Jefferson would be appointed by the congress to confer with John Adams of Massachusetts and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania on the matter of drafting a document articulating the feeling of the delegates relating to the proposal of declaring independence from England. With Adams forceful and brilliant nature, combined with the wisdom of Franklin and the eloquence of Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was written, ratified and adopted. The age of questioning tyrannical government and allowing for the people to have more control over their destinies was about to be born in both continents.