Chamber Music of Mozart

There is perhaps no better way to explore the genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart than by studying his chamber music. Nowhere is Mozart's maturity and mastery more apparent than in the chamber music he wrote during the last 10 years of his life. This is an opportunity to hear, study and enjoy a selection of immortal musical compositions that Professor Robert Greenberg calls "a blessing of inconceivable richness." Across the span of this course, you will consider the three different "generic types" of chamber music that Mozart composed: string quarters, works for piano and another instrument or instruments, and combinations that employ neither a string quartet nor a piano. The centerpiece of these works, drawn primarily from Mozart's "golden years" in Vienna, 1781-1791, is the set of six so-called "Haydn" string quartets that Mozart dedicated to his friend, the great Joseph Haydn. Professor Greenberg, one of the Teaching Company's most popular and requested professors, takes you deep inside the structure of Mozart's chamber master-works to reveal his hand at work. You will learn the basic "language" that all 18th-century composers used to write Classical music. In addition, you will explore the subtleties of Mozart's technique as a composer: his ability to make art "artless"-music that is enormously complex and sophisticated but which sounds simple and effort-less-and to know how and when to bend or break the rules of composition to create music that at times confused or even disturbed his audiences, but that would endure forever. You will have the simple but profound pleasure of listening to music that is "great by whatever standards we choose to apply: aesthetic, technical or intellectual," according to Dr. Greenberg.Greenberg, Robert is the author of 'Chamber Music of Mozart', published 2004 under ISBN 9781565859333 and ISBN 1565859332.