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Originally Posted by Seraphim
Don't take my word for it, take the word of people who are much better placed to make such judgements, like Beethoven, Schubert, etc... Why do they feel those composers were geniuses? Perhaps because Beethoven, Schubert, etc felt incapable of writing music as high in quality (in fact they said so) as that of those they deified. If those composers felt Mozart's music was the work of a genius then who are we to disagree?
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First of all, this implies circular logic. You base the claim that certain composers are geniuses on the fact that other composers called them such. And the judgement of those latter composers is valid because they are geniuses themselves. You're basing your justification of genius status on genius status.
Also, since you imply that everyone who is called a genius by somebody you acknowledge as a genius is actually a genius, that means for example composer A (say, Schumann) declares B a genius (say, Bach), who declares C a genius (Buxtehude), who again declares other people (maybe his teachers, no idea who they were) geniuses, etc. So everybody in this possibly huge line is by your definition a genius. But not only that: You imply that if a composer finds another composer a genius or better than themselves that they actually are, so Buxtehude must in fact be better than Bach and the people Buxtehude admired must in fact be better than Buxtehude and so on. I think, by that logic you'll eventually find that the first humans were the universally acknowledged greatest composers of all times and the ultimate geniuses and everybody else is nothing compared to them...
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You request a simplistic analysis of musical elements as if music is nothing more than a sewage diagram from the city planning office. In reality, the work of an artistic genius is much like porn ... you know it when you see it.
Hard work and training can only get one so far if they lack genius. Just look at poor Robert Levin who bravely put his music right in the middle of Mozart's Requiem. Can you, using your analytical methods identify which is the work of genius? If not, it's not because Levin is as capable as Mozart but because your analytical methods are lacking.
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Nice contradiction between those two paragraphs. First you say the work of a genius is something "you just see" and doesn't need to be defined theoretically. Then you say that recognizing a "non-genius work" withing the "genius work" by Mozart depends on your analytical methods. Shouldn't by your logic
everybody just spot which parts of this expanded Requiem are written by a genius and which not, "just like porn"?