MPR: About Us: 250 Years of Mozart

As part of Minnesota Public Radio's celebration of 250 years of Mozart we asked, "How has Mozart's music touched your life?" and you shared. Read about people's favorite pieces and how Mozart's music has affected their lives!

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
"The Magic Flute"

Why?
30 years ago on January 31, a young flute player and I went to see Ingmar Berman's movie version of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" at the Campus Theatre in Dinkytown. We were both undergraduate music students at the University of Minnesota at the time.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
On January 31, 2006, that flute player and I will celebrate the 30th anniversary of our first date. We were married about two and a half years later, and Mozart's music always has a special place in our hearts. (Part of our honeymoon was spent in Salzburg!)

Eric & Janet Heukeshoven
Winona, MN 55987

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
The Requiem.

Why?
The first time I heard it, it made me stop in my tracks. I was so stunned by the depth and expression of the music.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
The beauty of the requiem, made me listen for the beauty of all music, and made me addicted to classical music.

Jill Van Havermaet
Blaine, MN

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
"The Magic Flute"

Why?
When my late husband and I were married in early 1941, his dirt-poor fellow graduate students pooled their dollars to buy us the two-volume, 78 rpm version of the opera. My husband loved one of the arias so much that I used it to introduce the DVD of his memorial program.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
I play his sonatas for piano, and when my violinist son is available, we play Mozart together. Mozart's music can bring the tears, as well as the lifting of spirits.

Madeline Hamermesh
Minneapolis, MN

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"

Why?
My mom started taking me to Suzuki violin lessons when I was three years old. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is the first piece I learned to play.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
Our group recitals would start with the most advanced violinists playing the most difficult pieces. Each successive piece was a little easier, and a few more violin students came up on stage to join in. The grand finale was always "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." I still get shivers thinking about standing in the midst of all of those violins, all of us playing the same simple, beautiful music.

Elizabeth Sproat
Washington, DC

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
"The Marriage of Figaro"

How has Mozart's music affected you?
Mozart is what got me started on classical music at a very young age. I was babysitting my younger siblings at age eight or nine, I think. And my parents, while we were in a store, caved into my begging and bought me a cassette tape called "The Best of Mozart." I still have that tape some 16 years later. After playing it repeatedly every day and night, I found Minnesota Public Radio. And as they say, the rest is history.

Ryan Mihalak
Poplar, WI

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
Coronation Mass

Why?
My Mozart story takes place in Germany 30 years ago. My husband, on a Fulbright teaching exchange, was awarded a small town on the Bodensee (Lake of Constance). One of the faculty members invited us to audition for the choir she was in, which was the Birnauer Kantorei, based in a baroque pilgrimage church. We were accepted, but were expected to take private lessons from the artistic director weekly. She seemed to like the quality of my alto voice, which was the result of Lutheran college training. This heavier tone was not one they cultivated at that time. The choir was invited to sing for a marriage ceremony involving eight couples, and she asked me to sing the alto in the quartette. I was terrified. So after weeks of practice, she asked another alto to sing with me. Our quartette became five voices. However, after the service, my support voice told me that she hadn't sung much or very loudly. It was exciting, yet frightening. And very gratifying.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
Since that experience, I've listened carefully to Mozart's music, and have been thrilled so often. The portion of the mass that still gives me goose bumps is not the quartette, but the very moving "Agnus Dei." I'm immediately transported back to Basilica Birnau.

David Rykken
Coon Rapids, MN

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
Mozart's Clarinet Concerto

Why?
This was the first big clarinet piece I learned as a freshman music major. I fell in love with the music and Mozart. I couldn't believe that I was really making his music sing on my instrument.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
To me, Mozart's music is strong and happy, but there is often a tinge of sadness. I think this a reflection of his strong faith and the struggles he experienced in life. I think we all identify with those feelings.

Rose Kennealy Karas
Inver Grove Heights, MN

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Why?
It was my mother's favorite, and we went to every Sommerfest concert when it was on the program.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
In the fall of 1936 my mother was pregnant with me. She and my father attended a series of Mozart concerts at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. I was born on Mozart's birthday in 1937.

Adrienne Kinkaid
Plymouth, MN

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
To play, Symphony No. 41 (the "Jupiter" Symphony) and to listen to, the Requiem

Why?
As a violist, there is such energy between the voices in the orchestra during Jupiter's first movement. When we violas get solo voices in symphonies, we like to milk them for all they're worth. But as it's often been said, anyone can play loudly but it takes talent to perform with artful restraint. Beethoven's thunder and storm clouds would come later; Chopin's haunting nocturnes and mazurkas would have their time. Mozart, however was still in a time when restraint and obedience of the tempo were more or less held in high regard. Despite this, his music moves and plays like a river: it all flows and pours in a general direction, but it fills out every space, leaving no rock, no pebble, and no crack in the bed dry.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
When I was 12, we were forced to watch Milos Forman's "Amadeus" movie in music class. By that age, I had already worn out my VHS copy of Disney's "Fantasia" and my cassette of Beethoven's 6th Symphony. Loving the movie and the music behind it seemed like a second natural step. While everyone else in class made fun of Mozart's laugh and the funny clothes, I was smitten.

Since that time, Mozart's music has made me cry. And I don't cry because the music's beauty touches me in a profound way; that would be commonplace. I cry when I hear things like the Requiem which pulls one by the ears to the depths of hell and the loftiest clouds of heaven; we hear the voices of the damned "consigned to the flames" and humanity's fearful yet eerily serene prayer to be heard and blessed by God's voice. The voices sometimes swirl around the listener, giving the impression that yes, it is possible to experience the afterlife, and it is beauty -unmatched beauty.

Laura McGowan
Minneapolis, MN

What is your favorite Mozart piece?
Symphony in G minor

Why?
It was the first classical piece I ever heard in my life as a child. It engrossed me so much that I played it over and over again. I could see a dramatic story unfolding as I listened intensely.

How has Mozart's music affected you?
I believe that without Mozart our world of music would be missing the largest piece of the puzzle. Where would physics be without Einstein? Another example of a pivotal human in our history. I also share a birthday with him!

Taher Omar
Minneapolis, MN

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