Wolfgang Amedeus Mozart & Bach
Discussions - Part 3

Continue from Part 2

Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow Book

William L. Hoffman wrote (February 8, 2020):
What could be considered the keynote discussion of Karol Berger's 2007 book, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity,¹ will begin the "Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, Pathways,” the subject of the Joint Meeting of the American Bach Society and the Mozart Society of America at Stanford University CA, February 13–16 (https://www.americanbachsociety.org/meetings/stanford2020_program.html). The conflation of the two leading composers of the 18th century, Bach and Mozart, is exemplified in Berger's intellectual study. "Bach’s passing in 1750 marked the end of the dominant spiritual world of Western Civilization that he celebrated and the emergence of the rational world," says the Bach Cantata Website article, "Bach and Mahler."² This can be figuratively known as the shift from “Bach’s Cycle to Mozart’s Arrow,” from the sphere of traditional, repetitive connections and reaffirmations to the intellectual sphere of presumed progress and seeming perfection. The concept of “Bach’s Circle and Mozart’s Arrow” is the title of “An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity,” by Berger, an exhaustive (420-page) study of the pan-musical currents generated by Bach, nurtured to maturity by Mozart and the First Viennese School (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Viennese_School and transformed by Mahler and the Second Viennese School.

Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts at Stanford University, Berger as a fine arts authority (especially in the Introduction), and trained musicologist in musical matters with extensive examples brings a wealth of knowledge to his discussion of a significant connection between Bach and Mozart, with his commentary on their works one of the most salient features of his book. It "is largely a philosophical argument that Berger develops over the course of the book," says reviewer Bertil van Boehr.³ Berger uses "as his examples the sacred music of Johann Sebastian Bach as the epitome of circular time, and the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as the pivotal point towards a more progressive view." Related Berger topics include a "prelude that looks at Monteverdi's L'Orfeo as 'an early modern paradigm shift' (p. 37), an interlude that focuses upon the theological shift between Augustinian Christian viewpoint and the more enlightened humanistic thoughts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau [Part I, Bach's Cycle; Chapter 3, Interlude, "Jean-Jacques contra Augustinum: A Little Treatise on Moral-Political Theology: 131ff], and a "postlude that argues that the solidification of the temporal shift occurs irrevocably in the 'revolutionary' works of Beethoven" ["Between Utopia and Melancholy: Beethoven and the Aesthetic State": 293ff], says Boehr (Ibid.: 503).

Mozart Perspectives

In Part I, Bach's Cycle, Berger finds (Ibid.: 12) that Bach's "music displays a double temporality, developing unquestionably up-to-date goal-directed momentum but revitalizing and subordinating its forward propulsion to a sense of cyclical or entirely timeless stasis worthy of his medieval predecessors." "On the other hand," says Boehr, "the focus in Mozart [Part II, Mozart's Arrow: 179ff] is on the operas, specifically Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte, providing a bilevel approach that incorporates formal flexibility with a broad aesthetic purpose." Overall, Berger's central thesis, "that a drastic paradigm shift in the use of time as a constant, occurred a in the eighteenth century" (Ibid.: 504), "is sometimes difficult to follow," says Boehr. Following the German conservative succession of "great composers," it "fails to take into account the context within which even his principal figures (Monteverdi, Bach, Rousseau, Mozart and Beethoven) lived and worked." "The chapters on Mozart are equally nineteenth century in their views, and lacking some of the context that history otherwise provides," says Boehr (Ibid.). Still, the "discussions of the individual works, however, are often quite illuminating," he says (Ibid.: 505). Understandably, to have considered contextual matters would have "expanded the tome into several volumes, a true magnum opus," says Boehr; while Berger's book, "is useful in expanding the discussion of the more tenuous aesthetic state of affairs that existed during this period."

After 1750, "composers fundamentally changed their conception and execution of music to reflect an altered view of time," says 2008 reviewer Mark Sealey.⁴ Previously, "time had been conceived of as cyclical… events recurring: season, (church) year, births, marriages, deaths." Then time "came to represent more of a straight arrow to composers and thinkers; it became linear, directed and moved only 'forward'."Bach wanted time to stand still; Mozart (and Beethoven) needed to exploit time in order to map character, contrast, mimetic reality and purely musical concerns unto the experience of writing and listening to music," he says (Ibid.: 1f). Instead of a series of sub-themes to support the hypothesis in the chapters, Sealey suggests that the "theme before its variations would have made following Berger's arguments easier." He also would have "welcomed a more explicit examination of why and how Bach wrote for eternity (perhaps without knowing so!) and Beethoven for himself." Berger's work "is an important, useful, an all round excellent book that will appeal to anyone interested in the history of ideas . . . ," Sealey finds (Ibid.: 3).

Bach Scholar Assessment

The first three chapters of Berger's book on Bach are studied and analyzed in Bach scholar Gregory Butler's 2008 review for the American Bach Society.⁵ Berger's Chapter 1, "The Arrested Procession," examines the St. Matthew Passion complex opening chorus with its modified da capo form (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XBZQqLUq00), concluding with "a most extraordinary ending," to quote Berger, that conflates (blends) important thematic phrases as ritornello (return) transformations, showing the "timelessness of the contemplative reinforcement of the central idea." In Chapter 2, "A Crystal Flying Like a Bullet," says Butler, Berger "presents an equally brilliant analysis of the Fugue in C Major." BWV 846b, from the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), Book 1. "For Berger, the lack of interest on Bach's part in linear flow of time is reflected in his relative disinterest in the temporal dispositions of his [seven] demonstrations [to construct the fugue]. Having argued in these two chapters that for Bach time either follows a circular route or is abolished altogether, he asks the question: 'But why does Bach prefer this shape of time, rather than the other [linear], why the circle rather than the straight line'?" "In Chapter 3, 'There Is No Time like God's Time," Berger answers the question," says Butler. In the St. Matthew Passion, "the flow of events in time (recitatives) is checked by' timeless movements of contemplation" (arias)," says Butler (Ibid.: 7). "He argues that it is precisely the [repetitive] da capo form of the arias and the strophic form of the chorales that capture the timeless movements of contemplation as musical structures." Berger "sums up his view of the coexistence of temporal and non-temporal layers elegantly utilizing the concept of 'linear temporality embedded within the envelope of eternity'." "The last segment of the chapter is given over to later composers' reception of Bach's music, in particular of the WTC." "Berger's musical analyses in this book are as good as any I know — clear, comprehensible , and penetrating," concludes Butler. "This book represents a major contribution to cultural theory and the history of ideas."

Berger's Matthew Passion Commentary

Berger's most illuminating discussion of the St. Matthew Passion in Part I, Bach's Cycle, is Chapter 3, "ThIs No Time Like God's Time" (pp. 101-129), says a BCW article (Reference 31 2007).⁶ <<In six strategic places in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (SMP) – also known as Christoph Wolff’s six dramatic “contemplations in dialogue form” (ref. No. 16) and Chafe’s meditative scenes on Heinrich Müller’s theme of Christ’s atonement (ref. No. 17) – Picander’s libretto names its symbolic speakers, the Daughter(s) of Zion and the Chorus of Believers or the Faithful. “Who are these figures and what is their role?” asks Berger. Crucial to understanding is the concept of the Passion topography of three hills in the Jerusalem area – Mount Zion in Jerusalem, Mount of Olives to the east, and Golgatha, to the west. Since Zion stands for the Temple of Jerusalem, “it is more than likely that for Picander and his audience, the Daughter of Zion was, proximately, a daughter of Jerusalem, a witness of the crucifixion, and, more generally, a daughter of the church – representing the individual member of the congregation – in dialogue with the Faithful, representation the congregation as a whole.” The Daughters in the opening chorus and the closing choral movements of Parts 1 and 2 are collective voices, a dramatic musical device. On a symbolic or allegorical level [p. 105], the “Daughters of Jerusalem” in “the traditional Christian allegorical reading of the Song of Solomon (alluded to in the opening choruses of both SMP parts) representing “the enamored maiden stood alternatively for Christ’s bride, for the church (as in Revelation 21.2, 9), and for the individual soul,” Berger points out. He suggests that “the dramaturgy of the Passion closely resembles that of the opera seria in its practice of punctuating the action, set as simple recitative, with reflective and fully developed numbers, mostly arias, in which the action halts to allow the passion aroused by the most recent event to be expressed. However, whereas in opera the job of passionate reflection is left to the protagonists of the drama, in the Passion the reflection comes from outside.” Theologian Heinrich Müller’s sermon theme of atonement is toned down in Picander’s libretto. Citing Elke Axmacher’s 1984 study, “Aus lieber will mein Heyland sterben” (From Love will my Savior perish) [p. 111], Berger says Picander’s text eliminates “all references to God’s wrath as the reason for the sacrifice [atonement], playing down God’s active role in the story, stressing Jesus’s humanity over his divinity, and concentrating on the loving, compassionate heart of the individual believer.” Berger also summarizes Daniel Melamed’s “The Double Chorus in J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57: (2004), 3-50, in Berger's footnote (No. 6: 364).

ENDNOTES

¹ Karol Berger, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2007 (https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520257979/bachs-cycle-mozarts-arrow).
² "Bach and Mahler" (2012) https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Bach-Mahler.pdf.
³ Bertil van Biehr, "Eighteenth-Century Music, "Bach's Cycle," in Notes, Music Library Association, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Mar. 2009: 503-505); https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.unm.edu/stable/27669886?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents]; biography https://cfpa.wwu.edu/people/vanboer.
⁴ Mark Sealey, Book Review, "Bach's Cycle," in Classical Net, 2008; http://www.classical.net/music/books/reviews/0520250915a.php; Sealey is a trained musicologist associated with the Bach Network
⁵ Gregory Butler, Book Review, "Bach's Cycle," in Bach Notes, The Newsletter of the American Bach Society, Volume 10, Fall 2008: 6; https://www.americanbachsociety.org/Newsletters/BachNotes10.pdf.
⁶ Cited as Reference No. 31, Matthäus-Passion BWV 244: Early History (A Selective, Annotated Bibliography), 2009; https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/SMP-Biblio-Hoffman.htm.

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To Come: More Bach and Mozart from The American Bach Society conference, "Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, Pathways,” select abstracts.

Zachary Uram wrote (February 8, 2020):
Bach - Mozart paper

https://www.academia.edu/36178548/Bach_Mozart_and_the_Musical_Midwife_?email_work_card=view-paper

William L. Hoffman wrote (February 9, 2020):
[To Zachary Uram] See especially the later section, "The Musical Midwife," about Baron van Sweiten," his biography and advocacy of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Beethoven.

Bach-Mozart Conference Topics

William L. Hoffman wrote (February 12, 2020):
“Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, Pathways,” a joint meeting of the American Bach Society and the Mozart Society of America (https://www.americanbachsociety.org/meetings/stanford2020_program.html) will be held later this week at Stanford University, Palo Alto CA. The topics are "Social Contexts," "Reception Studies," "Bach and Mozart Connections" and "Form and Function." Topics described in the Conference Abstracts related to Bach and Bach-Mozart are found at (https://www.americanbachsociety.org/meetings/stanford2020_abstracts.html).

Friday, the Conference proper begins with the topic "Social Contexts" with papers "Bach and Mozart at the Coffee House" by Pierpaolo Polzenetti, "Bach, Mozart, and the Pursuit of Wealth," by Noelle Heber, and "Music, Edition and Instrument History: Ambrosius Kühnel’s Business Partnership with Viennese Fortepiano Manufacturers," by Christine Blanken. The first paper focuses on the 18th century coffee house culture as found in Bach's Coffee Cantata 212 and Mozart's opera Così fan tutte and their composers' "shared concerns and contrasting views." A detailed description of Coffee Cantata 211 and related literature is found at the BCML Discussion, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV211-D3.htm. The paper on the Bach and Mozart pursuit of wealth focuses on their various activities as pioneering freelance musicians, including "private music lessons to wealthy amateurs," as well as other sources of income. Historical documents "allow for a fascinating comparison of the fluctuating earnings of two eighteenth-century composers who achieved a measure of financial success through their independent pursuits." An accounting of Bach's income is found at Heber's ""Bach and Money: Sources of Salary and Supplemental Income in Leipzig from 1723 to 1750," Understanding Bach 12 (2017), https://www.bachnetwork.org/ub12/ub12-heber.pdf. Blanken's paper focuses on the "business partnership between Hoffmeister (Vienna) and Kühnel (Leipzig)," beginning in 1800, with the first edition of Bach's keyboard music and especially the Viennese fortepianos that became dominant.¹

Pertinent reception studies include Eleanor Selfridge-Field's "The Italian Transcriptions of J. S. Bach, J. Bern. Bach, and J. G. Walther," Morton Wan's "Mozart’s Fugue and Enlightened Automata: Technology, Gender, and Counterpoint," Moira Hill's "The Hamburg Reception of C. P. E. Bach and Mozart through the Passion Settings of C. F. G. Schwenke" and Estelle Joubert's "Visualizing Networks of Bach Reception during the Enlightenment." The study of the transcriptions of Italian concertos and trios for organ or harpsichord by members of the Bach family shows that while Sebastian's 21 works, BWV 592-96, and 972-87, emphasize studies of exemplars from Antonio Vivaldi, the transcriptions of older Johann Bernard Bach ignored German exemplars and was involved in Italian models in BWV 972-81 while Walther's 14 arrangements show nine ignored Vivaldi (further information see http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Organ-Music-Trans1.htm: "Weimar Concerto Transcriptions"). Mozart's "Fugue in C Major, K. 394/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAr46pGng-s) is Wan's "attempt to understand how Mozart’s contrapuntal erudition, while demonstrating his investment in the legacy of J. S. Bach, could also reflect an Enlightenment ontology of music." In 1782, Mozart began distinct phases of mastering Bachian counterpoint through transcription, imitation, assimilation, synthesis, and transcendence. This fugue shows Mozart's mastery of stylistic imitation, says Robert L. Marshall,² as described in Mozart's letter to his sister Nannerl on April 20 in which he cites wife Costanza as "the cause of this fugue's coming into the world" and the fugue as "this most artistic and beautiful of musical forms." The subject, Marshall points out (Ibid. 224), is derived from the C-Major Fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGvl_94Bb_M). Hill's essay finds that Schwenke, Emanuel Bach's successor in Hamburg, used adaptations of Emanuel and Mozart in his annual Passions that show "parody, pasticcio, and adaptation provided another outlet for presenting works." Recent studies also show that Emanuel was a persistent borrower of his father's music in his Passions (https://academic.oup.com/em/article-abstract/45/3/481/4082043). Joubert's study of Bach reception 1750-1800 involves a "graph database platform" and visualization of repertory and genre. "Ultimately, this paper promises to reveal broader patterns of dissemination of Bach’s music, in turn providing insight into the performative and aesthetic contributions of his music in cultural centers across Enlightenment Europe," she says. The pioneering work on early Bach reception is Gerhard Herz, "JSB in the Age of Rationalism and Early Romanticism" (1935 dissertation in German) in Essays on J. S. Bach (https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Studies-musicology-English-German/dp/0835714756).

Saturday, the conference considers "Bach and Mozart Connections" with three leading Bach scholars. Stephen Roe analyzes "Johann Christian Bach’s German Heritage," the previously-neglected formative year's of Bach's youngest son (b.1735) in Leipzig and Berlin, particularly the keyboard works.³ Michael Maul's "Mozart, Doles and the Prefect of the Choir: New Observations on Mozart's Visit to the St. Thomas School" reassesses Mozart's famous 1789 encounter with Bach's Motet BWV 225, as narrated by student Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (https://thelistenersclub.com/2017/11/13/the-bach-motet-that-inspired-mozart/) and published in 1799 in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung.⁴ Maul questions the accuracy of this account through "reports by other observers of this event," the musician who led the performance (?Thomaner prefect), and "the consequences for him of Mozart’s excitement about the quality of this performance." David Schulenberg's "Mozart and the Bach Tradition" examines the so-called Mozart style through Johann Christian Bach and the influence of the "Berliner Klassik" (http://www.ortus-musikverlag.de/en/berliner-klassik) and brother Emanuel.⁵ The "astonishing transformation of the Bach tradition" "was an essential prelude to Mozart’s further development of the resulting style," says Schulenberg, as well as Christian's works such as his early Requiem and his last opera Amadis des Gaules.

The Saturday afternoon conference session, "Form and Function," offers three musicological analyses related to Bach and Mozart. Jonathan Salamon's "The Leo: A Galant Schema from J. S. Bach to Mozart," offers a new 18th century stylistic schema based on a pattern from one of Leonardo Leo’s solfeggi that "demonstrates Mozart’s deliberate, structural use of the Leo as an archaizing gesture in his chromatic Gigue in G, K. 574 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNhYYhsqBnA), "as a reference to the earlier style he associated with J. S. Bach." Yoel Greenberg's "The Emergence of the Recapitulation in Eighteenth Century Binary Forms" involves the gradual transformation from baroque binary form to classical sonata form, focusing on the “double return” "of the main theme and the main key" as found in "works of J. S., W. F., and C. P. E. Bach, and in early works by Leopold Mozart, Haydn and W. A. Mozart." A related subdominant return in the da capo of Bach's vocal music is explored in Cambridge University Press. Caryl Clark's "The Symphonie Concertante and Its Implications for Biography and Historiography: Mozart, Boulogne, Paris, Salzburg" contrasts Bach's lifelong experience with French style to Mozart's experience, most notably in his "Sinfonia Concertante," K364 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Q9tc8wr8U) during his six-month stay in Paris in 1778 and his return to Salzburg. Clark argues that this music showing “patterns of influence and inspiration” "might more profitably be explored from a position of greater inclusivity."

ENDNOTES

¹ Christine Blanken abstract, other sources include Sheet Music Plus), Jstor, Curtis Institute, and http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Keyboard-Music-Intro.htm.
² Robert L. Marshall, "Bach and Mozart's Artistic Maturity," 1998, in Bach and Mozart: Essays on the Enigma of Genius (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2019), https://boydellandbrewer.com/catalog/product/view/id/22859/s/bach-and-mozart/: TABLE OF CONTENTS, 212-37.
³ Stephen Roe publications: The keyboard music of J.C. Bach: source problems and stylistic development in the solo and ensemble works (New York: Garland, 1989 (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_keyboard_music_of_J_C_Bach.html?id=m0EYAQAAIAAJ); The collected works of Johann Christian Bach: Vol. 42 Keyboard music (New York: Garland, 1989); "J. C. Bach, 1735 - 1782: Towards a New Biography," 1982 article in The Musical Times, https://www.jstor.org/stable/963598?seq=1.
⁴ Michael Maul, Bach's Famous Choir: The Saint Thomas School in Leipzig, 1212-1804, trans. Richard Howe (Martlesham UK: Boydell, 2018), https://boydellandbrewer.com/bach-s-famous-choir.html.
⁵ David Schulenberg, The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014, https://d-nb.info/1067675612/04.

ADDENDUM (The following is a revision ofan abstract proposal submitted for the conference but rejected)

Mozart Presents Emanuel Bach Resurrection/Ascension Oratorio

The study of reception history reveals a significance convergence in the late 1780s involving Bach's second son Emanuel and Mozart. Following the publication in 1787 by Breitkopf of Emanuel's setting of Carl Wilhelm Ramler's "Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu" (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus), the oratorio (first performed during Easter 1774) was presented in Vienna in February and March 1788, conducted by Mozart. It was underwritten by Baron Gottfried von Swieten (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_van_Swieten, German ambassador who championed Sebastian and Handel to Vienna and Mozart. Mozart directed as many as 86 musicians of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, which arranged concerts in the Royal Library, or their palaces, of works of Emmanuel Bach, and oratorios of Händel. I will examine the conditions under which the music was composed and presented, showing that this event was the culmination of Emanuel's career as well as the tradition of Bach's sons presenting sacred music in the Bach Family tradition for the feasts of Ascension Day and Michael and All-Angels, and was the beginning of the public concerts and choral society traditions. Two other Bach sons also composed liturgical music for these feasts: Wilhelm Friedemann in Halle, and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (the so-called "Buckeburg Bach"). Besides the significant text of Ramler, best known for "Der Tod Jesu" (The Death of Jesus), the leading Passion work of this time, other noted Enlightenment writers Johann Jakob Rambach and Friedrich Möhring contributed feast day cantata lyrics. The Michaelmas tradition dates to Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703) with his cantata "Es erhub sich ein Streit im Himmel" (There was a war in heaven) with J. C. F. Bach's treatment of the same subject using lyrics of Johann Gottfried Herder while Christoph Friedrich also teamed with Emanuel to produce a pasticcio "Michaelis-Cantata."

Bibliographic Sources

Benoît Jacquemin, "C.P.E. Bach: Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu," Hyperion recording liner notes, trans. Richard Stokes (2003), https://www.allmusic.com/album/release/cpe-bach-die-auferstehung-und-himmelfahrt-jesu-mr0002668187/credits.
Barbara Wiermann, “Werkgeschichte als Gattungsgeschichte: Die ‘Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu’ von Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,” Bach Jahrbuch (1997): 117–43, esp. 122–23; abstract https://journals.qucosa.de/ejournals/bjb/article/view/1840.
Jason B. Grant, “Die Herkunft des Chors ‘Triumph! Triumph! Des Herrn Gesalbter sieget’ [The origin of the choir 'Triumph! Triumph! The Lord's Anointed Winner] aus dem Oratorium ‘Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu’ von C. P. E. Bach,” Bach-Jahrbuch, Vol. 97 (2011: 273-286).
Jason B. Grant, "The origins of the aria 'Ich folge dir verklärter Held' and the recurring chorus 'Triumph!' from the oratorio 'Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu' by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach," BACH: the Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Baldwin-Wallace College Berea OH (Vol. 44 No. 2; 2013: 6-24).

Michelle Rasmussen, "Bach, Mozart, and the 'Musical Midwife' (Baron van Swieten)," The New Federalist (August 6, 2001: 8), https://www.academia.edu/36178548/Bach_Mozart_and_the_Musical_Midwife_?email_work_card=view-paper
Emanuel Bach Estate Catalogue, 1790, includes the Michaelmas cantatas Es erhub sich ein Streit (BWV 19) as well as Wie wird und werden and Wenn Christus seine Kirche schützt (both by J. C. F. Bach) https://www.cpebach.org/prefaces/oratorios-preface.html.

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To Come: Bach Biography: History, Topics; Recent, New Perspectives

William L. Hoffman wrote (June 10, 2020):
The Report on the ABS/MSA joint meeting at Stanford University, "“Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, Pathways,” Feb.14-16, 2020, is available online at the ABS Bach Notes current issue, No. 32, Spring 2020, at Page 11, http://americanbachsociety.org/Newsletters/BachNotes32.pdf.

Mozart

Ehud Shiloni wrote (February 14, 2021):
I found this in the comments section of some youtube video. Thought you may like it.

Here goes:

There is a joke among musicians here in Croatia. I apologise if it sounds sacrilegious, it's just a joke.

When Mozart died Saint Peter welcomed him in Heaven and took him to meet God. As they slowly made their way Mozart was thrilled to hear the heavenly sounds of what he thought was the most beautiful music one could imagine. It was Heaven's choir and orchestra.
Thinking this he met the Lord and the Lord said unto him: "Oh Mozart! I am very pleased you're here. You will be in charge of the ensemble."
And Mozart, a little bit confused, responded: "I would be most honored, oh Lord. But... Do I deserve such a position? I mean, isn't Bach around somewhere?"
And God looked at him calmly and said: "I'm Bach."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Short Biography | Arrangements/Transcriptions: Works | Recordings
Discussions: W.A. Mozart & Bach: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3