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cahnAnd including Emperor Joseph II!
from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:
Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.
(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)
from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:
Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.
(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)
Re: Klement: the Weber Version - I
Date: 2022-01-30 09:55 am (UTC)Provided Klement didn't make up this part entirely: maybe the idea was that F1 could tell the Emperor "yes, my son has been a very naughty boy, but a) I had no idea, and b) I don't have another son, so it's not like I can disinherit him, and so you'll have to live with having lost the Hungarian Crown to us Hohenzollern.
Incidentally: in rl, if FW had died or other reasons been unable to inherit, I suppose the Prussian Crown would have gone to one of F1's younger half brothers, the Schwedt cousins.
On the other hand, that's quite the number of possible thrones you are collecting there, FW, first the English one through adoption, now the Hungarian one through political scheming.
You know, having just read the gigantic Joseph biography, I can only imagine how the Hungarians would have responded to being ruled by FW. The Protestant part of the nobles might have been happy for a few weeks before finding out what FW's idea of how the nobility should participate in any state ruled by him looked like. The Catholics would have been appalled from the get go. And I can definitely see him make a couple of Josephenian reform decisions guaranteed to piss off the population, like
- no more Latin at school! We wanted the kids to understand what they're learning, therefore: all classes have to be in German!
This keeps being a most entertaining tale indeed.
One wonders what Thomas Mann would have made out of the Geschichte des Hochstaplers Johann Michael Klement...