On Mozart's birthday, it is interesting to consider that, while he was a prodigy and is rightly viewed as a genius, even he had to devote himself to his art in order to achieve such greatness.
"People make a mistake," he wrote, "who think that my art has come easily to me. Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not studied over and over."
It often seems that much so-called art nowadays is simply thrown together without effort, and it often makes me question whether such 'artists' love their work at all since we naturally want to spend time with what we love. When a person loves something, s/he wants to perfect it and does so not only by concentrating on his/her own work but on the works of those who have mastered that art.
Perhaps this is what Mozart meant when he wrote: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
No comments:
Post a Comment