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What did Mozart mean when he said this?
Topic Started: Oct 21 2006, 11:54 AM (1,278 Views)
pianojerome
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HOLY CARP!!!
"I write music as a sow piddles."

Is he refering to the manner alone in which he composes? (I've never seen a sow piddle: is it quick and orderly, or does it spray all over and make an unwanted mess, I wonder?) Or maybe to the quality as well of his final product?

Perhaps he is refering rather to the shared attitude towards piddling/composing - just something to be done, no questions asked, nothing to be ashamed of nor proud of.

Or maybe he is actually suggesting a literal temporal coincidence: he composes *at the same time* that a sow piddles. (Maybe it gave him inspiration?)

Why a sow, and not some other animal? Perhaps he is in fact comparing himself to a female pig: "I compose as a sow piddles."

One will never know for sure. As the King of Siam always says, "Is a puzzlement!"
Sam
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George K
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Finally
If I remember correctly, he said that in a letter that he wrote to his sister (oh, what was her name...), and she had asked him how he can compose such much music so effortlessly. His response was that it just came out, just as a cow pisses. (that's the version I heard)
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
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DivaDeb
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yep...effortlessly and lots of it
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
It's funny what constitutes 'effortless', and how this has changed over the years. Even just the physical act of writing the score down would be too much like hard work for many people who today are considered to be musicians.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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George K
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Finally
And for some of us, even piddling is not all that easy:

Posted Image
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
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Daniel\
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Fulla-Carp
He was known for off color remarks like that. I wouldn't read too very much into it.

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Phlebas
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John D'Oh
Oct 21 2006, 12:03 PM
It's funny what constitutes 'effortless', and how this has changed over the years. Even just the physical act of writing the score down would be too much like hard work for many people who today are considered to be musicians.

I had a composition teacher who told me a story about a composer who wrote a big sympony or opera. He used the wrong ink, and one day when he took the score out of a cabinet, all the note heads fell off the paper.
Random FML: Today, I was fired by my boss in front of my coworkers. It would have been nice if I could have left the building before they started celebrating. FML

The founding of the bulk of the world's nation states post 1914 is based on self-defined nationalisms. The bulk of those national movements involve territory that was ethnically mixed. The foundation of many of those nation states involved population movements in the aftermath. When the only one that is repeatedly held up as unjust and unjustifiable is the Zionist project, the term anti-semitism may very well be appropriate. - P*D


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Radu
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George K
Oct 21 2006, 09:56 PM
his sister (oh, what was her name...),

Nannerl
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