Odets on Mozart

Entry from Journal

April 9, 1940

Mozart, in his best work, has the profound sadness of a man trying to break out of a form not his own personally: which is to say a man trying to break out of prison. Child and man of his age, he was above it by being underground in it. On the other hand, the personal tragedy of Beethoven, the man, is that HE DID BREAK THROUGH THE FORM! (In Mozart’s case it is like the Negro who walks around, personal life in him, contained in a social form which he did not make and from which he can never escape!)

In certain periods where the forms of art are breaking down (because of social breakdowns and changes) it is a bondage, a sign of servility, to work within those forms when one’s content is in advance of the times. It was between these two worlds that Mozart was beginning to be caught by the time he had reached the age of independent manhood. Against him was ranged the entire world of common usage of the artist, represented by his employers and his very own father, a perfect servant and minor diplomat. The overlords did not want to know or hear what he was feeling and sensing; they wanted only the shell of his genius, never the substance. Here, in the simple and natural protection of his genius, is where Mozart began a subtle change in his life.

He pretended a servility (as Haydn did not have to pretend) by retaining the old decaying forms. And this is how he went underground — he moved around in these forms freely, saying exactly what he wanted to say, loading them with a rare precise vehemence (which Beethoven was later to bring up into daylight!), often expressing all sorts of censorable materials behind opera masks.

He is a man of great elegance in his art, not all of it natural to his nature. His technical equipment is excellent and enviable. His playing contains a contained feeling of which he is somewhat afraid; and he possesses, when you think of it, little quality of the spirit. His name is Heifetz, and you know all of this when you hear him fiddle Mozart.