He has been called the "Divine Mozart." A book called The Mozart Effect claims that Mozart's music has more healing properties than that of any other composer. It has even been said that the angels listen to J.S. Bach, but the Holy Trinity listens to Mozart.

One of the ironies of these adulations is that Mozart does not seem to have aimed particularly at achieving transcendental effects in his music. While composers as diverse as Palestrina, J.S. Bach, Igor Stravinsky and John Tavener intentionally sought religious expression in at least some of their music, Mozart does not come across as caring about it even in his works for the Church. I am not commenting on what piety Mozart may have had, I am only noting Mozart did not wear his emotions on his sleeve, and he wore piety least of all.

One of the qualities often noted of Mozart is the effortlessness of his expression and the wealth of musical ideas. Accounts of Mozart's lightening speed at composing, not to speak of his alleged ability to write sublime works at the billiards table, give the impression that Mozart took dictation from Heaven while his mind was mostly on worldly matters such as what obscene jokes he could send to his favorite cousin. Melody after melody floats up to heaven with ease, with no feeling of strain. It is a comfortable ride on a chariot made of air that arrives at a heaven that feels as familiar as one's own home. With J.S. Bach, there is more the feeling that one has worked hard to achieve the vision of the Divine offered in the music. With Mozart, the vision of the Divine is as handy as a pocket handkerchief. Much music that tries hard to be religious, plummets to the depths of the earth through its ponderousness. Mozart impishly runs along the corridors of God's House with hardly a trace of reverence.

There is plenty enough evidence that even Mozart had to work at constructing his major works. Moreover, a careful analysis of his music suggests that Mozart knew what he was doing and that he thought out the structure of how work carefully. It is just that he could do these tasks rather quickly. The end result was normally a concerto or an opera where every note seems to have fallen into place at the drop of a hat. Each emotion, including the most turbulent and the most witty, as well as the most transcendent, is expressed with the perfect decorum of an eighteenth-century drawing room. Nothing gets out of hand, nothing stands out unduly. Unlike Haydn and Beethoven (and like Schubert) Mozart is often witty but never downright funny. The last quality to stand out in his music is piety.

Mozart composed at a time when the possibilities of the tonal system in music were unfolding at a bewildering rate. The Baroque Period had already seen the development of the powerful emotional expression fostered by the use of tonality. However, there was the tendency for each concerto movement, each aria, to be confined to one emotion. Dramatic transitions of emotions happened, but they were rare. It might happen once or twice in an aria or a movement, but that was about it. With the symphonic style as Josef Haydn and Mozart developed it, the dialectic of various emotions becomes quite complex.

I suspect that one of the reasons for the alleged healing properties of Mozart's music is the juxtaposition of many musical ideas of differing emotional content. A sonata design thrives on the movement from the tonic to more and more distant keys with contrasting musical ideas as the vehicles for this movement. Mozart differs from Haydn and Beethoven in his tendency to build his symphonic designs lyrically, with several musical ideas following each other and then returning from time to time. So rich is the progression of ideas and the modulations through a bewildering number of keys that one can easily overlook how little development there often is of his themes. Hayden and Beethoven, on the other hand, are more apt to look for more mileage out of less. That is, to use fewer and simpler musical ideas, such as the famous four-note motif of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and then develop these ideas quite extensively. Schubert, incidentally, is closer to Mozart's symphonic vision in his use of several contrasting ideas, although he subjects them to much more development than Mozart. The result of Mozart's way of handling sonata designs is that, more often than not, a wide variety of musical ideas, of differing character, sound harmonious and fully reconciled to living together in the same musical world.

The sense of spiritual well-being is enhanced by the bright major-key themes that predominate in much of Mozart's music. There are shadows. Some are as fleeting as a small cloud passing by on a bright sunny day. Some are subordinate musical ideas that nag just a bit at the affirmative character of the main themes. Others are more elaborate excursions into sadness which can even border on despair in the middle section of a slow movement or as the main theme of the slow movement of a work, such as the slow movements of the Piano Concertos 9, 18, 22, and 23. The overall effect, however, of the dominating major-key material of these works is to absorb the more somber melodies that suggest that paradise has its dark spots so that the dark visions are also reconciled in the harmony of the musical work. It has much of the effect as the plot of The Marriage of Figaro where human wit and ingenuity and common sense solve the problems so neatly that one can fail to see how close the plot comes to a moral collapse.

Mozart wrote rather few minor-key works, and even fewer works that end in the Tonic Minor. A look at the effect of those works that do help to illustrate the point that the minor triad is not as consonant as the major triad. In fact, the minor triad can sound rather dissonant. It is because of the dissonance of the minor triad that the Picardy Third became customary in minor-key works where the final chord would resolve into the major mode. The major-key finales of works such as the G-Minor string quintet and the coda to the finale of the D-Minor Piano Concerto can be construed as extended Picardy Thirds. Beethoven hardly ever failed to resolve a minor-key work into the major, even at the risk of making the ending rather incongruent with what had gone before (such as in the Egmont Overture.) However, there are a few works, among them the A Minor Piano Sonata, the C Minor Piano Concerto and the G-Minor Symphony (#40) that end uncompromisingly in the tonic Minor with the effect of absorbing the contrasting major-key material. The final chord of the A Minor Sonata sounds like a trap snapping shut. The variations of the finale of the C-Minor Concerto drive the theme into the ground with relentless fatalism. (This work was quite unsettling to Mozart's audiences.) That a subordinate theme in a sonata design is presented at first in a contrasting key and then returns in the tonic is usually an idle curiosity for most listeners. However, in both the first and last movement of the G-Minor Symphony, the subordinate theme is presented in the relative major but then returns in the tonic minor, thus having the effect of turning out what little light the theme had offered. (A more dramatic though less subtle example of this effect comes in the final movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony Since these relentless Minor-key works are rare, they don't set the tone for Mozart's output as a whole, but they have a much greater impact than mathematical proportions would account for. Human wit and ingenuity are not adequate for solving problems any more than they are in Don Giovanni. Unlike the Count in The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni does not care for the social order and his place in it, and therefore cannot be restrained by clever machinations that play on that sense of honor and order. There can be no other end for this defiant stand than Don Giovanni's unsettling interview with the statue to the tune of the most blood-curdling music Mozart wrote.

Among the many wonders of Mozart's music, the piano concertos rank among the greatest of all. I will take a look at the Concerto #22 in E-flat Major, K. 482 to illustrate the qualities of Mozart that I have been noting. The work begins with a militaristic fanfare theme that suggests that we are in for a pompous work of celebration. However, there is a lot more to it than that. The fanfare outburst is promptly answered by a recessive figure which flows, in turn, into a lyrical second theme that goes on for a longer period than the first. An aggressive figure, close in spirit to the opening fanfare, intervenes and then peters out, setting up another brief lyrical theme which is followed by a pompous figure that raises the curtain for the soloist. As if there weren't enough musical ideas already, the piano enters with another new theme, one that the soloist does not share with the orchestra. And so it goes on. The development is little more than a transition through several keys back to the tonic and the first theme in the recapitulation. The pompous themes set the tone for the movement by setting up a context for the more lyrical material. The lyrical material, in turn, softens the impact of the pompous themes.

The second movement, in C Minor begins with an anguished theme introduced by the orchestra. The intensity is strengthened when A-flat is held in the melody is held twice, as if caught so that it can't move on, before it finally stumbles forward. What follows is a set of variations featuring the soloist which is offset by contrasting bright subjects played by the woodwinds. Undeterred by the cheerful responses, the soloist persists with its own theme. The penultimate variation switches to the major mode, only to relapse in the tonic where, at the end, the melodic line is isolated so that the movement ends in total alienation of the soloist from everything the orchestra has offered throughout the movement.

When the rondo-finale enters when with one of those ridiculously innocent themes of Mozart's, one can be forgiven for thinking that the middle movement never happened. Hardly anything clouds the playful and carefree music here. A particularly interesting feature is an extended slow section during one of the diversions from the main theme. Its scoring for woodwinds, and it's reflective but bright character, recalls the contrasting themes from the second movement, without being clearly based on. So sure-footed is the dancing playground atmosphere that there is no need to bump off either the pomposity or the tragedy. When Mozart's music turns to dancing, everything else goes along for the ride to heaven.