"Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music"
About this Quote
Mozart is laying down a rule that sounds polite, even priggish, until you realize how radical it is: art can depict horror without reproducing it. He’s rejecting the cheap trick of making an audience suffer in order to prove a point. However ugly the onstage situation, he insists, the sound itself must remain seductive. Not because he’s squeamish, but because he understands what music does best: it recruits the body first. If the ear is merely assaulted, the listener stops listening; attention collapses into self-protection. “Flatter and charm” isn’t decorative language here, it’s a strategy for control.
The subtext is a defense of form against sensationalism. Mozart is writing in an era when opera is both mass entertainment and moral theater, where composers are expected to paint emotions vividly. He draws a boundary: express passion, even violence, but don’t tip into disgust. That word matters. Disgust is not tragedy; it’s recoil. It breaks the spell, and Mozart’s whole game is the spell - the alchemy that lets an audience sit with jealousy, cruelty, terror, and desire long enough to recognize themselves.
There’s also a quiet flex embedded in “thereby always remain music.” He’s arguing for the autonomy of the art form: music can represent pain without becoming noise, just as a great actor can play madness without actually losing control. It’s an aesthetic credo that doubles as an ethical one: intensity, yes; degradation, no.
The subtext is a defense of form against sensationalism. Mozart is writing in an era when opera is both mass entertainment and moral theater, where composers are expected to paint emotions vividly. He draws a boundary: express passion, even violence, but don’t tip into disgust. That word matters. Disgust is not tragedy; it’s recoil. It breaks the spell, and Mozart’s whole game is the spell - the alchemy that lets an audience sit with jealousy, cruelty, terror, and desire long enough to recognize themselves.
There’s also a quiet flex embedded in “thereby always remain music.” He’s arguing for the autonomy of the art form: music can represent pain without becoming noise, just as a great actor can play madness without actually losing control. It’s an aesthetic credo that doubles as an ethical one: intensity, yes; degradation, no.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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