I prefer earlier composers - the Baroque suits me better. But in Salzburg, Mozart's home town, they have a wonderful tradition of re-enacting all things Mozartish. His music is everywhere and so is the sensibility. People dress as they did in the late eighteenth century and dance to the music of the time. It's wonderful to see.
The dancing's where I'm getting to. Mozart wrote a lot of dance music, and was no mean dancer himself. He wrote for the popular styles of the time, meaning popular with the kind of people who held and attended balls, not street riff-raff. He was passionate about writing and participating, especially the minuet.
There was nothing stuffy about the music:
They are exasperating to listen to in large quantity, but they are full of lively, even zany details, and serve as a reminder that eighteenth-century composers were expected to be adept at producing both 'popular' and 'serious' music, and that there was no categorical difference between the two.
The vision in my head is of a ballroom of finely dressed Austrians. People of all ages are in attendance, good dancers and bad, friends and strangers. There's chatter and laughter between dances, smiles and storytelling, like at any good party.
The music begins, and men and women partner up - sometimes wives and husbands, sometimes friends, oftentimes singles. Steps and moves are formalized and everyone knows the rules, although not everyone can keep time. The fun, as with all good dancing, lies in the shared grace and closeness. The movements are contrived and formulated, but that is the point. Anyone can dance with anyone else precisely because the rules are clear and understood.
One other surviving period detail is that men always ask for the woman to join him in a dance. That seems to work best.
Bottoms Up Salzburgers.
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