Mozart and Art

I went to a Mozart concert by Orchestra Nova today. The pieces played were:

1. Violin concerto 3

2. 3 German dances

3. Symphony No. 40

As good as the 3 pieces are, Symphony 40 would be instinctively likable because its main theme is a well known tune. The second movement of the symphony was the one that I liked the most. It's a slow, almost sad but very romantic piece which managed to evoke a very tangible scene in my mind. The scene of two lovers dancing on a wooden pier over the ocean on a cloudless night. The sky is shot on the horizon in the shape of the moon and it is bleeding its milky agony on the scarred ocean. The only sounds are the creaks of the wooden floor of the pier as the hard soles and piercing heels of the dancers create rhythmic impressions over its accumulated dust. The dance is slow and intimate now and energetic and primal then and the rest of the universe with all its consequences and concerns has melted into the significance and insignificance of a few mutual gazes and some skipped beats. The two, oblivious of the celestial firmament above and around, dance away to the tunes of an invisible hand and whims of an unseen puppeteer, his gestures sure and controlled, her movements rapturous yet precise. The two ephemeral inky blots move among the mighty company of stars with the confidence of stupidity and the egoism of love but on the dull and permanent canvas of the heavens, they mark their patterns with the brilliance of human will. And it's a beautiful pattern. It is smooth and differentiable where the violins have taken deep breaths and discontinuous where the strings are plucked. It is serene and slow where the music is stringed and agitated and violent in the company of horns. Every now and then, they come close, their hands held together, the sorry moon imprisoned between his palm and hers - when the music goes quiet - and with a tremendous jerk as the crescendo is reached, the other side of the night sky gets drenched in the moonlight.

Mozart might never have intended images to be associated to his music but I feel that the importance and essence of art is not in the creator's intent but in the viewer's interpretation. I have colored his sketchy drawings with my imaginations and probably have gone overboard but art is nothing if not a good lie. Its importance is in its ability of making us invent beautiful false stories. It's actually useless when it is factual. And at this point I get reminded of a beautiful passage by Wilde where he talks about the real utility of art - the capability of inventing lies:

'Art, breaking from the prison-house of realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, beautiful lips, knowing that he alone is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style; while Life---poor, probable, uninteresting human life---tired of repeating herself for the benefit of Mr. Herbert Spencer, scientific historians, and the compilers of statistics in general, will follow meekly after him, and try to reproduce, in her own simple and untutored way, some of the marvels of which he talks.'