Kurt Blaukopf, Pioniere empiristischer Musikforschung: Österreich und Böhmen als Wiege der modernen Kunstsoziologie (Schriftenreihe Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung und Kunst, vol.1), Wein: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1995

Abstract

In a splendid addition to scholarship, Kurt Blaukopf extends our knowledge about early sociology by introducing us to authors not typically associated with the founding of the discipline. Normally we trace the beginning of sociology to Auguste Comte; and when we look to sociological pioneers in the sociology of aesthetics, there also is a list of “classical founders.” Yet Blaukopf successfully wets our appetite to expand this list with additions presented in the auspicious initial volume of the new Schriftenreihe of the Institut Wiener Kreis by employing stories connected with Mozart leaving the employ of the Salzburg Court and establishing himself as free-lance musician in Vienna in 1781. He recalls for us the delightful episode with the critical remark of Emperor Josef to Mozart after the 1782 premiere of Die Entführung aus dem Serail: “Gewaltig viel Noten lieber Mozart!” (rendered as “Too Many Notes, my Dear Mozart” in Amadeus) to which Mozart replied “Gerade so viel, Eure Majestät, als nötig ist” (“just as many as are needed”). And with scholarly erudition, Blaukopf cites Mozart’s early biographer Niemetschek on this episode who reported Mozart’s enlightened reaction to this exchange as follows: “Mozart did not regard this as [the emperor’s] independent judgment but as imitative chatter (nachgesagt).”