Their recent appearance in newspapers represent two quite different archetypal media stories. On the face of it, there isn’t much connection between 50 Cent – the American rapper whose posters have just been censured for glamorising gun crime – and J T Leroy, an American writer who may, or may not, have transformed his hardscrabble [...]
Their recent appearance in newspapers represent two quite different archetypal media stories. On the face of it, there isn’t much connection between 50 Cent – the American rapper whose posters have just been censured for glamorising gun crime – and J T Leroy, an American writer who may, or may not, have transformed his hardscrabble street upbringing into voguish literary art. Now back to the studio.Chairman: And that just about wraps it up. A last word from Mr Freemason?Freemason: No comment.Chairman: Thank you And goodbye
More from Miles Kington.
At the time the event was declared a tie, but Mozart said later it was a fix, and that he had easily won A bit of a whinger, our Wolfgang? Perhaps. Eyewitnesses agreed Mozart was the more stylish performer, but Clementi the harder hitter. One of the best remembered musical sporting events of all time took place on Dec 24 1781, when the Emperor Josef II arranged a heavyweight piano contest between Mozart and Clementi. Who can doubt which was the greater composer, by any standards, except, perhaps, musical?Chairman: Thank you And now for sports news Gary?Gary: Jim, John Good morning. Mr Clementi died in 1832 at his grand country house near Evesham, aged eighty, very well off, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mr Mozart, improvident, disorganised, died at age 36, a pauper. Mr Clementi also played the piano and composed, but shrewdly made a lot of money out of publishing and piano manufacture.
Now for a business update.Our Business Correspondent: I have been looking into the affairs of W A Mozart of Salzburg and I find a distressing lack of investment and foresight, especially when we compare him to an exact contemporary, Mr Muzio Clementi. Oh, woe to the classical music industry of 1792! Woe, I say!Chairman: Thank you. His music was never promoted as it should have been by the bloated, self-satisfied business of his time. With reference merely to the English National Opera…Chairman: Perhaps we could keep just to the story about Mozart.Lebrecht: But in Mozart’s day the music business was as near to collapse and corruption as it is now! Mozart never got any royalties from his successful operas.
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