It is actually "Die Zauberflöte", not "Das".

Of these two definitely Shakespeare. However, had you had paired him against Johann Sebastian Bach, who also was a Freemason, it would have been a much more difficult decision.

Fun Fact- The word Honorificabilitudintatibus, which appears in Love's Labor Lost translates into "the state of being able to achieve honors.  But that's not all.  Honorificabilitudinitatibus can be scrambled into an anagram- hi lude, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi, which is Latin for "these plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world".

I really like Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik 2 Romanze - Andante.

This thread is making me want to read some Shakespeare while listening to Mozart. :)

If my Latin doesn't fail me, it would have to be "hic ludi", so this can't be right.

I was thinking apples and oranges but this is more unique. 

Anyway, I'm not very familiar with Shakespear unfortunately so I can't really say which I prefer. This is sort of like comparing monkeys with zebras though. 

I misspelled the anagram. It's ludi not lude.  One lude too many.    A brief word history and anagram explanation in the link below.   

http://wordsmith.org/words/honorificabilitudinity.html

btw....anyone here into the whole , 'who was Shakespear  mystery?'

I've read a few books over the years and I find the whole thing very interesting but not convinced he was just a cover name for someone else....but yet ...there are some peculiar things about the whole tale.

To be or not to be Shakespeare.  Is that an important question? I can't tell what the dickens his name was.   All's well that ends well, after all...  

"What's in a name?  That which we call a rose

by any other name would smell as sweet."

Instead, I love Mozart, expecially his Requiem, so... Mozart.

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Does anybody know Giuseppe Verdi's requiem? It's wonderful.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/to-be-or-not-to-be-shakespeare-127247606/" rel="nofollow - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/to-be-or-not-to-be-shakespeare-127247606/

Not sure this poll will go too well here ... I keep thinking that many folks have not heard Mozart enough to even compare to reading a play or two, which most kids in school today, find ... boring! 

I had heard Mozart by the dozen by the time I was ten. I had read 6 plays before I even got to college, and ended up reading more than 15 of his plays.

The comparison is strange, specially in a forum that likes "progressive" something or other. Both the writer and the musician were PROGRESSIVE in their time, and they helped spread the strength of the word (Willie) and music (Mozart) and as such, they both deserve to be way up there ... away from "preferences" and the "likes and dislikes".

Not sure I can even take this poll seriously ... even in a fun board!

But as great as Mozart's operas were, it's his symphonies, concertos, and chamber works that are what draw me to him.  Meanwhile, those are two killer plays.  In this case, against my own grain, I go with Shakespeare.  

In Peter Greenaway's PROSPERO'S BOOKS there are moments that are just incredible and amazing ... and one of them is listening to Sir Gielgud do his thing with words ... he makes it sound so smooth and easy, that understanding them is not an issue, something that is really hard to put together when you and I are reading Shakespeare. We can make sense of a sentence or two but all of a sudden the continuity into the next set of lines and words is ... ??? what happened? ... all of a sudden, you do not have any questions what is being said.

My thoughts are that you have to get off the pentameter and this and that in poetry, and just enjoy the flow and freedom of the words and thoughts ... 

It's not "better" than Mozart ... it's almost similar, in that your imagination can easily fly left and right ... and that is always my favorite stuff in any literature.

In this day and age, and I am a Directing Major in Theater, I did not think, and I am not sure that most people ever read the plays or actually listen to anything Mozart ... you just know that one is gonna get ... gawd ... too many lyrics and long winded! ... and the other ... gee can you shut that violin off? Because it ends up being "too much" and longer than 3 or 4 minutes ... excuse me ... longer than 6 or 7 minutes (we're progressive here!) ... and the appreciation for both kinda goes weird ... 

I prefer Willie, but I have no problems with the wording or the long this and that ... speaking it so you and I can relate to it (tell the English Dept to shove the Iambic Puta Meter where the sun don't shine!) and so many great actors in the past 50 years have done to make sure we hear and understand what it is about ... while listening to Mozart, after 5 different things, I can't help thinking that the rest is just stuff figuring out what all this music is about ... how different can I make it ... or what happens if I change this note! 

Willie is way more than that, although I am more of the opinion that too much of it has been "decomposed" so academics can create in their imagination that THE GLOBE was not a place where you and I went to get drunk and enjoy some bawdy stuff, and maybe pick up a girl, or vice versa! Willie, could not have been something for the upper class, that the audience of poor folks could not understand ... and all these English Departments saying talking like all these folks, half drunk many times were there for the poetry ... is just weird ... we don't do that here ... no one shows up for poetry ... it's way too weird and no one understands it or knows what it is about!

But I still like the wording better than the Mozart stuff!

True....there are only 3 examples of his actual handwriting and in all 3 he himself spelled his name differently.

Go figure....

Hi,

And ... did she have arms, or not?

jamesbaldwin wrote: As a writer, possibly Shakespear is better but... I'm not a fan of his. Instead, I love Mozart, expecially his Requiem, so... Mozart. ...

Not surprising ... in a different language than English, Shakespeare is very tough and difficult. Even my dad translated a couple of plays into Portuguese, and I have to tell you that looking at these later, the feelings and the words, just do not match ... and it makes it very difficult to think that this or that is not as good. Same thing goes for me with Boccaccio and a couple of other Italian writers, which somehow in my reading of it, seems like something is missing and I know it is in the translation of it.

Thus Shakespeare would likely have less of an appeal in other countries, although for many actors and actresses, it still is ... the best, since the characterizations, in general, are very strong!

Mozart, for me, is easy ... if you know how to close your eyes and just flow with the music ... you don't even need to know the words on anything, since the music is very expressive. And so is Shakespeare. Try to get PROSPERO'S BOOKS, and then one day play the DVD and record on a DAW or Audacity, just the words ... and then on another empty night, just listen to the words by Sir John Gielgud ... it will change your opinion, some. AND, believe it or not, this has become one of my favorite ways to listen to a lot of things, instead of seeing it ... for example ... watching MARAT/SADE (Peter Brook's opus incredibilitus!!!) is difficult since they films around the play going on, which was OK for a while, but very confusing otherwise ... because all of a sudden some points of view seem, not quite right. BUT, if you just hear the dialogue, and not having your vision encumbered, this play takes on another MASSIVE DIMENTION ... and it is downright revolutionary, to the point that I want to direct one of these productions with skinheads and such, just to give you an idea! It is an incredible amount of dialogue, and a lot of it has been incorporated subtly in many songs since it was first opened in 1965 ... and it probably was one of the first "psychedelic" productions in London, the other having been the famous version of "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM", which by all thoughts and ideas is a monster of a dope play! All this before Sgt. Pepper! 

But the words are what made these great, and this was/is the Shakespeare tradition that we love dearly were it not for that stupid Iambic Puta Meter that English Departments continuously think is what defines Shakespeare, which is not true ... the audiences of the Globe would not have known Iambic Pee from Iambic Poo and get a laugh from the gag ... 

In Mozart's case, it is not the words, it is the inflection and the language he created with instruments to define something new in music, that up until that time was metronomic and stupid and repetitious ... something that even a movie points out very strongly ... and all of a sudden, you have someone seeing something else with all these notes, creating new feelings you and I never considered ... in so many ways it is not really different than Shakespeare!

"Oops..."

That said, you can compare everything with anything, as long as you find the common denominator. For me it was hopping (and I confess, it's not very serious, although Shakespeare can hop too, especially in his comedies... "...I did it again").

Talking about music, Britney (I wanted to write BS, but that could be misread by some) at some point did mark pop music like Mozart did mark classical music (in a much more important way, definitely).

I agree with you about Mozart (and Shakespeare), but you understood that I am not a fan of Mozart's music...

 

Hi,

There are times when I "question" the literacy that "became" known as SHAKESPEARE. The reason for saying that, and you can get a good picture of it in the film "SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE" is that if the crowds at the Globe were to be "seen" and "believed", I seriously doubt that many of folks in that audience would give a damn about the poetry unless it had rhymes that were bawdy and funny ... and were delivered as such. 

I think that the "updating" and "cleaning up" of Shakespeare was done to try and remember him as great, however, to someone who was drunk and in the grounds ... I can hear it now ... "rock'n'roll" ... loud and clear, and more than likely someone in the stage would throw something at that person, or go along with that loon. That, simply put, is not the "right" audience for a lot of his plays, although it should work for the comedies ... but I don't see HAMLET do well, unless the lighting was so low and the whole thing was eerie to the point of scaring folks ... just like the MACBETH witches could probably get some folks to pee in their pants!

MOZART ... is pretty much the same thing, and I think a lot of his material has also been cleaned up over the years. But he could not "have fun" with the Court for a long time and the film makes a big deal of something similar and likely to have happened, which would send many a composer to drink and every thing else, and Wolfgang's escape was the bars ... and there, he created a lot of his far out stuff. Funny thing is that few people know much about his compositions, and so many "concerts" or smaller pieces, which I think were his "studies" for use somewhere else.

It's weird that we picture them as GODS ... for me ... when I think the reality of "theater" at that time, was not the sumptuous high class thing that we think it was and must have been ... I really doubt that ... and it would suggest that things were changed and cleaned up.

Not a surprise though ... since we can see film and theater these days and how they "change" both and still make it appealing to any audience!