RAW on Mozart

"It sounds like as Mozart's music. All as mechanical as clockwork and yet as free as a dream ... "

-- Robert Anton Wilson

(From The Trick Top Hat, in the chapter "The Universe Decides," from the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy. Spoken by the character Natalie Drest.)

I know that Robert Anton Wilson loved Mozart, but it's much harder to find comments about Mozart from RAW than it is to find comments about Beethoven. So I was pleased to run  across this passage, which I think captures Mozart's achievement in a few words: He stayed within the classical forms of his era, yet somehow he could transcend them with his genius.

After I read that passage, I put my book down and listened to this recording (a free download from the Gardner Museum) of Mozart's Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478, by the Nash Ensemble. It's a wonderful piece.