Typically, we think of music in movies in terms of what the music adds to the visuals. Music often tells us how to feel about what we're seeing — it sets the mood and provides an emotional context. But, as Evan Puschak details in this video, you can also learn something about music (Mozart, in this case) from the way in which talented directors and music producers deploy it in movies, particularly when they use it unconventionally.

[These films and TV shows] teach us something about the Lacrimosa. They open up doors in the music that maybe even Mozart didn't see. This is what's so cool about movies — they bring art forms together and, in these collisions, it's possible to see some really beautiful sparks.

• Evan Puschak
• film school
• movies
• music
• video
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Mozart Project is a book about the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Or is it an app? Stephen Fry calls it "a completely new kind of book"...you read it in iBooks but it acts more like an app than anything. Over 200 pages of text by leading Mozart scholars is accompanied by hours of music, videos, photo slideshows, all sorts of other goodies.

Curated and authored by some of the most respected experts, The Mozart Project gives new insight into the life of a musical genius, providing the ultimate experience both in terms of contributors and the carefully selected playlist of music and images that they have chosen to feature throughout the book.

• books
• iPad apps
• music
• The Mozart Project
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Here's a watercolor drawing by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of his ear compared to an ordinary ear¹:

"Mozart Ear" has become a medical catch-all term for deformed ears (for instance). Deformed or not², the ear clearly didn't have any negative effect on his musical ear. (via @DavidGrann)

[1] The note accompanying the drawing at Harvard's Houghton Library reads:

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791. Mein Ohr [und] ein gewöhnliches Ohr [My ear and an ordinary ear] : drawing, [n.p., n.d.] Water-color drawing; [n.p, n.d] 1 drawing : watercolor on paper

The "mein" is crossed out and "Mozart" is written in its place in another hand. With this is Fr. Jelinck's A.D.s., Salzburg, 1879 Sept. 19, certifying that this is by Mozart.

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[2] It's stated elsewhere that the ear is actually that of Mozart's son, which would be slightly more plausible than Mozart drawing his own ear. ↩

• art
• medicine
• music
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart