Do I like Mozart? How can I not like Mozart.  As the Oscar-winning film Amadeus shows, he was a fun guy who was a workmanlike composer with extraordinary talents. When he was 12, he wrote his first opera. If it was any good, I don't know, but when I was 12 all I'd written was a few stories in English class. 

So hats off to Mozart. Have a listen here and buy some of those Mozart chocolates you get from the Austrian / German / Baltic airports - not only do you get chocolates, but you also get a box in the shape of a violin. Winner.

Wow - I actually really like Beethoven.

Some quick facts:

1. He was the most dominant composer of the 19th century

2. He brought about the birth of musical romanticism by developing the Viennese Classicism of Mozart and Haydn

3. Born in 1770, he was deaf aged 48, and died in 1827. 10,000 people attended his funeral. To put that number in perspective: 6.3m people watched Micheal Jackson's funeral on the BBC and 80,000 people turned out to see Christiano Ronaldo's unveiling as a Real Madrid player. Changing times eh

My favorite pieces (you can listen to it on the Classical.com site by clicking the link):

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor: 1st Movement

What's yours?! Let me know and I'll have a listen.

Thanks for visiting my Classical Music Learnings site!

A lot of people are against the use of the word Learnings. I'm not one of them.

Jeffrey McManus reckons learnings is a stupid word. I disagree.

To quote The Old New Thing: "If things you teach are teachings, then things you learn must be learnings, right?" Right!

Please join my site and join me on my journey as increase my learnings on classical music from The Classical.com commuinity