Why Mozart is the Magnus Carlsen of music
In this episode we will make an X ray analysis of two real champions. Do you recognize them in the thumbnail?
Let's hope that the radiation doesn't transform them into the incredible Hulk or something worse!!!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
GENIUSES AT COMPARISON
GENIUSES AT COMPARISON
Mozart was an Austrian composer of the utmost importance in the history of music. His musical genius was revolutionary and his name is everlasting.
Carlsen is one of the greatest champions in the history of chess.
Mozart has a double name: Wolfgang (which means "wolf-stepping") and Amadeus just like Carlsen, who is called Magnus Ben.
Mozart was born in Salzburg on January 27, 1756 and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791 at the age of 35.
Carlsen (Tonsberg - Norway, November 30, 1990) is about to turn 35... 😱
Mozart was a subject of the Holy Roman Empire (Principality-Archbishopric of Salzburg) and then of the Habsburg Empire - odiern Austria.
Carlsen is from Norway - parliamentary monarchy. Reigning Harald V of Norway.
Mozart had an older sister, who he was very close to, Mary Anne, called Nannerl. When they were children they played together, touring the noble courts of Europe (Vienna, Paris, London). She was very talented. She played the harpsichord and the cello with great mastery.
It is a pity that her talent was not cultivated with the same assiduity by her father. Since she was a woman, her father preferred, when she came of age, to find her a husband (a baron). Only after his death, 10 years later, she could again dedicate herself to music, her great passion and talent. She opened a music school.
During his life Amadeus many times submitted his musical compositions to her judgement, since he held his beloved sister in high regard.
Carlsen has three sisters, Ingrid, Ellen and Signe. Their father, a good amateur chess player, achieved an Elo > 2000. Ingrid and Ellen also played chess. Magnus at first was not very interested, anyway he decided to start playing mainly because he wanted to win against his older sister, Ellen.
Mozart, a child prodigy, guided by his father, assiduously cultivated his talent from early childhood. Despite his death at a young age, he left behind a vast number of compositions. His career lasted thirty years.
His production is characterized by the exploration of every musical form. This set him apart from other great Viennese composers, Haydn and Beethoven.
He excelled in each one with the ability to express in music a wide range of emotions.
Critics have offered heterogeneous and sometimes opposing interpretations (classical, pre-romantic). This demonstrates the universal character recognized in Mozart's art.
Carlsen learned to play at the age of eight and quickly made great progress. His parents wanted him to become a ski champion, but the boy's passion prevailed.
He demonstrated a very early talent and great simplicity in achieving his results.
At the beginning of his career he had a style very similar to that of Mikhail Tal'. Later his game became more positional.
He had as a coach the former World Champion Garri Kasparov who compared his style to that of Anatolij Karpov and José Raúl Capablanca. His strenghts the great ability to evaluate every position, his deep concentration and nerves of steel, even for very long periods of time.
In short, his deep knowledge of openings, his positional understanding in the middle game and his excellent accuracy in the endgame make him one of the most complete players in the world.
1756-1780 Salzburg period and of the great journeys among the European noble courts.
During this period Mozart composed sonnets, masses, string quartets and piano concertos.
1781-91 finally in Vienna. Hired as court composer by Emperor Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine himself. It is the decade of great masterpieces.
In Vienna he fully realized his operatic vocation. He composed the Italian trilogy "The Marriage of Figaro", the "Don Giovanni" and "Così fan tutte" and, in 1971, once back from a trip between Prague and Berlin, "The Magic Flute" which achieved a resounding success.
The Magic Flute - Queen of the night aria
In the same period he began to write, commissioned by an aristocrat, a requiem mass, heartbreaking for its beauty. Unfortunately he became seriously ill and never managed to complete it.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem in D minor - K626 Confutatis:
Magnus Carlsen obtained the title of Grandmaster when he was 13 on Aprile 2004.
On May-June 2007 (17 years old) he was eliminated by Aronian at the Candidates Tournament with direct elimination formula (final results: 3-3 in classic, 2-2 in rapid, but 0-2 in blitz games). In the December of the same year he reached the semifinals of the FIDE World Cup.
Towards the end of 2009 he won the World Blitz Championship in Moscow 3'(+2''). In 2011 he didn't take part in the Candidates Tournament as a protest for the rules too unbalanced in favor of the defending champion.
In the Memorial Tal he took first together with Levon Aronian. The following year he won that tournament again, preceding Fabiano Caruana, Italian-American, another rising star of the fabulous realm of chess.
In March - April 2013 - London - he finally won the Candidates Tournament against Kramnik and Aronian and acquired the right to challenge Anand, the reigning champion. The World Championship took place in Chennai, Anand's hometown - India - and was decided in the best of 12 games. A landslide victory 6.5-3.5 for the Norwegian. Magnus Carles, 22 years old, was the new World Champion.
Anand vs Carlsen game n.9 [0-1]
In June 2014 - Dubai - Carlsen won the World Rapid and Blitz Championship and became the first and only player in history to hold together three FIDE world titles (the "Triple Crown").
Since then it has been a victory after the other.
In 2016 the competition with Fabiano Caruana became tougher (currently in the Elo ranking Caruana is the second in the world), but he kept the lead.
The World Championship match against Caruana took place in London - November 2018. For Carlsen it was the third time defending the title.
All 12 classic games ended in a draw!
The plan was to continue with rapid play-offs 25'(+10'') in the best of 4 games, then 5 mini matches of 2 blitz games each 5'(+2'') and finally, in case of another draw, the ARMAGEDDON game: white 5' and black 4', but a draw would have been equivalent to a victory for black.
Rapid games were enough to decide the title.
In the first Caruana did not see the decisive move to obtain the draw and lost. Then Carlsen dominated, winning the second and third games as well.
(analysis and comments by GM Sam Shankland)
Fast forward to the present day. Between 2020 and 2021, because of the COVID pandemic, over a year passes between the first and second rounds of the Candidates Tournament. Jan Nepomniachtchi prevails.
The World Championship is held at the Dubai Expo in the best of 14 games.
Carlsen wins hands down and collects a well-deserved millionaire purse.
He won the last 5 editions (from 2009 to 2013) of the Oscar of chess, awarded by the historic Russian magazine "64". The name 64 comes from the number of squares on the chessboard. It ceased publication in 2014.
He holds the record for the greatest number of classical games played without being beaten (125: 42 wins and 83 draws), between August 2018 (defeated in Biel by Şəhriyar Məmmədyarov) and October 2020 (defeated during Norway Chess by Jan-Krzysztof Duda).
He reached the highest Elo score ever: 2882
The only one to hold the "Triple Crown", a result he achieved three times, in 2014, 2019 and 2022.
In 2023 Carlsen decided not to defend anymore his title, but continued his excellent performances in the chess arena, winning the Chess World Cup for the first time, the very last important trophy missing at the time from his palmarès.
He is considered one of the strongest chess players of all time.
In 2024, FIDE, on the occasion of its centenary, awarded him the "Best player of all time" prize.
On that occasion, he humbly stated that Kasparov would have deserved that award in his place.
Today the World Champion is Gukesh.
Everyone expects a top challenge between the two.
Few know that the match between the two has already taken place in the recent past.
This was the result:
Personality, behaviour, habits and private life
Mozart was an elegant gentleman respectful of etiquette but also witty, capable of having fun and, sometimes, foul-mouthed and irreverent.
Mozart had a beautiful love story with Constanze Weber, who he married with. It is touching to read their love letters, which are now preserved in a museum in Salzburg.
Carlsen is a good sport and polite, but also eclectic (he plays football, cooks and goes cross-country skiing) and witty.
In 2010 he modeled for a well-known brand with Lyv Tyler.
In 2017 he appeared in an episode of the famous SIMPSON series. He coached Homer for the chess challenge against his father, in order to overcome his childhood conflict!
His first girlfriend was Synne Christin Larsen. They were engaged for many years, buy they broke up in 2018.
The following year he met a journalist, Elisabet Lorentezen Djonee. They dated for a while.
Then the engagement with Ella Victoria Malone. They were seen publicly together for the first time in February 2024. She is both Norwegian and American because of her parents and was born in 1998. Love at firrst night? Who knows, but it's very likely, in fact they quickly decided to get married. The wedding occurred just days after Carlsen won the World Blitz Chess Championship (a title shared with GM Ian Nepomniachtchi).
She nowaday helps Magnus to manage his schedule with his father.
Mozart died of an illness that was never clearly identified.
The nascent Romantic era theorized suspicions and legends regarding the circumstances of Mozart's death, especially due to the macabre coincidence of the composition of the Requiem, mysteriously commissioned and left unfinished.
Popular imagination has created the legend that the famous Italian court composer Antonio Salieri, consumed by envy, plotted Mozart's downfall. This story is not true. Antonio Salieri was in fact among the few who followed his funeral procession, crying over the premature death of perhaps the greatest musical genius of all time.
Here is the scene from the 1984 cinematic masterpiece "Amadeus" directed by Milos Forman (starring Tom Hulce, F. Murray Abraham and Elizabeth Berridge) about the origin of Salieri's envy!
In September 2022 at the Sinquefield Cup (St. Luis – Missouri – USA) Hans Niemann defeats Carlsen, with the black pieces, in a sharply and surprising way. The Norwegian champion leaves the tournament, subtly accusing his rival of cheating. GM Hikaru Nakamura is of the same opinion too.
The American, aggrieved personally, admits in a long interview that he ‘cheated’ twice in his youth (at the age of 12 and 16), but only online. And he attacks the skeptics: “Next time if they want me completely naked, I will be”. Chess.com ‘suspends’ Niemann from its platform shortly after the end of the tournament in question. Carlsen confirms his hypotheses about a cheating and underlines that, in his opinion, Niemann had cheated more often, and more recently, than confessed publicly.
FIDE opens an investigation to verify what really happened and to try to ascertain how much truth there is in Carlsen’s words and allusions.
Meanwhile, two factions spread in public opinion: pro-Carlsen and pro-Nieman.
Nieman decide to sue for defamation, later dismissed by the US court.
Eventually, the parties reach an agreement and the dispute is resolved. Niemann is reinstated on the platform and Carlsen confirms that he is available to play against his rival again.
The opportunity for a new challenge between the two occurs at the Speed Chess Championship (SCC) 2024.
In this tournament, players compete online but are physically present in an arena in the center of Paris, sitting close to each other with noise-canceling headphones in front of hundreds of spectators. They are also followed by thousands of people on Chess.com.
In the semifinals the two players met again.
Carlsen beated Hans Niemann 17.5-12.5 (7-2 victories in the longer 5’(+1’’) format, 4-4 draw in the 3'(+1'') blitz and 6.5-6.5 draw in the bullet matches).
In the final, Carlsen won the Speed Chess Championship title again for the fourth time, defeating GM Alireza Firouzja with an impressive score of 23.5-7.5. This is the best final score ever.
Carlsen and GM Hikaru Nakamura remain the only players to have won the tournament in almost a decade of editions (the first was in 2016).
Here is the Carlsen Niemann match:
Exceptional life stories over 3 and a half centuries apart.
Mozart in the musical field has no comparison, he was eclectic, with a sunny disposition, always looking for new ideas and emotions. His travel experiences broadened his mental and musical horizons.
Carlsen has shown exceptional skills and qualities in chess. He no longer has the title simply because he voluntarily gave up defending it. He has been playing at the highest levels for almost 20 years. In short, a titan of chess.
It is no coincidence that they have called him the Mozart of chess!
What if Mozart was the Carlsen of music?
I hope you enjoyed this article, as much as I enjoyed writing it in order to celebrate these two great characters.
Every comment is welcome.
See you soon!
DocSimooo
