Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a better composer than Richard Wagner

To touch quickly on the part about emotion: I didn't attack Wagner because there's nothing to attack, but there is a stigma against Mozart's music for being "too happy." Now, there is a lot that he wrote for the sake of it sounding good without sounding profound, and I would ask the reader to look back at the Milton Cross quote in the previous round. I also ask anyone to listen to pretty much anything in the Requiem. The only "happy" one that comes to mind is Tuba Mirum, but that fits the context of the piece quite well.As for the "laughable" part of Mozart's opera, I believe this reaction is less to do with the pigeonholed idea that fast, major keys must hold some sort of happy, joyous connotation. This idea is nearly exclusive to Western music, and other societies have not built their music around this concept. For Mozart to be able to present tension in the fast paced, major key by quickening the dialog and expertly combining the voices in a way that only serves to emphasize this tension is not to be laughed at, but to be praised. He did something most could not at the time - be successful in presenting a negative idea with musical concepts that were stereotyped with the exact opposite.Comparing the lightness of "Here Comes the Bride" with the heavier Don Giovanni is hardly fair; they serve different purposes, which is why I took the two overtures to be compared. Why exactly does Mozart sound better? The balance that I talked about in the part about Wagner's "piercing" music is that Mozart knew exactly how far to go with intervals between bass and treble, and Wagner doesn't do this quite as successfully, as is apparent in the overtures. Mozart seemed to have an innate understanding of the harmonic series (and thus the partials between them) that seems absent in most of Wagner's music. The music Mozart uses balances these frequencies in a way that makes the music balance itself out perfectly. Wagner, on the other hand, balances ideas in such a way that often push these patterns to a breaking point. This is certainly alright in moderation, but it seems quite frequent in Wagnerian music.Finally, I would like to point out why I mentioned the length of pieces. Ultimately, Con and I can agree that length is irrelevant when taken by itself. However, coupling the length with musical ideas that have been said again and again is something a bit different. One composer who made what appears to be a perfect musical metaphor for this idea is Erik Satie, an early avant-garde impressionist. His composition "Vexations" is believed to be a political statement against Wagnerianism, specifically its incredibly long ideas. In his instructions for the otherwise short piece, it can be read "In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilites." It has been interpreted, rather appropriately, as a direct dig at the Wagnerian idea of "unendliche Melodie." It's very important for me to note that this term means "unending melody," and it was not a term used to make fun of or put down Wagnerianism, but an actual term of a technique used quite frequently in Wagnerian composition. It would be coupled by a series of complex chords, but that does little to save the monotony of it all. Wagner used this to lengthen his pieces, when simply using them in moderation would work. Mozart wasn't void of repetitiveness, but it seldom equaled Wagner's.Back to Con again.