Hooked on Mozart 2

(license)

This Mozart medley was arranged in 1990 for my high school HSNU Philharmonic Club when we were holding a series of activities for Mozart's 199th death memorial year. Basically, it's a medley of Mozart's various works.

The number 2 is nothing more than a version number. Where's Hooked on Mozart 1 then? It's actually a soundtrack in the album Hooked on Classics,performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by its arranger, Louis Clark. I like the idea so picked different pieces and made the second version.

This piece was arranged in 1990 for my high school HSNU Philharmonic Club when we were holding a series of activities for Mozart's 199th death anniversary. Basically, it's a medley of Mozart's various works. However, the selection was considered elementary repertoire and was expected to be recognized by us Mozart fans.

If you are curious about how many of them you can identify, try it by downloading the MIDI file and check your answer below. My friends in my university Philharmonic Club teased me by asking new comers to be able to recognize these works before they were allowed to "join this Mozart religion and become a Mozartian."

I was too poor to buy any midi equipment at that time, so the only sequencer I could use was Composer, a bundle program with Adlib Card. Due to the design of Adlib Card, Composer is only capable of sequencing 6 tracks of pitch music and 4 tracks of pitchless percussion. Thus, I had to sacrificing some voices when I input the notes tediously by DRAGGING my mouse (I believe anyone who used Composer before knows why I capitalize the word DRAGGING.) It didn't came out to be unexpectedly bad because Adlib Card wasn't expected to produce music for other than games (perhaps that's why it was pirated by a game company (See the story in copyright history under 1998/05/19 section)), and because there weren't lots of chords beyond the 7ths in the pieces I selected. About one fourth of the pieces were dictated by me. I can still remember how hard I tried to slow down my tape recorder and listened to those "super low flutes". Today, MIDI devices are much cheaper and sound processing software are available everywhere. In retrospect of those days when I used the mouse and keyboard to input and even went into ROL format for those triplets unsupported by Composer, I suddenly realize why I have always been this skinny.

The MIDI file here was converted with a program written by someone whose name didn't appear in the software title. It converted the original ROL into MIDI format 0 file, but a lot of settings were lost. It took me quite some time to reset the tempo and voicing, but I couldn't afford the time to restore all the instrument patch changes. Thus, all parts are set to Grand Piano. It's not too bad except for some woodwinds' suspension and strings' vibration disappear.

(2026-08-22 update: When I wrote this article, I no longer had the Adlib Card at hand to render the track, so I resorted to the lossy file conversion to MIDI. However, with today's emulators, I could easily render to an audio file for modern browsers.)

Although this piece has been pirated, I still hold the copyright. However, I am willing to share my craziness for Mozart with anyone, as long as my efforts are not denied by deleting my name.

Many thanks to Mr. Pierre R. Schwob for hosting this piece in his fabulous Classical MIDI Archives.