Mum had some Mozart on the other day. Some of his stuff was really the elevator music of it's day, to be brutally honest... it was GREAT stuff, but sounded like it was really meant to be background music.
Then you have his Requiem, which is like... peerless. That does not equate to 'having some good stuff', TM. It's more like 'owning your stupid ass centuries before you were born'.
Not really so, dear Thomas. Mozart was one of Beethoven's major and most enduring influences; according to some scholars, the major influence, period. Beethoven not only fashioned his 5th after some of Mozart's symphonies but also composed variations around themes from Mozart's most extraordinary operatic outputs. Much more than his chamber music, it was his symphonies, flute and piano concertos and, of course, breathtaking and groundbreaking operatic works that exerted influence on musicians from many trends in the 19th.
For instance, Chopin had Mozart as one of his heroes, and composed many songs based on his work; the same goes for Beethoven's most enthusiastic fan and Chopin's rival, Liszt, who had Mozart as a background for many works and wrote extensively about it - Liszt would prove to be one of the greatest innovators in music up until the coming of Schoenberg and others. He changed the away people approached this instrument, the piano, and more or less invented what we know as recital - all of this was inspired not only by Beethoven, of course, and Chopin, whom he really admired and kept admiring even after their personal feud, but also by Mozart, who had an extremely beautiful, sophisticated approach to the piano - as a major pianist himself, Mozart influenced other piano virtuosi in many ways.
Not to mention that Mozart's most prominent pupil was Nepomuk Hummel. ;-)))
Mozart was already very popular in the 19th century, of course. But more than being popular, he was a model and framework for some of 19th and 20th centuries greatest composers.
Even Wagner's work is heavily influenced on Mozart's operatic compositions. Mozart's work got Wagner into opera and his first work in this field, never performed during his life, "Die Feen", is completely fashioned after Mozart.
Some of the best works by Schubert have been inspired by Mozart symphonies.
The list is endless.
By Schubert's time, Mozart was already considered a genius, and not at all a predictable, dull composer - his influence on such amazing musicians is also proof that there was much more to his work than people could have realized in his days. But from 1820 on, Mozart was already one of the main forces composers had to tackle with, and the finest incorporated into and adapted to their own works much of Mozart's repertory, mainly symphonic, operatic and concertante.
He's been for a long time already one of the most popular composers ever. His work deeply affected the course of Western Music and his genius was unique.
His influence on Beethoven and Beethoven's sheer admiration for him is not only an interesting chapter in the history of music, but also one of the most revealing and symbolic too - it shows the extent to which Mozart was a bridge composers from the most different styles used to organize their own innovative work.
In this particular, historical and musical sense, I think you're wrong.
As for the taste, of course, there's no right or wrong: one can find all of Mozart's catalogue dull and boring. It's rare, I must say, because he's hugely popular even among people who don't enjoy what's labeled as "classical music", but it's in no way "wrong".
Taste is taste and, as medieval philosophers said, de gustibus non est disputandum.
Big hug
