Volume 42, Number 16 · October 19, 1995
The Wonder of Mozart
By Frank Kermode
Mozart: A Life
by Maynard Solomon
HarperCollins, 640 pp., $35.00
Mozart and Posterity
by Gernot Gruber, translated by K.S. Furness
Northeastern University Press, 277 pp., $29.95
Mozart: Portrait of a Genius
by Norbert Elias, translated by Edmund Jephcott
University of California Press, 152 pp., $17.00
On Mozart
edited by James M. Morris
Woodrow Wilson Center/Cambridge University Press, 250 pp., $15.95 (paper)
Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 1740–1780
by Daniel Heartz
Norton, 780 pp., $65.00
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
by Georg Knepler, translated by J. Bradford Robinson
Cambridge University Press, 374 pp., $49.95
Mozart was famous in his day, first as an infant prodigy, later as a pianist and composer, especially of opera, and although his reputation later had its ups and downs it cannot be said that he has ever been neglected. There is consequently a huge bibliography, and the quantity of biographical material available is surprising until one reflects that he flourished at a time when the modern respect for recorded detail, and the Romantic cult of genius, were just getting going. Composers were gradually disengaging themselves from aristocratic patrons and establishing the right to explore the market and be respected on their own account. We think of Mozart as the friend of Haydn and Beethoven, though he was also the absconding servant of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg and a favored employee of the Emperor Joseph II.
Review, 4078 words
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