Volume 7, Number 10 · December 15, 1966
The Viennese Muses
By Frank Kermode
The Letters of Mozart and His Family
edited by Emily Anderson, Second edition prepared by A. Hyatt King, by Monica Carolan
St. Martin's (2 volumes), 1032 pp., $40.00
Musicians are inclined to argue that the quantity of paper described above is a mere superfluity, that if you are interested in Mozart there is plenty to listen to; but this seems at best prim and at worst a sacrifice of pleasure to a puritanical aesthetic—it simply complies with the pretense, very common in theoreticians of all the arts, that our minds and imaginations suddenly become preternaturally pure when we are listening to music or looking at pictures or reading. It was not only knowledge but the experience of a particular world that made Mozart a better composer at the end than earlier on, and it seems very perverse to suggest that we are not better listeners for improving ourselves similarly. And some relevant knowledge can be had from books of this kind.
Review, 2807 words
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