Description

Edited by James M. Morris

The book is an attempt to suggest how much more complicated a figure Mozart was than popular legends and media portrayals would have us believe. He was surely a genius – in that, the legends are correct, and the evidence abounds – but he was also a working composer in a society crowded with working composers, and he had to make a living at his craft to maintain the style of living to which he and his family had become accustomed. By observing a realistic and human genius, the collection of essays portrays a more complex individual than the divinely inspired Mozart of myth, who took his notes directly from God.

Bibliographic Details

20 b/w illus.

Contents

• Introduction
• Approaching Mozart Denis Donoghe
• How extraordinary was Mozart? Howard Gardner
• Mozart and the transformational imperative David Henry Feldman
• On the economics of musical composition in Mozarts Vienna William J. Baumol and Hilda Baumol
• Mozart as a working stiff Neal Zaslow
• The challenge of blank paper: Mozart the composer Christoph Wolff
• Marianne Mozart Carissima Sorella Mia Maynard Solomon
• Mozarts concertos and their audience Joseph Kerman
• Mozarts tunes and the comedy of closure Wye J. Allanbrook
• Don Giovanni against the Baroque or the culture punished Michael P. Steinberg
• Nineteenth-century Mozart: The Fin-de-Siecle Mozart revival Leon Botstein
• The abduction from the theater: Mozart opera on film Stanley Kauffmann.