Mozart's Life Research Articles

Neue Mozart Ausgabe Online (review)

Neue Mozart Ausgabe Online, part of the Digitate Mozart Edition. Operated by the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg in cooperation with the Packard Humanities Institute. http://DME.mozarteum.at (Accessed June-September 2010). [Requires a Web browser, an Internet connection, and a PDF reader.] Complete works editions have long been an important resource for scholars and musicians. Although their high production costs have made them susceptible to shifts in academic trends and availability of funding, large critical editions continue to play an important role in twenty-first-century scholarship. Recent years have witnessed an increase in online digital collections; the C.P.E. Bach complete works is currently making performance parts of each volume available on its Web site (http://www.cpebach.org), nineteenth-century editions of Bach, Handel, and others are now available in facsimile online (made possible by the expiration of their copyright), and the Digitale Mozart Edition (DME) is at the forefront of this trend, with the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (NMA) already completely digitized and available online. The DME has also begun to implement plans to make archival documents pertaining to Mozart's life available online, as part of their overall project to provide world wide access to the complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ... [and to] include a critical edition of letters, documents and libretti as well. (1) Only the NMA Online will be discussed in this review. The content is free and open to the public for private and educational use. Commerical use is prohibited, as is wholesale reproduction of the edition. (1.) Excerpted from the DME's Project Outline on their homepage: http://DME.mozarteum.at/DME. With 126 volumes and almost 35,000 pages digitized, the NMA Online--available in German, Japanese, and English--offers numerous advantages to libraries, scholars, and musicians over printed volumes. Of great interest, lo librarians will be the ability for users to view any part of the edition, download it as a PDF file, and print a hard copy if needed. This will reduce wear and tear to printed editions and decrease use of copy and scanning equipment (as it renders reproduction of the originals unnecessary). The ability to print is useful for musicians since users can annotate their own copies of a with greater ease. This feature also makes the NMA Online a potential performance library for performers, although for now the score only format makes it impractical in this regard for the majority of Mozart's compositions. In the future, the DME plans to convert the NMA material into a format that would allow for individual performance parts to be viewed and printed. Compared to the printed edition, ease of use is greatly increased with the online version since it is searchable and browsable by a number of different criteria. Both a Kochel number and a more generic keyword search function are available. Users can also browse by genre, key, volume editor, and the original NMA organization scheme. If one were looking for the wind quintet K. 581, but didn't know the catalog number, it could be found in a number of different ways. A search for clarinet in the keyword box would yield it, as would browsing the category drop down list for Series VIII--quintets with wind instruments. Users can also find the correct volume by searching for its editor (in the case of K. 581, Ernst Schmid). Below the main search box is a listing of each series in the NMA and by clicking on any of these, users may browse a list of the volumes contained within each series, complete with information on works contained, publication date, editor, and number of pages. These search features of the NMA Online allow for many different works or volumes to be accessed simultaneously and compared on a single computer screen. Once the desired volume has been found, the user has the option of either viewing the entire NMA volume in facsimile (the by clicking on the note-head icon, the report by clicking on the text button) or proceeding to an interactive table of contents that has been created for each individual volume (by clicking the i button). …

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—Controversies Regarding His Illnesses and Death: A Bibliographic Review

More has been written about Mozart's illnesses and death than for any other composer. An exploration of PAMA's Bibliography of Performing Arts Medicine provides the data for this review. The bibliography contained 136 entries that pertained to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Of these, 81 were available to the author, either in printed or electronic copy. In order to provide a clearer historical perspective on this topic, this review assembles information pertaining to illnesses and other medical problems that occurred during Mozart's life as well as those purportedly contributing to his death.

Preparing the Conductor as Teacher

As nineteenth-century musical romanticism flourished, professional ensembles began to exceed the chamber music dimensions of preceding generations. Musical scores required dozens and sometimes hundreds of musicians to perform the music of Berlioz, Wagner, and Mahler. Out of necessity, the conductor began to replace the performer as the principal leader during performances. Because many of these early conductors were composers, their role as interpreter was central in the evolution of the profession. Although this professional model has served as the template for the training of conductors, many undergraduate conducting students will spend their careers in the teaching profession working with inexperienced, amateur musicians. Additionally, the size of many ensembles in schools today more closely approximates the chamber music of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries than the gargantuan groups of the Romantic era. How we prepare conductors, then, should focus on the conductor as teacher, musical collaborator, and pedagogue. Much of the formal academic and professional training and the majority of conducting workshops and master classes emphasize communicating musical ideas effectively through visual gestures--using the hands, face, and body. Most professional ensembles, by extension, foster an environment where the conductor shapes the finished product according to his or her preconceptions of the music derived from score study. The group seeks to mirror the conductor's interpretive ideas through watching and reading the physical conducting. While conductorless ensembles are rare in the music world, they have much to offer the cause of developing independence among ensemble members.2 Conducting students usually begin their training by developing skill in physical conducting technique. The conducting instructor observes and attempts to refine the movements of the student into motions that will communicate ideas inherent in the music. Students ultimately conduct one another in a laboratory environment, where the intent is to produce musicians who are able to interpret a musical score and be comfortable in front of an ensemble. In addition to physical technique, most conducting classes emphasize score study prior to rehearsal. For example, if an apprentice is assigned to conduct Mozart's Ave verum corpus, he or she must know what the Latin lyrics mean, be able to give a short synopsis of Mozart's life, and have some knowledge of his oeuvre. The apprentice should also possess an understanding of form, key, instrumentation, performing edition, and other compositional features of the work. For many conducting classes, these two issues, conducting technique (communicating to an ensemble) and score preparation (understanding the composer's intent), are the principal foci of undergraduate conducting classes. A cursory examination of conducting textbooks and course syllabi corroborates these two topics as the primary components of

Taboo and Biographical Innovation: Mozart, Beethoven, Shubert

The lives of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert offer instances in which materials sufficient to lead to significant discoveries had long been available, but their implications had been overlooked by generations of scholars. Such biographical innovations may be blocked by taboos centering on sexuality, ancestry, power, and authority. In Mozart's life, taboo attaches to his penchant for obscenity and the carnivalesque; to Leopold Mozart's domination of his children and to his disinheritance of Mozart; and to the stench of decay that emanated from Mozart's dying body. In Beethoven's case, taboos are invoked in connection with birth and ancestry fantasies, derivatives of a proliferating family romance. With Schubert, taboo centers on his openness to unorthodox sexual experience, including homosexuality. In many instances, taboos of a psychological and institutional nature block the emergence of biographical innovations, which are avoided because they partake of the forbidden. Thus, a central problem for historians is to locate sources of authorization to recognize and perhaps to resolve biographical taboos. Is psychoanalysis, which enjoins us to interrogate every detail of a person's life, including thoughts and dreams, an appropriate theory for such investigations of pathways through the tangle of prohibitions a biographer must negotiate? Or is it, too, implicated in its own particular set of taboos?

The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (review)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART The Cambridge Encyclopedia. Edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [xi, 674 p. ISBN 0521-85659-0. $175.00.] Appendices, bibliographical references, indexes. The 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth has been celebrated with performances, symposia, recordings, and publications. One of the most comprehensive of the latter is The Cambridge Encyclopedia, This reference book aims to function both as a starting point for information on specific works, people, places and concepts as well as a summation of current thinking about Mozart (p. xi). Edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe, the encyclopedia does an admirable job of covering Mozart's life, his music, and the world in which he lived through concise articles written by leading European and American scholars. As promised in the book's preface, the volume covers a wide range of subjects. It includes articles on broad topics such as the Enlightenment, travel, aesthetics, and the German language. One of the best of these broader entries is William Stafford's discussion of the concept of genius. Stafford addresses competing definitions of the term, how it has been applied and misapplied to Mozart, and how the composer himself employed the word. The encyclopedia also contains more general essays on musical topics and their relation to the composer. Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl's essay on dance, for example, discusses the role of social dancing in Mozart's life and the culture at large, as well as its role in Mozart's music. Lengthy articles on symphonies, chamber music, concertos, sonatas, and other musical genres detail Mozart's creative output. In addition to music analysis, these essays examine where and why composed the music he did and explores modern as well as eighteenth-century perspectives on these forms. Many of the encyclopedia's entries cover Mozart's contemporaries: the composers, patrons, performers, and poets with whom he worked and competed. Often these brief biographies incorporate lively quotes from the family's letters. The volume also contains articles about earlier composers (e.g., Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach) which discuss Mozart's familiarity with their music and how perhaps it influenced his own. A few articles examine Mozart's influence on later composers such as Beethoven. At least one curious omission exists in the encyclopedia's biographical essays, however. While the book includes entries on most of the singers who premiered the composer's operas, Vincenzo Calvesi, the first Ferrando, is absent. The volume also lacks an entry for composer Georg Benda, whose melodramas admired. One of the encyclopedia's strong points is its articles on the countries and cities in which lived and worked. Of these, Mary Sue Morrow's essay on Vienna is particularly well crafted; it describes clearly and concisely the city's political, economic, and social structures, its musical life, and elucidates their impact on Mozart's career. Similar essays on Prague, London, Paris, and Mannheim explain their significance in eighteenth-century culture and the composer's life. Another of the book's strengths is that it covers the role of religion and sacred music in Mozart's life quite thoroughly. Not only does the encyclopedia include long articles on the Mass and Mozart's Requiem but also ones on motet, litany, and offertory. An article titled Religion and Liturgy by Bruce C. MacIntyre places Mozart's sacred works in context by discussing Salzburg as a church state, the city's distinctive liturgical practices, Joseph II's reforms, and the increasing toleration of religious minorities. The encyclopedia's biography of the composer devotes an entire section to Mozart's religious beliefs and conduct; Ruth Halliwell's discussion of Mozart's education also stresses its religious framework. In covering sacred music and religion so extensively, the encyclopedia upholds its promise to reflect the latest in scholarship (p. …

Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-Existing Music in Film (review)

Reviewed by: Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-Existing Music in Film Kendra Preston Leonard Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-Existing Music in Film. By Phil Powrie and Robynn Stilwell. (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series.) Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. [226 p. ISBN 0-7546-5137-1. $89.95.] Illustrations, music examples, filmography, bibliography, index. In this collection of essays, editors Phil Powrie and Robynn Stilwell, both well-known for their own work in music and film, seek to illuminate the use of and responses to the inclusion of pre-existing compositions in a variety of film genres and historical periods. For the most part, the scholarship represented in this book is indicative of the newness of the field itself: some essays are paragons of clarity and reasoned analysis; others are trying to find an ideological home amid a wealth of information and a sea of possible approaches; and a few could have benefited from more space for explanation or more time for incubation before publication. The true value of the collection lies in three outstanding articles by Kristi A. Brown, Jeongwon Joe, and Phil Powrie. Joe, in "Reconsidering Amadeus: Mozart as Film Music," offers a powerfully reasoned and well-articulated response to the myriad of musicologists (and others) who took offence at the much-edited and re-coded Mozart works used for the score of Amadeus. In her article, Joe reiterates the fact that the film is not, in fact, a true biopic of the composer, but rather what playwright Peter Shaffer emphasized, a "fantasia on events in Mozart's life." What makes the soundtrack for the film work so well, Joe argues, is that it offers a non-specialist public a greater understanding of both the actions and events taking place on the screen, creating what she terms the "third meeting" (borrowing from Roland Barthes). Her response to fact-based criticisms of the film from a primarily pro-high-culture is that such criteria have no reasonable place in evaluating film soundtracks, especially those for films expressly not presented as factual; in doing so, critics ignore the essential use of the music, that which contributes to the whole. Kristi A. Brown's work "The Troll Among Us" revisits the old chestnut that is "From the Hall of the Mountain King," from Grieg's Peer Gynt suite and establishes for a vast majority of audiences a new view of the work and its underlying meaning when used in recent film. Written with an easy, casual style appropriate for scholars in a wide array of disciplines, "The Troll Among Us" positions the rumbling dance as both a clue as to the heinous identity of the bad guy (demonstrated in M and Needful Things) and as a accompaniment to petty villainy (Rat Race). Drawing on traditional Scandinavian uses of the troll in folk literature and the appropriation of the troll as an ambiguous creature "between the human and the monstrous," Brown traces the lineage of the troll in contemporary society from its folk beginnings to its indirect association with Jews and then the SS. The troll is shown in M to be both the murderer and the crowd howling for his "extinguishment." In Needful Things, the character initially portrayed as the troll—the demonic Leland Gaunt—cleverly masterminds a [End Page 627] scheme by which nearly the entire populace of the town is taken over by its trollish nature. While Brown is correct in her assessment of the score as "heavy-handed," it is effective nonetheless quite simply because of the instant recognition of the "Mountain King" tune and the sinister darkness it has come to represent throughout popular culture. Subtelty is not needed or even wanted at this juncture: this is a horror movie made from a Stephen King novel, pure and simple, and the use of known motives both visual and musical affords the film exactly what it needs to reach its target audience. In her conclusions, Brown points to other recent pop-culture appropriations of themes and motives from Peer Gynt, both textually and musically. This seems a rich field for further exploration and publication, and Brown's flair and analytical skills position her perfectly as...

Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 (review)

Reviewed by: Mozart: The Early Years, 1756–1781 Jane R. Stevens Mozart: The Early Years, 1756–1781. By Stanley Sadie. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. [xxv, 624 p. ISBN 0-393-06112-4. $35.00.] Illustrations, bibliography, indexes. Shortly before his death in March 2005, Stanley Sadie completed the manuscript of the first volume of a long planned two-volume work about Mozart and his music. Sadie was surely correct in perceiving a need for a comprehensive monograph on Mozart's life and works that would take account of over half a century of scholarly studies, both biographical and musical, that have transformed many of our ideas about this most "classical" of composers. Few, moreover, would question this scholar's credentials for such an undertaking, building as it does on decades of research, best known from his New Grove article and other work on Mozart. Yet this is not a project for the faint of heart. Much has changed since the early-twentieth-century canonic work of Hermann Abert, Théodore Wyzewa, and Georges de Saint-Foix: not only has our knowledge of relevant and often essential minutiae vastly increased, from paper and handwriting dating to the identities and lives of countless contemporaries who contributed to Mozart's world; but our most basic views of eighteenth-century music history and of the ways that composers contributed to it have lost their straightforward clarity in favor of an often rather murky complexity. While such considerations only underline the need for this new monograph, at the same time they contribute to the formidable difficulties it faced and to its unavoidable susceptibility to criticism on a multitude of fronts, especially in its present truncated form. Happily, the skill with which Sadie met these difficulties will ensure that his book will become an essential staple of any scholarly library, despite its equally sure fate as a continuing object of scholarly critique. [End Page 588] The plan of this volume, like much else about it, is rather traditional—meaning it is a plan that has served the needs of a great many writers and readers in the past. In twenty chapters, beginning with Mozart's family history and concluding with the composition of Idomeneo, we move through the largely familiar chronological periods of Mozart's first twenty-five years, each characterized by a title that often serves to give direction to the narrative (e.g., "Disappointment in Vienna" [1767–1769], "Frustration" [1775–1777]). The first and usually longer part of each chapter is devoted to detailed biography, including Mozart's composing activity; in most cases this narration is followed by a discussion of the principal works of the period, with attention both to issues of sources and authenticity (where relevant), and to musical commentary. Like all biographies of Mozart, this one must rely for information about these early years on the voluminous correspondence written by and to family members, largely during periods when the young musician was away from his Salzburg home. But Sadie is sometimes able to augment these accounts with those of outsiders commenting on the family's activities. In early chapters, the attention given to the practical details of travel, with sometimes numbing listings of names of inns and people encountered along the way, can lead to reader ennui; one wishes for a map on which one could trace the Mozarts' routes for a vicarious (or actual) tourist expedition. Yet these details serve in themselves to evoke Leopold's own very real concerns during these journeys—how would he get his family safely and comfortably to the next major destination, how much would it cost, would they be able to make enough money in appearances to make up those expenses?—as well as the arbitrariness of their compensation, over which they had no control. As Wolfgang grew older, Leopold's continued preoccupation with these concerns has appeared to modern historians to be increasingly inappropriate (as it certainly was to his son). Ever since the early years of the nineteenth century, Mozart's biographers have been fascinated by his personality, what we might call his psychological makeup. The twentieth century added another element, the psyche of the father and especially...

Fictionality, Theatricality and Staging of Self: A New Look at Pushkin's 'Egyptian Nights'

THE SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 84, Number 3 July 2006 Fictionality, Theatricality and Staging of Self: A New Look at Pushkin's 'Egyptian Nights' ALEXANDRA SMITH WITH many critics having labelled as decadent the period I833-35, in which Pushkin's'Egipetskienochi' ('EgyptianNights') was written, it is possible to interpretPushkin'snarrativeas an example of the performance of the modern poetic self that manifestsitself best at a time of cultural catastrophe and the collapse of established values. Leslie O'Bell suggestsreading the story of an artistembedded in 'Egipetskie nochi' as a two-fold narrative:'as the triumph of the independence of artand the fellowshipof the poets' and as 'the instructivetragedyof the poet as man who is threatenedby his dependence on society." Indeed, Pushkin'sunfinishedtale highlightsthe tensionbetween life and artand presentsthe artistas 'a living paradox, now "low",now "high",bound to his social personalityyet transcendingit'.2O'Bell places the storyin 'the "deadtime" of the Russian/Egyptian nights'.3David Herman sees it as an allegory that predictsPushkin'sdemise as a writerand human being.4 For Herman, 'Egipetskie nochi' expresses Pushkin's anxiety about the future of poetry, and about poets who might emerge from Alexandra Smith is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Sheffield. The author thanks Caryl Emerson for some useful discussions of the topic related to Pushkin and theatre; and Carol Ueland, Neil Cornwell and two anonymous SEERreviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments on the draft of this article. 'Leslie O'Bell, Pushkin's'Egyptian Nights': TheBiography of a Work,Ann Arbor, MI, I984 (hereafter, O'Bell) pp. iio-ii. 2 Ibid., p. i ii. Ibid., p. I2I. 4 David Herman, 'A Requiem for Aristocratic Art: Pushkin's "Egyptian Nights"', Russian Review,55, October I996, 4, pp. 66i-8o (hereafter, Herman) (p. 662). 394 A NEW LOOK AT PUSHKIN' S 'EGYPTIAN NIGHTS' society'slowerclassesdueto theadvanceof technology andthespread of culture: The improviser challenges the authority of social exclusions and violates the defenses of Charskii's home with the same ease as his artistic selfreinventions make a mockery of the borders of identity. Superior poetry turns out to be merely the flip-side of dissolving hierarchies and social disruption.5 Herman observesthat the Italian'slivelihooddependson creation on demandand is symbolically dialogizedsinceit beginsalwayswith chuzhoe slovo.6 Suchcommentsarevalid,yet I believethe mainconcernsPushkin expresses in 'Egipetskie nochi'revolvearoundquestions ofidentityand a searchforthesurpassing of thehedonistic worldview thathadlargely shapedPushkin's workspriorto the I83os. In itsphilosophical aspects, 'Egipetskie nochi' standsclose to Malen'kie tragedii (Little Tragedies): it givesprideof place to notionsof moralresponsibility and individual choice.According to G. A. Lesskis, in the I830s Pushkin starteddevelopinga newworldvieworientedmoretowardssocialinteractions and moralchoice: Pushkincomes to realize the inner contradictionof the hedonisticprinciple that makes the hedonist's individual life senseless and devalued; [...] Pushkinexposes the fatal consequences of the hedonistic type of behaviour for people who came in close contact with it.7 This assessment of Pushkin's evolutionas a writerand thinkerhelps usmodifyHerman's viewof Pushkin's demiseasan individual. 'Egipetskie nochi' in fact offersPushkin'sre-evaluationof the hedonist's valuesas theyrelateto the creativeprocess.We can detecta shiftin Pushkin'sown scale of values,from the assumptionthat rebellious behaviourin itselflargelycontributes to the formationof the creative self,to the realizationof the responsible aestheticattitudeto life that relieson dialogicconscience.MikhailBakhtin's worksexaminedsuch an outlookclosely.As CarylEmersonexplains, In 'Author and Hero', Bakhtin [...] stresses the impossibilityof selfactualizationand self-realizationwithout the other as a necessarywitnessto what I do. Eventuallyit will be redefinedas addressivity [obrashchennost ]. The absolute need for response begins to compete with the moral requirement of responsibility.8 'Ibid., p. 665. 6 Ibid., p. 668. 7 G. A. Lesskis, "'Kamennyi gost"' (tragediia gedonizma)', in V. E. Vatsuro et al., Pushkin: Issledovaniia i materialy, Leningrad, I989, 13, pp. 134-45 (p. 136). 8 Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, MikhailBakhtin:Creation of a Prosaics,Stanford, CA, I990 (hereafter, Morson and Emerson), pp. 75-76. ALEXANDRA SMITH 395 Monika Greenleaf points out that in I826-30 Pushkin's life and art 'were subjected to teleological pressures similar to those that had mythicized Mozart's life and death'.9 During this period Pushkin aspired to combine his role of national poet with that of leading dramatist.As Greenleaf comments, 'When BorisGodunov was banned from the Russian stage, Pushkinwas denied access to the most...

Mozart's letters, Mozart's life: selected letters

What was Mozart really like wild? sublime? responsible? fun-loving? bright? foul-mouthed? Reading these letters, we learn in his own words that he was all of these and much more. Here is the composer at his most intimate and unguarded, expressing his feelings about life, love, music, and the world around him. For this collection, Robert Spaethling has carefully chosen letters written by Mozart over a span of almost twenty-two years from his first journey to Italy as a shy teenager to the final months of his life in Vienna. The letters, together with the accompanying introductions, chronicle the composer's life, personal development, and artistic growth. These new translations into English, the first in more than sixty years, are faithful to the original German even to the point of misspellings, which abound in the early correspondence. No effort has been spared to find language as closely equivalent to Mozart's as any translation can be and to clear up references in the letters to people, places, and events. Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life makes wonderful reading for anyone who has ever loved a work by the composer, from the deceptively simple Eine kleine Nachtmusik to the towering, magnificent Requiem.

Mozart in revolt: strategies of resistance, mischief and deception

A reading of the letters between Mozart and his father, placing them in the context of the stylized strategies of the 18th-century epistolary tradition. The book argues that the letters reveal a rebelliousness deep within Mozart's life and work.

Mozart: an anomaly in the history of music?

Mozart's work is quite unique on account of its quantitative and qualitative fullness within a short life. The explanatory patterns offered for this phenomenon range from a concentrated process of musical socialization, which comprised an exclusive preoccupation with music, to the specific fact of his travelling activity at that time (approx. 10 years of Mozart's life); to his good fortune in receiving, as a natural accompaniment in life, a musical education which was focused exclusively on high standards and enabled Mozart to become acquainted with almost the whole of the central European intelligentsia; to a consciously economic way of working which helped him to translate his experience of life into a work of art. These circumstances, which are ideal from the point of view of production, determined as they were by exceptional talent and by the environment, seemed to be so improbable to succeeding generations that the history of the reception of Mozart displays not only a reaction from a non‐academic perspective, but also designed a variety of diverging explanations for the (literally) unbelievable circumstances. This is probably why, ever since the start the nineteenth century, writings about Mozart have been not only contradictory, but have in part also provided no answers whatsoever to those questions which played such a major role in the biography. Consequently, the anomaly is valid not only for the process of production but also for that of reception.

Did Mozart have Tourette's syndrome? Some comments on Mozart's language.

DID MOZART HAVE TOURETTE'S SYNDROME? SOME COMMENTS ON MOZART'S LANGUAGE K. ATERMAN* The enemy of creativity « good taste.—Picasso. One of the striking features of the extensive literature on Mozart's life and work is the continuing debate on certain aspects of his personality, prompted by a perceived discrepancy between his sublime music and the "vulgarity" of his "uninhibited" language [1], which is marked by a "forthright, coarse exuberance" [2] that has caused some "understandable embarrassment" [3] to at least some readers. His language in letters to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla—the "infantile" [1], "notorious" [3], "inimitably bawdy and whimsical" [2] "Bäsle Briefe"—so offended the "refined" tastes of the rising Central-European middle class that these letters were either bowdlerized or simply not published. This was, for example, the course taken in 1828 by G.N. Nissen, one of Mozart's early biographers, who was aware that the attitude toward language and its "indecencies" was changing and decided not to include the Bäsle letters in his Biographie W.A. Mozarts because of Mozart's "too childish and coarse jokes" [4]. Indeed, these letters did not appear in extenso until 1938—and in an English translation at that, [see 5, Simpkin cites 1985 ed.] for the German version still had not been published in 1947 [3]. In due course, however, Mozart's characteristic style in these letters—and in his life—came to be examined and reexamined from sociological, psychological, and merely conjectural points of view. The result, as Simkin [6] has recently maintained, is that "the surprising scatology found in Mozart's letters has not yet been satisfactorily explained." Yet, the key to understanding Mozart's occasionally "eccentric" [7] style and lanThe author acknowledges with pleasure the great interest and encouragement of Leroy P. Heffernan, M.D., and the expert assistance of Mrs. M. Larlham. The paper is written for Myre Sim, a friend of many years. AU translations from German by K. Aterman.»Address: 5737 Southwood Drive, Halifax, N. S., Canada B3H 1E6.© 1994 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 003 1-5982/94/3702-0852W 1 .00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 37, 2 ¦ Winter 1994 247 guage can, according to Simkin [6], be found in "Mozart's plausible affliction with Tourette's syndrome." This assertion is certain to refuel the controversy about Mozart's "peculiarities ." Neumayr [7], for instance, in his study of Mozart's illnesses and death, had already in 1987 dismissed as "absurd" the suggestion that Mozart suffered from Tourette's syndrome. Sacks [8], well-known for his studies of the subject, also has questioned this diagnosis. Moreover , Simkin himself recently has been quoted as saying in a telephone interview that "no one can prove [if] he [Mozart] did or did not have this disorder [Tourette's syndrome], manic depression, hyperactivity, or was just juvenile" [Matinée: The Daily News (Halifax, N.S.), Saturday, Dec. 19, 1992]. In view of these uncertainties, it may be appropriate to draw attention to some factors that may help us see the question of Mozart's eccentricities in sharper perspective. A discussion of this question in a somewhat different context has been presented on an earlier occasion [9]. In their systematic review, Singer and Walkup [10] define Tourette's syndrome, first described in 1825, as "a spectrum of familial involuntary motor and/or vocal tics and comorbid neuropsychiatrie problems." This seemingly straightforward definition is complicated however, by the fact that, as Sacks [8] has pointed out, there are "different forms of the syndrome," with the "stereotypic form" representing one end of the spectrum and the "phantasmagoric form" the other. Sacks describes the phantasmagoric form as being: especially remarkable for its mimicry, antics, playfulness, extravagance, impudence , audacity, inventions, dramatisations, unexpected and sometimes surreal associations, intense and uninhibited affects, speed, "go," vivid imagery and memory, hunger for stimuli and incontinent reactivity, and constant reaching into inner and outer worlds to Tourettise . . . The difficulty is that this impressive and eloquent catalog of largely admirable qualities has wide applicability, leading us to ask whether eccentrics and provocative and creative artists are "Tourettising"? This is where part of our dilemma lies, for Sacks's description of...

Mozart: portrait of a genius

need for love had grown uncertain of itself in early childhood. His feeling of being unloved found constant confirmation in his changing experiences over the years, and the intensity of his unsatisfied desire to be loved, detectable as a dominant wish throughout his life, very largely determined what had meaning for him and what did not. - From the book. One of the most important social thinkers of our time provides a haunting portrait of Mozart's life and creative genius. German sociologist Norbert Elias examines the paradoxes in Mozart's short existence - his brilliant creativity and social marginality, his musical sophistication and personal crudeness, his breathtaking accomplishments and deep despair. Using psychoanalytic insights, Elias examines Leopold Mozart's carefully honed ambitions for his son and protege. From the age of six Mozart traveled with his father, performing in the major courts throughout Europe.The elder Mozart worked on his son like a sculptor on his sculpture, and this deep bond formed the lietmotif in understanding Mozart's early talent and complicated psyche. Mozart chafed at the constraints of Viennese courtly culture. Growing up in a society which viewed musicians as manual laborers producing entertainment for the court, he fought for an independent livelihood. Vienna's aristocracy ultimately turned its back on the composer, who faced mounting debts, no work, and no prospect of fulfilling his innermost desires. He died feeling that his life had become empty of meaning. Elias ponders the concept of genius, which he sees as a complex marriage of fantasy, inspiration, and convention. In exploring the tension between personal creativity and the tastes of an era, he gives us a book of startling insight and discovery.

Mozart's last months and controversial death.

The controversies about the cause of Mozart's death are related to the unusual nature of his symptoms as recounted by lay people, the absence of a medical record, the inordinate amount of publicity given over to the sensational poisoning allegations, and the substantial difficulty in the evaluation of the diverse original sources1–20. The controversies are especially concerned with the question of preexisting chronic illness and the interpretation of the swellings. A chronology of major events in the last few months of Mozart's life is given in Table 1.

The Mozart compendium: a guide to Mozart's life and music

A refernce book containing information about aspects of Mozart's life and times. Features include a chronology of life and works, a list of works with commentaries, a who's who of contemporaries, details of historical and musical background and accounts of daily life from diairies and documents.

Music and Mozart in the Life of Goethe (review)

Goethe Yearbook 333 with Euler. The rapprochement with Newton is more convincing in Arnim, who is most interestingly dealt with in chapter five, subtitled "The Galvanic Eye." After chapters dealing with Wordsworth and with Coleridge in relation to Jean Paul and then to Friedrich Schlegel, Goethe returns to figure prominently, if obliquely, in the final one, "Shelley: The 'Traces' oiFaust." The chapters ofThe Damnation of Newton work as self-contained essays linked by related topics and a consistent authorial point of view. Each is stimulating and enjoyable in its own right, and in the aggregate there is much information and insight. That there is no totalizing thesis answering to the titillating title is not to be regretted but appreciated. Burwick provides an exemplary blending of judicious intellectual history and subtle textual interpretation. University of Texas, Austin Jeffrey Barnouw Spaethling, Robert, Music and Mozart in the Life of Goethe. Columbia, S.C: Camden House, 1987 (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture, vol. 27). Spaethling's attractively bound monograph is accurately described by its title as a book "about Goethe and the role of music, particularly Mozart's music, in Goethe's life and art" (16). Written for the English-speaking general public (all German quotations are translated), it aims to "illuminate [...] the unique gift that Goethe and Mozart bestowed on their culture and the world" (18). To write it was "a personal need as much as a scholarly challenge" for the author (19), who, in describing the similarities and affinities between Goethe and Mozart, endorses their victory over the "lures of inwardness and death" and their creation of "a form of universe based on harmony, reconciliation, and the golden mean" (18). Spaethling acknowledges "that Goethe concealed within himself a powerful potential for nihilism and tragedy. [... ] But all his life the poet battled to overcome his destructive inclinations, and he succeeded" (173)· Mozart too "presents [...] the total scale of human feelings" (172), but Goethe perceived and endorsed in Mozart's major works "a fully integrated art form, an essentially non-violent and non-tragic view of life" (173). Spaethling follows "the traditional path of humanistic scholarship," which, he believes, "requires no special methodological introduction" (17) or even justification . His book is thoroughly researched, scrupulously documented, sensibly organized, and carefully written — its confessional aspects eliciting respect if not always unqualified assent (in this reader, at least). It is full of interesting information and impressive evidence of the author's knowledge and appreciation not only of Goethe but of Mozart and of music in general. Just the right amount of context and illustration is provided. Spaethling discusses, for example, the circumstances of literary and musical publication in the 18th century and the economic facts of Mozart's life (his income was far from paltry — 12,000 Gulden a year at the height 334 Book Reviews of his career, which was ten times as much as the income of a chief surgeon at the Allgemeines KrankenspitalIn Vienna [82]). He also notes the difference in capacity between the singers in Vienna and those in Weimar as weil as the inferior quality of props and equipment with which Goethe had to make do at the Ducal Court Theatre. It was news to this non-musicologist that Mozart not infrequendy described his programmatic purposes and successes, often in letters to his father (e.g., pp. 159-60), and enlightening that Goethe used the Papageno theme in poems and songs of his own. The information that Charles Ives was among those who have set "Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh" to music sent me scurrying to the music library to hear the piece. No book is without shortcomings, but almost everyone will be enriched by reading this one. The work is divided into two main parts, followed by the text of Goethe's Der Zauberflöte zweiter Teil (with Eric Blom's English translation), an extensive bibliography, and an index. Part I deals with Goethe and music, and surveys Goethe's active music making (he had lessons on the piano, the flute, and the cello as a youth and later founded a singing group called the "Liebeshof ' and sang bass in another that he called his "Hauskapelle" or "meine...

From the Sublime to the Sublimated

The paper is about Mozart's most symbolical opera The Magic Flute- Die Zauberflöte. Mozart was most certainly the world's greatest musical genius and often the beauty and charm of his music is linked to what is commonly described as a happy childhood. He had a close and loving relationship with his parents- reflected in volumes of affectionate letters which passed between him and them. Compared to some great composers, who often seem to have lived unhappy, frustrating and occasionally mentally disturbed lives, without the benefit of supportive parents, Mozart's life was not at all bad by 18th century standards. However, the biographies of Mozart as well as the letters also reveal much that would cause us, as curious psychotherapists rather than as musicologists, to wonder whether all was as well internally as his music and his biographies suggest.

The Golden Quill; A Novel Based on the Life of Mozart

The Golden Quill; A Novel Based on the Life of Mozart

The Life of Mozart; Including His Correspondence

This 1845 biography of Mozart by the music journalist Edward Holmes was the first to be published in English. Holmes, who numbered the poet Keats and the publisher Vincent Novello amongst his friends, wrote extensively for periodicals including the Musical Times and The Atlas. A lifelong admirer of Mozart's work, Holmes's keen understanding of its significance is evident throughout the biography. It is based on a thorough study of the then available printed and manuscript sources, in particular many of Mozart's letters which Holmes translated and included as he 'endeavoured throughout to let the composer tell his own story'. He was also able to consult Mozart's own catalogue of his works, that compiled by the publisher Johann Andre, and the Mozart autograph manuscripts bought by Andre from Mozart's widow Constanze. The work is written in a very approachable style and will appeal to anyone with an interest in Mozart.

Incidents in the Life of Mozart (Concluded)

Incidents in the Life of Mozart (Concluded)