On Mozart

Collection of essays which explore Mozart from various perspectives, suggesting the complexity of his character and his achievement.

The book, first published in 1995, 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.

Introduction; 1. Approaching Mozart Denis Donoghe; 2. How extraordinary was Mozart? Howard Gardner; 3. Mozart and the transformational imperative David Henry Feldman; 4. On the economics of musical composition in Mozart's Vienna William J. Baumol and Hilda Baumol; 5. Mozart as a working stiff Neal Zaslow; 6. The challenge of blank paper: Mozart the composer Christoph Wolff; 7. Marianne Mozart Carissima Sorella Mia Maynard Solomon; 8. Mozart's concertos and their audience Joseph Kerman; 9. Mozart's tunes and the comedy of closure Wye J. Allanbrook; 10. Don Giovanni against the Baroque or the culture punished Michael P. Steinberg; 11. Nineteenth-century Mozart: the fin-de-siecle Mozart revival Leon Botstein; 12. The abduction from the theater: Mozart opera on film Stanley Kauffmann.

This collection of essays is an attempt to suggest how much more complicated a figure Mozart was than legend and the media would have us believe. By observing a realistic and human genius, the book portrays a more complex individual than the divinely inspired Mozart of myth, who took his notes directly from God.