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Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791
ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award winner
A fresh look at the life of Mozart during his imperial years by one of the world's leading Mozart scholars. "I now stand at the gateway to my fortune," Mozart wrote in a letter of 1790. He had entered into the service of Emperor Joseph II of Austria two years earlier as Imperial-Royal Chamber Composer―a salaried appointment with a distinguished title and few obligations. His extraordinary subsequent output, beginning with the three final great symphonies from the summer of 1788, invites a reassessment of this entire period of his life. Readers will gain a new appreciation and understanding of the composer's works from that time without the usual emphasis on his imminent death. The author discusses the major biographical and musical implications of the royal appointment and explores Mozart's "imperial style" on the basis of his major compositions―keyboard,chamber, orchestral, operatic, and sacred―and focuses on the large, unfamiliar works he left incomplete. This new perspective points to an energetic, fresh beginning for the composer and a promising creative and financial future. 8 pages of illustrations
A fresh look at the life of Mozart during his imperial years by one of the world's leading Mozart scholars. "I now stand at the gateway to my fortune," Mozart wrote in a letter of 1790. He had entered into the service of Emperor Joseph II of Austria two years earlier as Imperial-Royal Chamber Composer―a salaried appointment with a distinguished title and few obligations. His extraordinary subsequent output, beginning with the three final great symphonies from the summer of 1788, invites a reassessment of this entire period of his life. Readers will gain a new appreciation and understanding of the composer's works from that time without the usual emphasis on his imminent death. The author discusses the major biographical and musical implications of the royal appointment and explores Mozart's "imperial style" on the basis of his major compositions―keyboard,chamber, orchestral, operatic, and sacred―and focuses on the large, unfamiliar works he left incomplete. This new perspective points to an energetic, fresh beginning for the composer and a promising creative and financial future. 8 pages of illustrations
272 pages, Hardcover
First published May 21, 2012
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About the author
Christoph Wolff
113 books20 followersChristoph Wolff is a German-born musicologist, who is best known for his works on the music, life, and times of Johann Sebastian Bach. Christoph Wolff has been on the faculty of Harvard University since 1976 and director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig since 2001.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 8, 2017
I never get tired of reading about the different ways genius manifests itself in different people. Mozart is a particularly fascinating example because he may be the purest embodiment of musical genius in history. There is plenty of competition for musical greatness, but it seems like even Bach and Beethoven laboured over their compositions in a way that Mozart did not need to. He composed entire works in his head before writing a single note down.
This book was part biography, part musical analysis. The biographical portions were fascinating. It cannot have been easy to cobble together such a coherent and detailed account of the last few years of Mozart's life, because it seems like records are not all centrally stored in one place and there's a lot of room for interpretation and inference.
I definitely overestimated my ability to follow along with the musical analysis, unfortunately. I would recommend this book, but with the qualifier that you should try listening to the pieces Wolff writes about while you're reading because otherwise it can be a bit hard to make sense of many of his observations. For instance, he spends a long time explaining exactly what makes the Magic Flute such a seminal work, but I would have a hard time relaying anything meaningful that he wrote on that, beyond "let's just say Mozart was very, very good at music."
This book was part biography, part musical analysis. The biographical portions were fascinating. It cannot have been easy to cobble together such a coherent and detailed account of the last few years of Mozart's life, because it seems like records are not all centrally stored in one place and there's a lot of room for interpretation and inference.
I definitely overestimated my ability to follow along with the musical analysis, unfortunately. I would recommend this book, but with the qualifier that you should try listening to the pieces Wolff writes about while you're reading because otherwise it can be a bit hard to make sense of many of his observations. For instance, he spends a long time explaining exactly what makes the Magic Flute such a seminal work, but I would have a hard time relaying anything meaningful that he wrote on that, beyond "let's just say Mozart was very, very good at music."
January 26, 2023
The tragedy of Mozart's premature death, at the peak of his powers, has lost none of its hold on the imagination. It has overshadowed the many wonders of his later works, imbuing even the sunniest of them with a layer of melancholy and the sense of irretrievable loss. As a teenager, experiencing many of Mozart's masterpieces for the first time, I absorbed the popular and irresistibly romantic image of the dying composer striving to finish the Requiem that turned out to be his own.
Christoph Wolff wants us to see Mozart's final years differently - not as an end, but as a beginning. Having entered the service of Emperor Joseph II, Mozart wrote: "I now stand at the gateway to my fortune". Wolff highlights the differences between the music Mozart composed in this period and what came before, arguing that the later works represent not so much the culmination of his art as a bold new direction.
One example of this is how Mozart used techniques of the past. He had clearly always reverenced the great Baroque composers, especially Bach and Handel (I was surprised to learn how much he borrowed from the latter for the Requiem). Yet he grew up composing in the style of his own day, which was airier and more graceful, rejecting intricate polyphony in favour of crisp, clear melodic lines. Wolff writes that in musical Vienna, Mozart found himself in "Bach circles", hobnobbing with powerful patrons who had seen Bach in action, or had connections with his many sons or students. And on a 1789 trip to the "Bach city" of Leipzig, where Mozart conducted a huge programme of his own works including the Jupiter Symphony, he wrote a "little Gigue" in G major (K. 574). This is an extraordinary little piece that does not sound much like Mozart at all, nor like the work of a Baroque composer. It is based on a theme by Handel, which is developed contrapuntally with eyebrow-raising chromaticism and disorientating syncopations - while still remaining perfectly poised and elegant. Four accented notes in the middle of the piece spell out the name B-A-C-H in German nomenclature. Remarkably, Mozart wrote this on his last day in Leipzig as a thank you gesture to Carl Immanuel Engel, the organist who had facilitated his visit to the city, inscribing it into Engel's friendship album.
Wolff clearly shows that Mozart harnessed techniques of the great Baroque composers but used them in an entirely fresh way, without sacrificing the clarity and naturalness of what is now (but was not then) known as the Classical style. He was not nostalgically wallowing in the past but pushing forward into the future. Even as he borrowed from his predecessors to achieve grander, more solemn or sublime effects in his music, his synthesis of old and new remained seamless.
Wolff finds a poignant symbol of what might have been in Mozart's thematic catalogue, a book of nearly 60 pages in which the composer kept a record of every composition he wrote. On the cover, Mozart clearly wrote the date when the book was begun, February 1784, but for the ending date provided only the first digit of the year, "1". The turn of the century was not so far ahead, and he was not sure whether he would reach 1800 before running out of pages. In the event, Mozart never made it into the 19th century and 28 pages of the catalogue were left unfilled. A touching image of one of these blank pages ends Wolff's book.
This is a scholarly tome, which does not go out of its way to be accessible. Works are referred to by their Kochel numbers, so if you don't know K.551 is the Jupiter Symphony, you will need to have a search engine to hand to help. But it is fairly short, and very illuminating. There are sections on Mozart's relationship with Salieri (dispelling some of the popular myths), his sacred music (particuarly the Requiem) and the musical fragments he left behind - reminders of music that he had already composed in his head, but not fully written down.
Wolff's analysis made me look at some of my favourite Mozart works - the Requiem, the Magic Flute, the final three symphonies - in a new light. The irony of the book is that Woolf so successfully convinces us that Mozart’s final years represented an exciting new start that it can only deepen our sense of loss at his early demise.
Christoph Wolff wants us to see Mozart's final years differently - not as an end, but as a beginning. Having entered the service of Emperor Joseph II, Mozart wrote: "I now stand at the gateway to my fortune". Wolff highlights the differences between the music Mozart composed in this period and what came before, arguing that the later works represent not so much the culmination of his art as a bold new direction.
One example of this is how Mozart used techniques of the past. He had clearly always reverenced the great Baroque composers, especially Bach and Handel (I was surprised to learn how much he borrowed from the latter for the Requiem). Yet he grew up composing in the style of his own day, which was airier and more graceful, rejecting intricate polyphony in favour of crisp, clear melodic lines. Wolff writes that in musical Vienna, Mozart found himself in "Bach circles", hobnobbing with powerful patrons who had seen Bach in action, or had connections with his many sons or students. And on a 1789 trip to the "Bach city" of Leipzig, where Mozart conducted a huge programme of his own works including the Jupiter Symphony, he wrote a "little Gigue" in G major (K. 574). This is an extraordinary little piece that does not sound much like Mozart at all, nor like the work of a Baroque composer. It is based on a theme by Handel, which is developed contrapuntally with eyebrow-raising chromaticism and disorientating syncopations - while still remaining perfectly poised and elegant. Four accented notes in the middle of the piece spell out the name B-A-C-H in German nomenclature. Remarkably, Mozart wrote this on his last day in Leipzig as a thank you gesture to Carl Immanuel Engel, the organist who had facilitated his visit to the city, inscribing it into Engel's friendship album.
Wolff clearly shows that Mozart harnessed techniques of the great Baroque composers but used them in an entirely fresh way, without sacrificing the clarity and naturalness of what is now (but was not then) known as the Classical style. He was not nostalgically wallowing in the past but pushing forward into the future. Even as he borrowed from his predecessors to achieve grander, more solemn or sublime effects in his music, his synthesis of old and new remained seamless.
Wolff finds a poignant symbol of what might have been in Mozart's thematic catalogue, a book of nearly 60 pages in which the composer kept a record of every composition he wrote. On the cover, Mozart clearly wrote the date when the book was begun, February 1784, but for the ending date provided only the first digit of the year, "1". The turn of the century was not so far ahead, and he was not sure whether he would reach 1800 before running out of pages. In the event, Mozart never made it into the 19th century and 28 pages of the catalogue were left unfilled. A touching image of one of these blank pages ends Wolff's book.
This is a scholarly tome, which does not go out of its way to be accessible. Works are referred to by their Kochel numbers, so if you don't know K.551 is the Jupiter Symphony, you will need to have a search engine to hand to help. But it is fairly short, and very illuminating. There are sections on Mozart's relationship with Salieri (dispelling some of the popular myths), his sacred music (particuarly the Requiem) and the musical fragments he left behind - reminders of music that he had already composed in his head, but not fully written down.
Wolff's analysis made me look at some of my favourite Mozart works - the Requiem, the Magic Flute, the final three symphonies - in a new light. The irony of the book is that Woolf so successfully convinces us that Mozart’s final years represented an exciting new start that it can only deepen our sense of loss at his early demise.
December 26, 2020
Una mirada sensata, sin romanticismos, de los últimos años de Mozart y de dos de sus obras cumbre: La Flauta Mágica y el Réquiem. Queda el sinsabor de lo que pudo haber sido y no fue en la vida del compositor, que tenía ante sí un futuro muy promisorio interrumpido por la muerte prematura. Mozart tenía obras en proceso y estaba dedicado a nuevas exploraciones melódicas y armónicas que podrían haber abierto otros caminos en la historia de la música. Finalmente, el libro echa tierra sobre esas miradas idealizadas del niño genio y el adulto inmaduro de talento sobrenatural, y deja la imagen de un músico serio, comprometido y convencido de su papel y su talento.
May 9, 2019
Fascinating...read this will approaching performing Mozart's Mass in G Minor (chorus) and it gave me new insights into Mozart. Working with artists all my career, I can relate to many of the stories of Mozart's anticipation of his increasing worth as a composer. Also learned he had a deformed ear, which probably points to his having died of kidney disease, and thankful Constanze saved all his little bits of paper.
September 1, 2017
Blurbed by the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Alfred Brendel, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, this clear-eyed account of Mozart's last few years raises provocative questions that might enrich your understanding of his so-called "imperial style." Christoph Wolff, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is one of the world's leading experts on Mozart and Bach.
May 7, 2020
Beautifully written and illustrated, this informative and scholarly book provides new insights into the life and works of one of music's finest and most creative composers.
May 9, 2022
This is for the knowledgeable musician. I enjoyed it very much. There’s a useful chart to help understand monetary values in Mozart’s time.
February 3, 2013
Having read Christoph Wolff's excellent book on Bach (Johann Sebastien Bach: The Learned Musician), I was not at all surprised that his new book, Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune, was likewise a superior work of musical history. Wolff's purpose in this book is to dispel the silly and melodramatic myth of the "personal catastrophe foreshadowed by, and reflected in, some characteristics of his late works." In fact, Mozart's last three years where characterized by great success and brilliant new musical innovations.
After a review of the circumstances leading to Mozart's imperial court appointment, and his travels outside of Vienna, the author turns his attention to a close analysis of Die Zauberflöte, a review of the compositional characteristics of Mozart's last works, and a commentary on Mozart's autograph fragments. Wolff points to the salient features of Mozart's later style, suggesting that "what emerged at the turn of 1787 is a remarkably mature steadiness in finding a balance between past musical experiences and a deliberate, often daring exploration of new ways, including those that move in such disparate directions as simplified melodic contours (see below, p. 103), sophisticated chromaticism, dissonant counterpoint, and emotionally charged musical rhetoric that began with the creation of three grand symphonies and their near predecessors, the string quintets K. 515 and 516 and the Sonata K. 533." Remarkable here is Wolff's commentary on Mozart's courtly dance music, a repertory not currently well known, but characteristic of many of the trends of Mozart's highly sophisticated "Imperial" style.
Wolff's analysis of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte is likewise striking. He discusses Mozart's own terminology, his reference to the work as opera "vera": "This pertains in particular to the seven great operas, beginning with Idomeneo, called “dramma per musica,” and proceeding in logical succession from The Marriage of Figaro, designated “opera buffa” through Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, both “drammi giocosi” (humorous dramas) to La clemenza di Tito, a “dramma serio per musica.” From the perspective of a completed oeuvre, it seems natural to view Die Zauberflöte, his “grand opera,” as a culmination or even the teleological goal of a line of development rather than a conscious fresh start. Yet, when Mozart conceived the work, he definitely had his eye fixed on the future—albeit a future whose artistic progress and end eludes any speculation. The very fact of the novel term “grand opera,” however, sets The Magic Flute apart from its predecessors. Although Mozart retained the singspiel convention of spoken dialogue and may even have engaged with Schikaneder in a creative give-and-take regarding ideas for the libretto and its shape, he redefined the underlying text in specifically musical terms and rechanneled it toward what he wanted grand opera to be and to mean—a type for which there were no models and which he basically defined for himself."
The final chapter, on the autograph manuscripts left incomplete at Mozart's death, is both informative and heartbreaking. Wolff cites the range of evidence demonstrating Mozart's ability to conceive of a work virtually complete in his head, and the composer's technique for capturing the essence of the work in a sketch to be filled in and completed later. Over 100 such manuscript fragments remain, a testament to the endless creativity of Mozart, and a small taste of works, fully complete in his head, the he would not survive to complete.
This is a marvelous book, written for the educated non-specialist. Just enough musical analysis to be demonstrative and satisfying, but not so much as to get in the way of the narrative, or be disconcerting to the untrained. Perfectly balanced, and highly illuminating--a must for every serious fan of Mozart, musician and non-musician alike.
After a review of the circumstances leading to Mozart's imperial court appointment, and his travels outside of Vienna, the author turns his attention to a close analysis of Die Zauberflöte, a review of the compositional characteristics of Mozart's last works, and a commentary on Mozart's autograph fragments. Wolff points to the salient features of Mozart's later style, suggesting that "what emerged at the turn of 1787 is a remarkably mature steadiness in finding a balance between past musical experiences and a deliberate, often daring exploration of new ways, including those that move in such disparate directions as simplified melodic contours (see below, p. 103), sophisticated chromaticism, dissonant counterpoint, and emotionally charged musical rhetoric that began with the creation of three grand symphonies and their near predecessors, the string quintets K. 515 and 516 and the Sonata K. 533." Remarkable here is Wolff's commentary on Mozart's courtly dance music, a repertory not currently well known, but characteristic of many of the trends of Mozart's highly sophisticated "Imperial" style.
Wolff's analysis of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte is likewise striking. He discusses Mozart's own terminology, his reference to the work as opera "vera": "This pertains in particular to the seven great operas, beginning with Idomeneo, called “dramma per musica,” and proceeding in logical succession from The Marriage of Figaro, designated “opera buffa” through Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, both “drammi giocosi” (humorous dramas) to La clemenza di Tito, a “dramma serio per musica.” From the perspective of a completed oeuvre, it seems natural to view Die Zauberflöte, his “grand opera,” as a culmination or even the teleological goal of a line of development rather than a conscious fresh start. Yet, when Mozart conceived the work, he definitely had his eye fixed on the future—albeit a future whose artistic progress and end eludes any speculation. The very fact of the novel term “grand opera,” however, sets The Magic Flute apart from its predecessors. Although Mozart retained the singspiel convention of spoken dialogue and may even have engaged with Schikaneder in a creative give-and-take regarding ideas for the libretto and its shape, he redefined the underlying text in specifically musical terms and rechanneled it toward what he wanted grand opera to be and to mean—a type for which there were no models and which he basically defined for himself."
The final chapter, on the autograph manuscripts left incomplete at Mozart's death, is both informative and heartbreaking. Wolff cites the range of evidence demonstrating Mozart's ability to conceive of a work virtually complete in his head, and the composer's technique for capturing the essence of the work in a sketch to be filled in and completed later. Over 100 such manuscript fragments remain, a testament to the endless creativity of Mozart, and a small taste of works, fully complete in his head, the he would not survive to complete.
This is a marvelous book, written for the educated non-specialist. Just enough musical analysis to be demonstrative and satisfying, but not so much as to get in the way of the narrative, or be disconcerting to the untrained. Perfectly balanced, and highly illuminating--a must for every serious fan of Mozart, musician and non-musician alike.
January 19, 2013
Great musicology book - compact, well documented, readable. Challenges the traditional notion that Mozart died poor and unrecognized by providing the historical context for the events in the last four years of his life. There is also a good amount of detail on how Mozart came to know the contrapuntal works of Handel and JS Bach - Baron van Swieten is not the primary source in this account.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews