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W.A. Mozart
Hermann Abert's classic biography, first published in German more than eighty years ago and itself based on the definitive mid-nineteenth century study by Otto Jahn, remains the most informed and substantial biography of Mozart in any language. The book is both the fullest account of the composer’s life and a deeply skilled analysis of his music.
Proceeding chronologically from 1756 to 1791, the book interrogates every aspect of Mozart’s life, influences, and experience; his personality; his religious and secular dimensions; and the social context of the time. In “a book within a book,” Abert also provides close scrutiny of the music, including the operas, orchestral work, symphonies and piano concertos, church music and cantatas, and compositions for solo instruments.
While the tone of Abert’s great work is expertly rendered by Stewart Spencer, developments in Mozart scholarship since the last German edition are signaled by the Mozart scholar, Cliff Eisen, in careful annotations on every page. Supported by a host of leading Mozart scholars, this immense undertaking at last permits English-language readers access to the most important single source on the life of this great composer.
Proceeding chronologically from 1756 to 1791, the book interrogates every aspect of Mozart’s life, influences, and experience; his personality; his religious and secular dimensions; and the social context of the time. In “a book within a book,” Abert also provides close scrutiny of the music, including the operas, orchestral work, symphonies and piano concertos, church music and cantatas, and compositions for solo instruments.
While the tone of Abert’s great work is expertly rendered by Stewart Spencer, developments in Mozart scholarship since the last German edition are signaled by the Mozart scholar, Cliff Eisen, in careful annotations on every page. Supported by a host of leading Mozart scholars, this immense undertaking at last permits English-language readers access to the most important single source on the life of this great composer.
1515 pages, Hardcover
First published November 30, 1919
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 9, 2019
This book is a a terrifying prospect - 1400+ pages of fine print weighing several pounds. And yet, the translation is interesting and engaging and the text relevant and informative. I have only read this Mozart biography and that of (Alfred) Einstein (no, not the physicist) and found this one more entertaining. Yes, it is incredibly long but so much happened in Mozart's unfortunately short life and there was just so much music that I was able to get through it all in a few weeks. While covering the music to some depth, I did not feel that it went too over my head in musical theory (I don't play any instruments and just barely understand the basics of musical notation) but it did make me want to learn more and read about other composers both before (Bach, Handel), during (Haydn) and after Mozart (Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin...)
As for what I learned about Mozart:
First off, the film Amadeus is complete bullshit with very little basis in fact. The only thing that was close to reality was the exuberant, carefree, and irresponsible personality of Wolfgang. Otherwise, the intrigue with Salieri is not historical and neither is the deathbed transcription scene. The film did serve to bring Mozart's music back to the masses but it was a massacre of historical fact.
Next, the fascinating aspect is truly the relationship between Mozart and Leopold his father. This explains so much of his trajectory and his sad fate (Leopold was totally right that the Weber girls were totally bad news but he was too overbearing and overprotective). This is something that the Einstein book on Mozart dives into head first but which is carefully dissected and explained by Abert.
Also, I found it fascinating that Mozart was first the child genius of the period - a sort of Macauley Culkin from Home Alone - but when the initial shine wore off, his life was a constant struggle to find that past glamour. Pushed relentlessly by his father, he rebelled and made terrible decisions and maintained bloodsucking friends and made a catastrophic marriage (alluded to in my previous paragraph.
I learned from this book that died unrecognized, heavily in debt, and since Constanze (the allegedly frivolous and spendthrift wife) wouldn't spend the money on a coffin, he was buried without ceremony in a potter's field. He was perhaps the closet person in music to Icarus.
Fortunately, Constanze (but allegedly for materialistic and not necessarily artistic reasons) preserved his work and it was immediately upon his death recognized as something otherworldly. Unfortunately, he did not have the pleasure of enjoying his due.
Again, this is THE biography about one of the greatest composers of all time and will provide you with years of listening pleasure as you explore his works and re-read the associated chapters over the years.
As for what I learned about Mozart:
First off, the film Amadeus is complete bullshit with very little basis in fact. The only thing that was close to reality was the exuberant, carefree, and irresponsible personality of Wolfgang. Otherwise, the intrigue with Salieri is not historical and neither is the deathbed transcription scene. The film did serve to bring Mozart's music back to the masses but it was a massacre of historical fact.
Next, the fascinating aspect is truly the relationship between Mozart and Leopold his father. This explains so much of his trajectory and his sad fate (Leopold was totally right that the Weber girls were totally bad news but he was too overbearing and overprotective). This is something that the Einstein book on Mozart dives into head first but which is carefully dissected and explained by Abert.
Also, I found it fascinating that Mozart was first the child genius of the period - a sort of Macauley Culkin from Home Alone - but when the initial shine wore off, his life was a constant struggle to find that past glamour. Pushed relentlessly by his father, he rebelled and made terrible decisions and maintained bloodsucking friends and made a catastrophic marriage (alluded to in my previous paragraph.
I learned from this book that died unrecognized, heavily in debt, and since Constanze (the allegedly frivolous and spendthrift wife) wouldn't spend the money on a coffin, he was buried without ceremony in a potter's field. He was perhaps the closet person in music to Icarus.
Fortunately, Constanze (but allegedly for materialistic and not necessarily artistic reasons) preserved his work and it was immediately upon his death recognized as something otherworldly. Unfortunately, he did not have the pleasure of enjoying his due.
Again, this is THE biography about one of the greatest composers of all time and will provide you with years of listening pleasure as you explore his works and re-read the associated chapters over the years.
May 11, 2018
My Review:
There are works that persist through the passage of time... that permeate the dusty sheath that both binds and separates the past from the present. Works that, when filtered through a retrospective lens, continue to maintain the very essence of a divine-like creation, like the building blocks of an intricately complex monument - a world wonder that has existed though the ages. One that sparks generations of inquiry by those drawn to its magnificence, to its penetrating and majestic force..inspiring countless scholars to remark upon its persisting existence.
Marvels such as these command the historian and layman alike to persist in discovering its secrets to longevity, ever eager to teach subsequent generations. The Egyptians have the pyramids. The British have Stonehenge. Germany – and now the English-speaking world - have Hermann Abert’s W.A. Mozart, reworked from Otto Jahn’s classic mid-19th century masterpiece in 1921, and ushered into the relative present by the modern musical sphere’s pre-eminent Mozart scholar Dr. Cliff Eisen and translator Stewart Spencer. Abert’s Mozart is the very genesis from which nearly all modern biographies on this fascinating composer have drawn their inspiration – the massive tome (1515 pages long) is referenced as source material even in the textbooks designed for educating students, found in both the university classroom and prestigious conservatoires alike. (Tchaikovsky even references Otto Jahn's original German edition in a private written exchange with his loyal confidante and benefactress Baroness Nadezhda von Meck in a correspondence dated March 28, 1878).
How then, does one review the very progenitor of nearly every Mozart biography published since the early twentieth century?
One starts by reminding the reader that, although nearly a century old, W.A. Mozart remains, for the most part, as relevant and critically acclaimed for its content today as it had 95 years ago, when it was widely lauded as the single most important work on the composer – nay, to any composer who preceded the enigmatic/genius musician.
Be warned, however, the 2007 version (published by Yale University Press) is not for the faint of heart historian/musician. This mammoth undertaking, (with an excess of over one million words, and weighing in at just over six-and-a-half pounds), makes up for its rather unconventional proportions in its wealth of definitive research and scholarship backed by centuries of expert perspective and authentic documentation. It will, however, take the reader much time to ingest all of its contents. The old adage 'good things come to those who wait' applies.
In the 86 years that passed between Abert’s release in the German tongue in 1921 and Eisen’s edit / Spencer’s translation into English in the present century, many important discoveries have come to light concerning Herr Mozart - once hidden treasures unearthed from dusty archives across the European continent, advances in science and in medicine and its education have offered fresh perspectives on diseases and on the early mortalities that plagued generations past (and had taken preternaturally the lives of so many of our favorite composers), indeed altering the history, and therefore the scholarship of our not-so distant ancestors. At the time of W.A Mozart’s English language version, an exhaustive effort had been made by Eisen to include these fresh findings into intricately detailed annotations found at the foot of nearly every page.
Remarkably, W.A. Mozart, scholarly tome though it is, remains accessible to even the layman who may be discovering the composer or opera/classical music for the first time. Of course, the more recent discoveries of the past decade are not included here, (for instance the ‘discovery’ of the long-rumored existence of a Mozart-Salieri collaboration in 2015, the so-called solo cantata "Per la Ricuperata Salute di Ofelia, K.477a"). These discoveries and fresh perspectives will soon be made available in Eisen's new biography on Mozart, written in contribution to Deutsche Grammophon, Decca Classics and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation’s all-inclusive 200 CD box-set, entitled "W.A. Mozart 225: The Complete Edition" scheduled for release before the closing of the year. Even then, upon 225’s release in late October 2016 - just as in 2007 - both updates exist as mere appendages on the vast body of work that was Abert’s original biography. W.A. Mozart is the very soul of which all subsequent works are housed.
This crucial biography has long been, and continues to be indispensable for any serious scholar of classical music.
Five Stars.
-Rose
There are works that persist through the passage of time... that permeate the dusty sheath that both binds and separates the past from the present. Works that, when filtered through a retrospective lens, continue to maintain the very essence of a divine-like creation, like the building blocks of an intricately complex monument - a world wonder that has existed though the ages. One that sparks generations of inquiry by those drawn to its magnificence, to its penetrating and majestic force..inspiring countless scholars to remark upon its persisting existence.
Marvels such as these command the historian and layman alike to persist in discovering its secrets to longevity, ever eager to teach subsequent generations. The Egyptians have the pyramids. The British have Stonehenge. Germany – and now the English-speaking world - have Hermann Abert’s W.A. Mozart, reworked from Otto Jahn’s classic mid-19th century masterpiece in 1921, and ushered into the relative present by the modern musical sphere’s pre-eminent Mozart scholar Dr. Cliff Eisen and translator Stewart Spencer. Abert’s Mozart is the very genesis from which nearly all modern biographies on this fascinating composer have drawn their inspiration – the massive tome (1515 pages long) is referenced as source material even in the textbooks designed for educating students, found in both the university classroom and prestigious conservatoires alike. (Tchaikovsky even references Otto Jahn's original German edition in a private written exchange with his loyal confidante and benefactress Baroness Nadezhda von Meck in a correspondence dated March 28, 1878).
How then, does one review the very progenitor of nearly every Mozart biography published since the early twentieth century?
One starts by reminding the reader that, although nearly a century old, W.A. Mozart remains, for the most part, as relevant and critically acclaimed for its content today as it had 95 years ago, when it was widely lauded as the single most important work on the composer – nay, to any composer who preceded the enigmatic/genius musician.
Be warned, however, the 2007 version (published by Yale University Press) is not for the faint of heart historian/musician. This mammoth undertaking, (with an excess of over one million words, and weighing in at just over six-and-a-half pounds), makes up for its rather unconventional proportions in its wealth of definitive research and scholarship backed by centuries of expert perspective and authentic documentation. It will, however, take the reader much time to ingest all of its contents. The old adage 'good things come to those who wait' applies.
In the 86 years that passed between Abert’s release in the German tongue in 1921 and Eisen’s edit / Spencer’s translation into English in the present century, many important discoveries have come to light concerning Herr Mozart - once hidden treasures unearthed from dusty archives across the European continent, advances in science and in medicine and its education have offered fresh perspectives on diseases and on the early mortalities that plagued generations past (and had taken preternaturally the lives of so many of our favorite composers), indeed altering the history, and therefore the scholarship of our not-so distant ancestors. At the time of W.A Mozart’s English language version, an exhaustive effort had been made by Eisen to include these fresh findings into intricately detailed annotations found at the foot of nearly every page.
Remarkably, W.A. Mozart, scholarly tome though it is, remains accessible to even the layman who may be discovering the composer or opera/classical music for the first time. Of course, the more recent discoveries of the past decade are not included here, (for instance the ‘discovery’ of the long-rumored existence of a Mozart-Salieri collaboration in 2015, the so-called solo cantata "Per la Ricuperata Salute di Ofelia, K.477a"). These discoveries and fresh perspectives will soon be made available in Eisen's new biography on Mozart, written in contribution to Deutsche Grammophon, Decca Classics and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation’s all-inclusive 200 CD box-set, entitled "W.A. Mozart 225: The Complete Edition" scheduled for release before the closing of the year. Even then, upon 225’s release in late October 2016 - just as in 2007 - both updates exist as mere appendages on the vast body of work that was Abert’s original biography. W.A. Mozart is the very soul of which all subsequent works are housed.
This crucial biography has long been, and continues to be indispensable for any serious scholar of classical music.
Five Stars.
-Rose
July 15, 2014
This book deserves a five star rating because it is quite simply the most profoundly complete work about Mozart ever written. It is now translated into English so that even more scholars and enthusiasts can benefit from its collective wisdom.
March 5, 2025
What a masterpiece! If I were to select one book only devoted to Mozart - this would be the one.
Written by Hermann Abert, a German musicologist, who in 1925 he was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the first music theorist to be granted this honour.
Originally it was published in 1920 in two volumes. It's English translation by Stewart Spencer, was published in 2007, as a single volume edition. It's a large book of over 1,500 pages.
It covers everything that is known about this great composer: his life, family, origins and interaction with rich and mighty, as well as his friends and audience. It details his music, discusses its merits, often at level of a professional musician, but also accessible for the enthusiast.
It took me four years, on and off, to complete this gigantic volume, because I wanted to use my Spotify subscription to follow the discussion of the great composer's works. I think, this paid off, especially because I could learn about some less known musical pieces.
If you want to appreciate better Mozart and his music, this is the book to have.
Written by Hermann Abert, a German musicologist, who in 1925 he was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the first music theorist to be granted this honour.
Originally it was published in 1920 in two volumes. It's English translation by Stewart Spencer, was published in 2007, as a single volume edition. It's a large book of over 1,500 pages.
It covers everything that is known about this great composer: his life, family, origins and interaction with rich and mighty, as well as his friends and audience. It details his music, discusses its merits, often at level of a professional musician, but also accessible for the enthusiast.
It took me four years, on and off, to complete this gigantic volume, because I wanted to use my Spotify subscription to follow the discussion of the great composer's works. I think, this paid off, especially because I could learn about some less known musical pieces.
If you want to appreciate better Mozart and his music, this is the book to have.
partially-read
February 14, 2023Whenever I imagine that all is going well with my opera, as I often do, I feel my whole body is on fire and tremble from head to foot with my desire to teach the French once and for all to know, value and fear the Germans.-Mozart writing from Paris, 31 July 1778
February 4, 2015
This is a huge book (1388 pages) which took me over a month to read. It is the classic, century-old biography of Mozart, reprinted with some factual matter updated in the footnotes; the biographical material is somewhat outdated, but the analysis of the works is great and there is much useful discussion of the other composers and trends of the time. Only for those with a serious interest in Mozart's music.
September 22, 2013
Great book, Abert's grasp of musical style change is incredible, and Eisen is great at presenting Abert's take and then his own, keeping them separate so you can see how research has evolved. Too bad the darn thing is so heavy that you need a wheeled backpack simply to carry it around - they should have issued it in two volumes.
March 3, 2025
Monumentalna, najpełniejsza i najważniejsza książka o Mozarcie jaką kiedykolwiek napisano. Biblia każdego akolity tego genialnego ancymona; innym raczej nie polecam.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews