Mozart: Letters

by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lady Wallace (Translator), Michael Rose (Editor)

Over 100 often hilarious, sometimes sad, but always articulate letters from one of the most charismatic composers in history. Candid self-portrait emerges revealing his witty observations of royalty and their patronage, music, his family, his debilitating and humiliating poverty. One facsimile.

Genres: Music, Poetry, Nonfiction, History, Classics, Biography, Autobiography

256 pages, Hardcover

Published January 9, 2007

About the author

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart, the Austrian composer, toured Europe with his son, child prodigy, noted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who gracefully and imaginatively refined the classical style with symphonies, concertos, operas, Masses, sonatas, and chambers among his 626 numbered works.

The comic plays of French writer Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais inspired Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to operas.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart prolifically influenced the era. Many persons acknowledged this pinnacle of piano and choral music. His popularity most endures.

Mozart showed earliest ability. From the age of five years in 1761 already competently on keyboard and violin performed before royalty. At seventeen years in 1773, a court musician in Salzburg engaged him, who restlessly traveled always abundantly in search of a better position.

Mozard visited Vienna in 1781; Salzburg dismissed his position, and he chose to stay in the capital and achieved fame but little financial security over the rest of life. The final years in Vienna yielded his many best-known Requiem . People much mythologized the circumstances of his early death. Constanze Mozart, his wife, two sons survived him.

Mozart always learned voraciously and developed a brilliance and maturity that encompassed the light alongside the dark and passionate; a vision of humanity, "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute," informed the whole. He profoundly influenced all subsequent western art music. Ludwig van Beethoven wrote on his own early in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Franz Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."

Reviews

[Anna Petruk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy reading collections of letters. In the past, I've read mostly those written by artists or writers (The Letters of Vincent van Gogh and Emily Dickinson: Letters being notable examples), so this collection of Mozart's letters is something of an exception. Mostly Mozart's letters were addressed to his mom or dad, and a few to his sister, wife, and friends.

I'm not a musician, nor particularly knowledgeable about music or a huge fan of Mozart. I hoped there would be more stuff of general interest there - I don't know, something about his approach to creative work or thoughts on music. But there was almost none of that.

Mostly the letters told of:
- earthly matters: such as financial problems, food, clothes;
- society gossip: what specific people/aristocrats said or did. None of these names were familiar to me. Maybe their acquaintance with Mozart is the most notable thing about those people to us.
- details about adjustments to Mozart's works in progress and their reception once premiered. E.g. this singer becomes out of breath when singing this part of the aria, so it needs to be shortened. It didn't really give me much.

On the plus side, I found out Mozart could be quite funny, and he was also pretty religious/pious. Seemed like the kind of person who truly found solace in faith and made better choices because of it.

So overall it was ok but I didn't like this book as much as I hoped to.

[Tamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny that guy Mozart.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good general collection of Mozart's letters, some of which I'd seen before, others not. I had previously only read letters between Mozart and his father, so it was interesting to see a change of tone on Mozart's part depending on who he was writing. However, while there were letters from Leopold to his son included, and some from Mozart's mother, I wish there had also been letters from Mozart's wife. At least near the end.
(Also, this edition of his letters from Everyman's Library is really pretty…)

[Takeshinz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the original classic collection of Mozart's letters translated into English. Increasingly harder to come by - heavily edited and censored of course (as was the style of the time) but no less revealing of how hard travel was and how difficult it was for Mozart to find work and keep work given his genuis. A must for classical music fans.