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Mozart in Motion: His Work and His World in Pieces
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About This Book
In exhilarating, transformative prose, the poet Patrick Mackie reveals a musician in dialogue with culture at its most sweepingly progressive. Mozart is one of the most familiar and beloved icons of our culture, but how much do we really understand about his music, and what can it reveal to us about the great composer? Following Mozart from his youth in Salzburg to his early death, from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments, from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard, Patrick Mackie leads the reader through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer's life and brings alive the teeming, swiveling modernity of eighteenth-century Europe. In this era of rococo painting, surrealist aesthetics, and political turbulence, Mozart reckoned with a searing talent that threatened to overwhelm him, all the while pushing himself to extraordinary feats of musicianship. In Mozart in Motion , we are returned to the volatility of the eighteenth century and hear Mozart's music in all its audacious vividness, gaining fresh perspectives on why his works still move us so intensely today as we continue to search for a modernity he imagined into being.
Reviews
"Mackie sometimes betrays an overconfidence in his ability to get inside the mind of the famed composer."
"After perusing the pages of this thoughtful and beautifully written book, readers will want to discover, or rediscover, the timeless music of this beloved composer."
"The book is not a chronological survey of Mozart's career, and it presupposes a certain amount of knowledge ..."
"One of the clear virtues of the book is Mackie's feel for the original ..."
"Nonetheless Mackie's extraordinary knowledge, thoughtful insights, and exemplary prose make the book insightful, thought provoking, and enjoyable."
"Ambitious and brilliant: a book that rethinks Mozart's place in history and one that should win him new fans along the way."
"Passages tempt me to put down the book and just listen to the music—Mozart's and Prince's, comparatively—which might be just what Mr."
"But at his best Mackie is a sensitive and highly intelligent appraiser of musical form, with a gift for analyzing Mozart's music as the dynamic enactment—rather than the simple expression—of larger cultural and biographical energies."
"Erudite, ambitious and elegantly written ..."
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