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Mozart in Motion: His Work and His World in Pieces

Mozart in Motion: His Work and His World in Pieces

by Patrick Mackie

Farrar, Straus and Giroux ·2023 ·368 pages
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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

"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."

Carolyn Mulac· Booklist Read review ↗ Near the Top

"One of the clear virtues of the book is Mackie's feel for the original ..."

Stephen Brown· Times Literary Supplement Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"In addition to relying on letters and extant accounts for Mozart in Motion: His Work and His World in Pieces, Mackie also incorporates academic theory and philosophical reflections on how we collectively experience music today into his thematically organized biography."

Krysta Fauria· Associated Press Read review ↗ Near the Top

"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."

James Wood· The New Yorker Read review ↗ Near the Top

"The book is organized around a series of 25 essays in which he analyzes specific pieces of music."

Terry W. Hartle· The Christian Science Monitor Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Erudite, ambitious and elegantly written ..."

Anthony Tommasini· The New York Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"A maddening number of adverbs and adjectives clutter the text, snarling a reader's flow like a forest of traffic signs at an otherwise-straightforward intersection."

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim· The Atlantic Read review ↗ Near the Top

"A unique, wide-ranging study ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Mackie would advise ..."

Lloyd Schwartz· The Wall Street Journal Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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