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Mozart: The Reign of Love
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About This Book
From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart's singular imagination was at work in every direction. He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always hilarious. He went at every piece of his life, and perhaps most notably his social life, with tremendous gusto. His circle of friends and patrons was wide, encompassing anyone who appealed to his boundless appetites for music and all things pleasurable and fun. Mozart was known to be an inexplicable force of nature who could rise from a luminous improvisation at the keyboard to a leap over the furniture. He was forever drumming on things, tapping his feet, jabbering away, but who could grasp your hand and look at you with a profound, searching, and melancholy look in his blue eyes. Even in company there was often an air about Mozart of being not quite there. It was as if he lived onstage and off simultaneously, a character in life's tragicomedy but also outside of it watching, studying, gathering material for the fabric of his art. Like Jan Swafford's biographies Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Mozart is the complete exhumation of a genius in his life and a man who would enrich the world with his talent for centuries to come and who would immeasurably shape classical music. As Swafford reveals, it's nearly impossible to understand classical music's origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself.
Reviews
"in addition to prodigious research, he offers up well-informed appraisals and insights into Mozart's work."
"A virtually indispensable volume for the music collection."
"For those of us given to looking back on other times as tidy, aristocratic and pretty much everything that the 21st century isn't, Swafford offers a sharp corrective ..."
"Swafford's prose flows beautifully and is often cheeringly informal ..."
"It is, as Mozart characterized two of his midcareer piano concertos, 'a happy medium between what's too difficult and too easy … there are passages here and there that only connoisseurs can fully appreciate—yet the common listener will find them satisfying as well' ..."
"He is thoroughly up-to-date on the latest information and controversies, debunking the still commonly held mythology about the composer, and he continually reminds us of what astounding music Mozart wrote ..."
"Swafford paints a revelatory portrait of the man, his music, and his times ..."
"Mr Swafford, himself a composer and a programme-writer for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, offers an updated, accessible and authoritative life, beautifully written and full of astute critical judgments and incisive notes on the works."
"Instead of hypothesizing, or further mythologizing a life whose true facts are far more interesting than popular fiction, Swafford dug deep into every conceivable fragment and tidbit of the Mozart family's life and times, along with those of their friends, relatives, employers, rulers and influencers ..."
"Drawing on many previous biographies, along with Mozart's published letters, Swafford offers a thorough analysis of Mozart's overwhelming oeuvre ..."
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