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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
"Without resorting to technical terminology or offering musical illustrations, Swafford traces Mozart's development from prodigy to mature composer, weaving together the events of Mozart's life and the cultural milieu in which he worked ..."
"This hefty book does have the occasional infelicity, such as Swafford's speculation, not once but three times, that Casanova, in the audience for Don Giovanni (he had a hand in the libretto), would have been laughing ..."
"Swafford succeeds in laying to rest the persistent Mozart myths ..."
"In deft, empathic and knowledgeable prose, he treats a piano concerto here, an aria there, a string quartet or opera scene somewhere else, as lovingly as one might describe a dear friend: all as unique 'personalities,' entirely formed within the reader's receptive imagination ..."
"in addition to prodigious research, he offers up well-informed appraisals and insights into Mozart's work."
"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."
"The granular detailing all of the plots and characters can be heavy going, and weigh down the flow of the biography."
"Only toward the end do we feel the huge absence that would be left by Mozart's death — and Swafford's evocation of the moment the composer knew he was dying is appropriately terrifying."
"An admiring, authoritative biography."
"The stories behind and between the music generally hold sway, but at times the musical theory can dominate the narrative ..."
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