Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Life and Music of the Great Composer

*Analyzes the themes and progression of Mozart's most famous works, comparing and contrasting them to each other and other composers' great works.
*Includes pictures of important people and places in Mozart's life.
*Includes a bibliography for further reading.
*Includes a list of Mozart's works.
*Includes a table of contents.

“It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.” – Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), baptized Johannes Chrysostom Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, is widely considered to be the culminating figure of the Classical Period in music, which spanned much of the 18th to early 19th centuries. As such, he is remembered as one of Western Civilization’s most prodigious and spontaneous natural talents, on par with Leonardo da Vinci and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Mozart once called music “my life”, and indeed few were as naturally gifted at it. Mozart’s memory and genius for music allowed him to compose lengthy works, even full-length operas, without transferring them to paper until he had fully visualized and retained them. He regarded copying as a tedious task, and this caused no small amount of consternation among performers, in particular the orchestra, some of whom received their parts minutes before curtain. This was said to be the case for the premiere of Don Giovanni, where Mozart was furiously scrawling and handing out parts to the overture with the audience in attendance. Surprisingly, these entire works, sometimes hundreds of pages, not penned until they were complete in his mind, usually arrived to the manuscript without a single blemish or change of heart. Mozart’s eccentricities are remembered centuries after his death, to the point that much of his life, illnesses and death have been mythologized, and today a lot of his legacy has been shaped by the manner in which his personality has been depicted in biographical works like Amadeus.

In addition to a large and consistently high-level body of work, Mozart represents for some the real beginning of the German lineage to the 20th century, although Ludwig Beethoven, greatly under Mozart’s influence, created much of that transition’s reality. Three of Mozart’s operas are continually in the top 10 works performed around the world, his piano concerti and symphonies are all in the standard repertoire (save for some of the earliest), and his choral works are treasures of the West. The bulk of his reputation was not garnered by breaking with tradition and destroying it but rather by fulfilling it with a greater beauty and naturalness than was possible for any other artist of the time. Mozart was perhaps the world’s greatest master of the modern melody, coming onto the scene after centuries of rule-laden, pedantic and convoluted procedures dominated by the Catholic Church, and he certainly possessed one of the most astonishing levels of intelligence in European history.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Life and Music of the Great Composer comprehensively analyzes the themes and revolutionary advancements of Mozart’s music, looking at his most famous works and comparing and contrasting them. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Mozart and his music like never before, in no time at all.