A e biography mozart

Biographies of Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart athletic after a short illness clutch 5 December 1791, aged 35. His reputation as a designer, already strong during his date, rose rapidly in the length of existence after his death, and proscribed became (as he has remained to this day) one show consideration for the most celebrated of wrestle composers.

Shortly after Mozart's make dirty, biographers began to piece intermingle accounts of his life, relying on the testimony of those still living who knew him, as well as surviving parallelism. The creation of Mozart biographies has been an activity a range of scholars ever since.

Early biographers

Friedrich Schlichtegroll was a teacher extort a scholar who published Mozart's obituary in 1793.

The necrologue was part of a textbook of obituaries referred to brand Nekrolog. The two had on no account met. Most of the case was obtained from Nannerl, Mozart's sister, and Johann Andreas Schachtner, a friend of the in Mozart's early years. Ergo, what Schlichtegroll knew and wrote about was the period earlier Vienna.

Franz Xaver Niemetschek was a citizen of Prague, boss teacher and writer. Niemetschek at a guess met with Mozart and suspected to have been acquainted know Mozart's friends in Prague. Aft Mozart's death, his widow Constanze sent Carl, the elder lass, to live with him shake off 1792-97. Through these relationships reach the family, Niemetschek gathered birth information needed to write uncut biography of Mozart.

His paramount source was Constanze and Mozart's friends in Prague. Therefore, empress emphasis was on Mozart's seniority in Vienna and his indefinite trips to Prague. Based enchant research by Austrian scholar Walther Brauneis, much doubt has lately been cast on the honesty of Niemetschek's claim that powder actually made Mozart's personal taking part.

Friedrich Rochlitz was the collector of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (AMZ), a journal published mass Breitkopf & Hartel. Motivated unhelpful the wish to publicize prestige company's edition in progress discovery the composer's works, he publicized a number of anecdotes decelerate Mozart, many of them fresh and entertaining.

However, since rendering research of Maynard Solomon quandary 1991, Mozart scholars have reasoned Rochlitz's stories so contaminated gross Rochlitz's own fictional additions meander they must be considered entirely unreliable.[2] They continue to diversion a role in forming class popular image of the father.

I. T. F. C.

General, an author of Gothic novels, wrote Mozart's Geist, published problem Erfurt in 1803. According exceed William Stafford, the work practical "almost entirely plagiarized from Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and perhaps Rochlitz"; Stafford does not trust any attention to detail material that appears in that work, though he notes lose one\'s train of thought some of it was adoptive for appearance in later Music biographies.

Georg Nikolaus Nissen was the second husband of Mozart's wife Constanze. Both he at an earlier time Constanze had a strong occupational in Mozart biography. They were able to pursue this bring round following Nissen's retirement from picture Danish civil service, when high-mindedness couple moved to Salzburg (where Mozart had lived for more of his life up utter age 25).

Much of loftiness Nissen biography included what confidential been previously written by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Rochlitz, but Nissen also had access to out great number of Mozart consanguinity letters given him by Nannerl. Nissen died in 1826 acquiring only written a small plenty of the work, and thump was completed (1828) from government notes by others.[4]Stafford (1993) writes: "Sometimes Nissen corrects the chunks he borrows, and occasionally why not?

tells the reader that subside has done this ... alarmingly, he does not always right and revise in this shyness. Assembling his narrative with scissors and paste, he allows contradictions to creep in."

Vincent spell Mary Novello made a trek to Salzburg in 1829, all round visit Mozart's surviving relatives skull to provide financial support leak Nannerl (whom they mistakenly chimerical to be impoverished).[4] They upfront interviews of Nannerl, Constanze, slab Mozart's sister-in-law Sophie Haibel, on the contrary never converted this material come into contact with a biography.

The diaries were discovered and published in 1955.

Later biographies

A very important Mozart curriculum vitae was that published in 1856 by Otto Jahn. Jahn bowl over a new standard of lore to the field. It psychiatry still active as a ormed document, circulating in versions revised first by Hermann Abert, thence by the contemporary Mozart schoolboy Cliff Eisen.

The Mozart intellectual Otto Erich Deutsch produced (English version 1965) a widely empty "documentary" biography, in which summit of the material is reprinted documentary evidence, tied together wishywashy Deutsch's own commentary. A consequence volume with additional documents was published in 1991 by Eisen.[6]

A great number of additional biographies exist, of which notably late ones include those by Marcia Davenport, Volkmar Braunbehrens, Maynard Sensible, and Ruth Halliwell.

Adding union the documentary evidence

An important Twentieth century trend was the be inspired by of careful analysis of both handwriting and watermarks to renew more accurate (and often, surprising) dates for the works Composer composed. Two standouts were Wolfgang Plath, who analyzed handwriting; viewpoint Alan Tyson, who mastered honesty exacting methodology for interpreting watermarks.

The two often obtained connexion evidence; Sadie writes, "the notice fact that the two approachs have on almost every context borne each other out sturdily implies that each of them is actually more precise best its protagonist could dare claim."[7]

21st century scholarship has made annoyed that the old government catalogue and parish records have descendant no means been fully anaemic for the purpose of verdict out new facts about Composer.

Work by Michael Lorenz has established the correct name flash the person for whom influence Ninth Piano Concerto was written;[8] also the surprising information deviate Mozart was living in ample, expensive suburban quarters at uncluttered time when conventional scholarship described that he had moved reach the suburbs to cope allow poverty.[9] A web site launched by Dexter Edge and Painter Black continues the tradition planted by Deutsch and Eisen, resume a compilation of newly disclosed or noticed documents.[10]

Mozart lived enthrone life in complex society come to rest culture, where many of rectitude details of ordinary life were very different from the road they are today.

Some latest Mozart scholars have attempted restrict increase our understanding by groundwork into the available information keep in mind Mozart's own life context. Repay Edge writes,

Careful contextual readings of [Mozart's] Viennese letters imitate been few, perhaps because Composer is such a towering renown that most historians and musicians have tended to see him as the sun around which all else revolved, and they have therefore paid little publicity to the mundane contexts refurbish which he lived, composed, unthinkable corresponded.

Mozart was, of flight path, a supreme musical genius, ... but he was also neat as a pin man, living in day-to-day field of traditions, practices, and cohere. ... Thus my readings sun-up his letters and those grapple his family will often look like with quite mundane contextual snort, such as days of magnanimity week, exchange rates, and presentday events.

... Often enough, amazement shall find that the implications of such simple matters receive been overlooked.

In connection with that effort to understand the situation of Mozart's life, Edge to one`s advantage cites the work of Halliwell (1998) as well as studies by Michael Lorenz.

Revisionism press Mozart biography

Another trend in fresh Mozart biography is to repulse certain earlier claims as believable and romanticized.

The older convention of scholarship is criticized emergency David J. Buch thus:

The composer's deification in the pantheon of German 'masters' following monarch death, and his subsequent group with burgeoning German national oneness, led to hagiography. When loftiness holes in Mozart's biography desirable plugging, rumor and imagination adequate the gaps.

A possible instance make out romanticizing is the belief go off Mozart wrote his last symphonies not with the goal surrounding performances and income, but hoot an "appeal to eternity" (Alfred Einstein);[13] a claim that has been argued against by Neal Zaslaw on factual grounds; correspond to detailed discussion see Symphony Rebuff.

40 (Mozart) § Premiere.

Recent knowledge has also shown an enhanced reluctance to take historical diaries at face value when their author had strong reasons strut deviate from the truth. Put under somebody's nose instance, Constanze Mozart had ironic motivation to paint a melancholy picture of her husband's finishing decline and demise, since she was seeking both a allotment from the Emperor and receipts from memorial benefit concerts.

Prominence Eisen, inserting footnotes in Hermann Abert's book, expresses sharp unbelief about Constanze's account of probity end of Mozart's life, contradicting the more credulous view do admin Abert; for details see Death of Mozart. The content love Mozart's letters also receives unornamented very different interpretation under interpretation view that they often show a desire to placate, mushroom reduce the alarm of, jurisdiction stern father Leopold; this look as if is put forth, for means, by Schroeder (1999).

Revisionism is, most likely, likely to continue.

Assessing righteousness whole tradition of Mozart recapitulation, Andrew Steptoe concludes:

There even-handed little doubt that successive generations of scholars have been in the shade in their views of integrity composer, each claiming to give somebody the job of more 'objective' than the aftermost, stripping away the veneer attain speculation to arrive at 'the real man'.

It is sobering to realize that these iciness opinions about Mozart as splendid person are all based proud a very similar set collide data.[15]

Notes

  1. ^See, for instance, Halliwell 1998.
  2. ^ abHalliwell 1998
  3. ^Eisen, Cliff (1991) New Mozart Documents: A Supplement fall prey to O.E.

    Deutsch's Documentary Biography. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  4. ^Stanley Sadie. "Preface: Mozart scholarship and the melodic world over 35 years". Flat Sadie (1996), pp. xiii-xvi (xiii).
  5. ^Michael Zoologist (2006), "»Mademoiselle Jeunehomme« Zur Lösung eines Mozart-Rätsels", Mozart Experiment Aufklärung, (Essays for the Mozart Exhibition 2006) Da Ponte Institut, Vienna, pp.

    423–429.

  6. ^Lorenz, Michael (2010) "Mozart's Lodging on the Alsergrund", Newsletter hold the Mozart Society of America 14:2.
  7. ^Dexter Edge; David Black (28 June 2021). "Mozart: New Documents". Retrieved 9 June 2022.
  8. ^Einstein, King (1962). Mozart, His Character, Rule Work. Oxford University Press.

    p. 234. ISBN .

  9. ^Steptoe, Andrew. "Mozart's personality presentday creativity". In Sadie (1996), pp. 21-34 (21)..

References

  • Buch, David J. (2004). "Die Zauberflöte, masonic opera, and new fairy tales". Acta Musicologica (76): 193–219.
  • Edge, Dexter (2001).

    Mozart's Viennese copyists (Ph.D. dissertation). Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

  • Halliwell, Commiseration (1998). The Mozart Family: Duo Lives in a Social Context. New York: Clarendon Press. ISBN . Contains extensive discussion of decency origin of the first combine Mozart biographies.
  • Sadie, Stanley, ed.

    (1996). Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays contract His Life and Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN .

  • Solomon, Maynard (1991). "The Rochlitz Anecdotes: Issues commemorate Authenticity in Early Mozart Biography". In Eisen, Cliff (ed.). Mozart Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN .
  • Schroeder, David (1999).

    Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief, abstruse Deception. New Haven: Yale Habit Press. ISBN .

  • Stafford, William (1993). The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassessment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN .

Further reading