The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassessment - Hardcover

Stafford, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804719373 ISBN 13: 9780804719377

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1991

Synopsis

This is an ambitious attempt to separate what is actually known (and can be known) about Mozart from the many myths and legends that have grown up about his life and character, notably the circumstances of his death and his alleged immaturity, drinking, extravagance, womanizing, unreliability, and professional failure.

About this title

About the Author:

William Stafford is Principal Lecturer in Philosophy and the History of Ideas at Huddersfield Polytechnic, in England.

Review:

'A work of minute and impeccable scholarship. It is also tremendous fun to read. That is a very rare combination ... What is particularly enjoyable aboutthe book is the obvious enthusiasm with which William Stafford recounts these narratives. They are, by turn, fantastic to the point of risibility, compelling, revealing, and alas, even repulsive, where the German 'conspiracy' theories become, inevitably, anti-Semitic. But before the intellectual historian - for that is Stafford's calling - turns his hand to dismantling them, he gives each a real run for the money. It is, at times, like a trip through fairyland; and yet these narratives were not, after all, the product merely of books and ecstatics but of the likes of Jahn and Einstein. Nor does the fun stop with the reading of the narratives. For their deconstruction, although executed with scrupulous attention to the historical documents, never becomes dry or pedantic ... Gentle reader, whatever you do, read this book if you have interest in the divine - or is it the bestial, dissipated, autistic, or obnoxious - Mozart. For you will learn a lot about him, whatever he is, and a lot, too about the practice and pitfalls of historical narrative. Above all, you will have a helluva good read.' Music and Letters

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0804719373
• ISBN 13: 9780804719377
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300