Mozart in Motion
His Work and His World in Pieces
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ISBN10: 037460620X
ISBN13: 9780374606206
Hardcover
368 Pages
$30.00
CA$40.00
Mozart is one of the most familiar and beloved icons of our culture, but how much do we really understand of his music, and what can it reveal to us about the great composer?
Following Mozart from his youth in Salzburg to his early death; from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments; from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard, Patrick Mackie leads the reader through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer’s life and brings alive the teeming, swiveling modernity of eighteenth-century Europe. In this era of rococo painting, surrealist aesthetics, and political turbulence, Mozart reckoned with a searing talent that threatened to overwhelm him, all the while pushing himself to extraordinary feats of musicianship.
In Mozart in Motion, we are returned to the volatility of the eighteenth century and hear Mozart’s music in all its audacious vividness, gaining fresh perspectives on why his works still move us so intensely today, as we continue to search for a modernity he imagined into being.
Reviews
Praise for Mozart in Motion
"An exemplary intervention in this kind of cultural critique . . . Mackie is a sensitive and highly intelligent appraiser of musical form, with a gift for analyzing Mozart’s music as the dynamic enactment—rather than the simple expression—of larger cultural and biographical energies.”—James Wood, The New Yorker
“Mackie’s prose gathers momentum by tackling the music’s rich contradictions . . . If Mackie’s voice flirts with pretense, a close reading reveals keen ears and a lively imagination, especially for opera fans . . . Mackie challenges received ideas and offers descriptions that may yet prove worthy of his subject.”—Tim Riley, Truthdig
“In an intriguing blend of biography and deft musical analysis, poet Mackie creates a gallery of the composer’s masterpieces expertly framed in the cultural setting of eighteenth-century Europe . . . After perusing the pages of this thoughtful and beautifully written book, readers will want to discover, or rediscover, the timeless music of this beloved composer.”—Carolyn Mulac, Booklist
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
1In Motion
Don Giovanni
Opening nights of new operas may be the most fraught of all. So many things have to go right. The paint must have dried on the backdrops, the soprano’s throat must be clear of infections and the...