Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781

I strongly object to the use of the adjective "mature" to define Mozart's famous operas of the last five years. This is the common cliché used by most historical reviewers of his music, as does for instance, the previous reviewer Mike Berman, who is otherwise so insightful and knowledgeable. Was the Clemenza more mature than Mitridate, Lucio Silla, or Idomeneo? "Mature" implies that the earlier works were "immature", which is nonsense. Let's listen for instance to these earliest operas, Bastien und Bastienne, K 50 and la Finta Semplice, K 51, and let's see if Sadie's book shows us exactly where, how and why these early operas are "immature". He simply doesn't. As the Publishers Weekly writer says: "Likewise, modern critics expect to see a certain type of progress in Mozart's oeuvre, with subsequent works building and elaborating former ones, in ways alien to Mozart or his contemporaries. Sadie is deft at situating various styles of musical composition in their cultural context." That is the accurate view: no progress, but different styles corresponding to different times, different situations, different feelings, different clients or employers, different audiences. Mozart changed, all the time, but did not "improve" as if he were a young wine that gets better and finally drinkable after a couple of years in the basement. This is again nonsense. In fact a lot of the gaiety, charm, inexpressible longing, and iridescent atmosphere of the music in his younger years was never recaptured later during the Vienna decade. Listen again to Colas's "Diggy, daggy" magical aria. The power of this incantation is mind-blowing. Who's written something similar as fascinating and entrancing? To appreciate and recognize this unique freshness and sparkle of youth, it is necessary to know and listen to this music and operas in depth. This is where Sadie's book is invaluable. What is "immature" is the glibness of critics and historians who think that the "essence" of Mozart was in gestation during his early years, to finally bloom when he connected with Vienna and Da Ponte. This Aristotelian and medieval view of an "essential" Mozart lying dormant in the "latent" Mozart of the European travels and Salzburg-enforced wait station, flourished in the 19th century, under the influence of the concept of universal "progress" spread by the Enlightenment and the Encyclopedists and enshrined in the world views of most major thinkers of the 19th century. Time became destiny. This new view of universal progress and growth, marching towards a final state of perfection, was applied to everything -- culture, history, technology and science, and the human species. And this is still the accepted, unquestioned, credo of Western popular culture. Similarly, the progress of any artist was seen as reaching his "fully" developed form and talent. In this context, the so-called "maturation" of Mozart became an unquestioned given. However, at the end of the so-called "maturation" period,

Stanley Sadie intended to write a general biography of Mozart's life, following the completion of his labors on the titanic New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which he shepherded into existence. Sadie, himself, wrote the splendid Mozart entry, which was published separately. He completed the manuscript of the first volume of his two volume Mozart biography, covering Mozart's formative years in Salzburg and his extensive youthful travel throughout the music centers of Europe, just before passing away. Sadly, we will never see the completed work. Nevertheless, we are fortunate that we have the first extensive new biography of the early, Salzburg Mozart in more than half a century. The first thing that strikes the modern reader concerning Mozart's Salzburg years is how much of his early music remains only partially known. Many of his youthful operas remain a cypher to the average listener. His extensive number of early sonatas for piano or violin and piano are also still relatively unheard. Most of his adolescent symphonies remain unplayed. It is not until Mozart reaches the advanced age of 19, by which time he has been composing for at least 14 years, when he quickly composes his 5 violin concertos, that we are on familiar compositional ground. The nature and extent of Mozart's numerous journeys in search of employment are a revelation to the average music lover. Europe's complex social and musical scene in the middle 18th Century, one in which Mozart was obliged to operate as a genius endowed with a profoundly independent spirit, is undiscovered country that 21st Century research is only beginning to reveal as a vast mosaic of fierce political repression and incipient rebellion. A landscape that Mozart would effect peripherally before transforming it with his mature, revolutionary operas. These significant aspects of Mozart's early years are carefully discussed in this splendid biography. Ultimately, it is Mozart's nearly incomprehensible genius that Sadie struggles to explain. He succeeds admirably. And yet.... Despite the occasional Mozartean autograph manuscript exhibiting the evidence of compositional struggle (such as the six Haydn string quartets, with their chiaroscuro pages of cross-hatched deletions, amendations and corrections) offered as proof of his humanity, the sheer number of his masterpieces, written so swiftly and with such apparent effortlessness, prove that there is something inexplicable in Mozart. The spell he wove was miraculous. Mozart's musical martyrdom made him a hero to the Romantic generation whilst raising a sea of questions even Stanley Sadie's splendid biography must leave unanswered. The 19th Century saw something Godlike in Mozart's creative genius. Even now, in the 21st, that thought refuses to die. I recommend this biography for explaining the legend's birth, even though it cannot hope to reveal its wellspring. Mike Birman