Mozart

I own the Dorset Press hardcover version of this book (1987) which features a great and rare pastel of Mozart on the dust jacket. In fact, I got a steal on this edition (in new condition) at the local Goodwill Store for a dollar! This book is for the layperson and not the Mozart scholar. I don't mean to say that it's not authoritative as the bibliography includes 70 sources. Still, Davenport dispensed with bothersome footnotes and simply focused on telling the story of Mozart. The original of this book was published by Scribners in 1932. I wasn't bothered by this detail in that a 1932 biography of a man who was born in 1756 is probably nearly as good as a 2008 one. As I read, I realized that Marcia Davenport fitted her readers quite effectively for Mozart's shoes, and then she takes us for a nice walk though his life. Here's an illustrative quote from page 259: "In the reaction from his bitter disappointment, Wolfgang expressed himself, for the first time in three years, in a symphony. Into it he poured that intensely serious and vital force which permeated his three subsequent symphonies and culminated in the Olympian Jupiter, his last. After the cruel blow from Leopold [his father], he withdrew into himself, temporarily, but definitely enough to learn how lonely the soul becomes before it comes to create the immortal." Mozart was a fascinating personality... prodigy, genius, procrastinator, disorganized, compassionate playmate, fancy-free, and yet shackled by the stiff German culture of his era, as well as by his burdensome father. His later life was fraught with worries about debt and many of his career opportunities were train-wrecked by both jealous peers and by the indifference of the presiding royals, the latter of whom utterly failed to recognize his worth to society. The book is 400 pages in length, including the index, and some of Mozart's letters and scores are illustrated for empasis of particular points which the author makes. From this volume, I learned the story (and chiefly the lifelong anguish) of Mozart. And while this book was not written for the Classical Music scholar, I still found that it more than met my expectations. It's not a page-turner but it is solid and coherent. Recommended.

This book has so much information about the life of Mozart. Marcia Davenport has a great way of pulling all the information together in a timely fashion. A real touching book. Highly recommended. A great read but a sad story.

"No biographer, no commentator, critic, or interpreter can ever reveal Wolfgang Mozart entirely. Every attempt to know him truly, to relive his life, is incomplete without his own musical revelations."Although that sentiment could not be more accurate, this biography by Marcia Davenport, simply entitled Mozart, brings us about as close as we can get to knowing and understanding this musical genius solely through a 400-page biographical account. In preparing for the writing of this biography, Davenport retraced every journey Mozart made, saw every dwelling in which he had lived, every theatre in which audiences first heard his works performed, and every library and museum that possessed useful manuscripts. In the foreword, she asserts, "I think I know what he looked like, how he spoke, what he did day by day."Throughout the book, we too get a sense for Mozart the composer and Mozart the man. His great musical works did not emerge from a vacuum; rather, they are the products of a man deeply affected by a unique combination of experiences spanning from his prodigious childhood days of touring throughout Europe to his last days in which he wrote his great Requiem (K. 626), a piece he knew he was composing for his own death. We worry with him through his difficulties with debt and the constant onslaught of disgruntled creditors, and we delight with him when he glows with amorousness for some new love interest. We rejoice with him at the success in Prague of his great operas Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, and we mourn with him as Wolfgang attempts fruitlessly to receive a much-desired court appointment and recognition worthy of his talent. We carouse with him when he lightheartedly indulges in time with good friends; we are spectators at the heart-wrenching deaths of his mother, father, and a number of children who could not survive infancy.The book is thorough, accurate, and engagingly informative in its narrative of Mozart's life. Though sometimes bland, the language Davenport uses is appropriately simple; quite admirably, she resists the impulse to indulge in the romanticized and flowery rhetoric with which many authors approach Mozart's miraculous genius. Her graceful writing style lets the characters speak for themselves rather than overpowering them with her own bravura. Davenport also frequently quotes letters written to and from Mozart, thus providing internal proof for her assertions, as well as supplying additional insight into Wolfgang's personality and wit. Davenport quotes from a letter written by Mozart to his wife, Constanze, in which Wolfgang bemoans his ever-growing debt, then adds a post-script: "Tears rained upon the paper as I wrote the foregoing page, but now let us cheer up! Catch!-an astonishing number of kisses are flying about! The devil!-I see a whole crowd of them, too. Ha, ha! I have just grabbed three-they are delicious!" Such blithely clever passages are not uncommon in Mozart's letters, even when he is

From an avid reader in general, and of biographies and history in particular, I found this book remarkably hard to put down after the very first page. I agree with Barnes & Nobel when the wrote "The result is a biography of such commanding stature that it has remained unassailable since its publication in 1932." What makes this book so special is that it doesn't tell you about Mozart, it is Mozart. You feel as if you are living your life along side Mozart's. Davenport's writing, woven throughout the scores of quotations from letters written by Mozart and those around him, is so vivid that you can actually see Mozart's life unfold in your imagination from the beginning until the end. And what about the subject of the book - Mozart. In my opinion, Mozart is one of the most spectacular individuals the World has ever known. If you are not a Mozart fan now, you most assuredly will be after reading this book. He seems to have been not only an ungodly genius, but a generous individual with an incredible sense of humor as well. This book should be studied at the high school level. I really believe teenagers would not only comprehend Mozart, but would also find him similar to themselves from a social point of view. I bet it would be real eye-opener to many of these students that such an apparently laid-back, rebellious and "party animal" type of person could create such serious and Ingenious work. This book is a must read for all!

i encourage everyone to read this book - not just those who have an interest in mozart. i found the book staggeringly vivid - like i was walking alongside the man, not just reading about him.