Mozart

Mozart: A Life is based on an unsurpassed knowledge of the documentary sources, including numerous documents that have not previously appeared in any biography of the composer. It offers a beautifully written and absorbing narrative of Mozart's life, from his birth in 1756 and childhood in Salzburg to the extraordinary decade of acclaimed performances in the capitals of Europe, where he was honored by royal families and adoring audiences, to his emergence as a prolific young composer, his status as Salzburg's favorite son in the 1770s, his conquest of Vienna, his marriage there, his financial vicissitudes, his later journeys to Prague and Germany, his deepening melancholia, his final triumphs, and his premature death in 1791.

First sentence: When Leopold Mozart died in 1787 at the age of sixty-seven, Lorenz Hagenauer's son, Dominikus Hagenauer, wrote in his diary that his father's late friend had been "a man of wit and sagacity, who would have been capable of rendering good service to the state even apart from music "but that he "had the misfortune of being always persecuted here and was by far less beloved here than in other, greater

Year

1995

Language

English

Publisher

Harper Perennial

Editions

13

Pages

656

ISBN

9780060883447

Data source: Wikidata