Description: On Mozart is an attempt to suggest how much more complicated a figure Mozart was than popular legends and media portrayals would have us believe. He was certainly a genius--in that, the legends are correct, and the evidence abounds--but he was also a working composer in a society crowded with other working composers, and he had to make a living at his craft to maintain the style of living to which he and his family had become accustomed. By observing a realistic and human genius, the collection of essays portrays a more complex individual than the divinely inspired Mozart of myth, who took his notes directly from God.
Review Quotes: "Originating among the rash of Mozart bicentennial conferences in 1991, this distinguished miscellany from the Woodrow Wilson International Center unites scholars from several disciplines, including musicology..." Julian Rushton, Times Literary Supplement