The Mostly Mozart Guide to Mozart

Carl Vigeland

Description

A fresh, accessible guide to Mozart's life and works

Over a period of roughly twenty years, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed more than 600 finished pieces of music. If you were the director of a major symphony orchestra, you could program only works by Mozart for an entire year—and still you would barely have scratched the surface of the composer's immense, and immensely moving, body of work.

The Mostly Mozart Guide to Mozart is an accessible, insightful, and entertaining resource for music lovers looking for a deeper understanding of the genius of Mozart. It combines a brief and revealing account of his life and times with a comprehensive survey of his major compositions. You'll also discover accounts of major performances, fascinating anecdotes about Mozart and his works, comments from artists past and present, and tips on what to listen for when you listen to Mozart. And, a selected discography will help you develop a fantastic collection of recordings by the finest modern musicians playing Mozart's greatest music.

Filled with insightful quotes from fellow composers, critics, and Mozart admirers, as well as informative illustrations, The Mostly Mozart Guide to Mozart answers all of your questions about this transcendent genius and his music, and probably some you never thought to ask.
PREFACE.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

THE HISTORY OF THE MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL.

INTRODUCTION by Jane Moss and Louis Langrée.

PART ONE Mozart's Biography: A Hero's Life.

On the Road.

Home in Salzburg.

Vienna and the World.

Chronology.

PART TWO Mozart's Works: Let There Be Music.

Symphonies and Orchestral Works.

Concertante.

Concertos for Strings and Winds.

Chamber Music.

Vocal Music.

Piano Music.

Opera.

CONCLUSION: MOZART AND MORTALITY.

A PERSONAL NOTE.

READING MOZART.

NOTES TO PAGES XV–XXI.

CREDITS.

INDEX.

Sujets

• Musique
• Culture musicale
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Amadeus
• Lincoln Center
• Music
• Classical
• Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
• Biographies of Mozart
• Genres
• Styles

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 08 juillet 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470493762
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
PREFACE
Acknowledgements
THE HISTORY OF THE MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL
Introduction
 
PART ONE - Mozart’s Biography
 
On the Road
Home in Salzburg
Vienna and the World
 
PART TWO - Mozart’s Works
Symphonies and Orchestral Works
 
SELECTED SYMPHONIES
 
Concertante
 
SELECTED CONCERTANTE
 
Concertos for Strings and Winds
 
SELECTED CONCERTOS FOR STRINGS AND WINDS
 
Chamber Music
 
SELECTED CHAMBER MUSIC
 
Vocal Music
 
Masses
SELECTED MASSES
Other Choral Works
Requiem, K. 626
SELECTED OTHER CHORAL WORKS
 
Piano Music
 
Concertos and Sonatas
Other Works with Piano
SELECTED PIANO CONCERTOS
SELECTED PIANO CONCERTOS
SELECTED PIANO SONATAS
SELECTED OTHER WORKS FOR PIANO
 
Opera
 
Early Operas
IDOMENEO, K. 366, AND DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL, K. 384
The da Ponte Collaborations
THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, K. 492
DON GIOVANNI, K. 527
COSÌ FAN TUTTE, K. 588
ENCHANTMENT: THE MAGIC FLUTE, K. 620
 
A PERSONAL NOTE
READING MOZART
NOTES TO PAGES XV-XXI
CREDITS
INDEX

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Vigeland, Carl A.
The Mostly Mozart guide to Mozart/Carl Vigeland; introduction by Jane Moss and Louis Langrée
p. cm. Includes index. Includes discography.
eISBN : 978-0-470-49376-2
1. Mozart,Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791—Criticism and interpretation. I. Mostly Mozart Festival. II. Title.
ML410. M9V44 2009 780.92—dc22 [B]
2009009728
 
From time to time the news that Mozart’s skull has been identified causes a brief sensation, only for it to be discovered that it is not his after all. In any case the mortal remains and their whereabouts are not of great importance. What is important, perennially, is not the skull but what was inside it, which lives on in the minds and hearts of unnumbered thousands for whom it is a reason for being alive.

  —David Cairns, author of Mozart and His Operas
PREFACE
Few composers in Western classical music have generated a greater wealth of commentary than Mozart, in part because his vast creation was concentrated in such a tragically brief life. As a consequence, a guide to Mozart and his music must of necessity be selective, rather than encyclopedic. In addition, because Mozart was not only prolific but inventive beyond any degree of ordinary imagining, an orderly division of his oeuvre into neat, tidy categories runs the risk of missing his foremost accomplishment: changing the way we listen to music.
As you use this guide, therefore, keep in mind that everything he did is related. To apprehend this fully might demand the equivalent of a multidimensional musical hologram.
In piece after piece, Mozart redefined the art in which he composed, and the repercussions of that revolution are with us still. He both built on what had come before him and left a legacy for other composers to learn from, be inspired by, and add to. That process continues today. To appropriate the phrase that sprang up spontaneously after the death of the jazz icon Charlie Parker, Mozart lives.
Created from a screen print by Robert Motherwell, this poster celebrated the 1991 Mostly Mozart Festival.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nurtured by my parents, Hans and Ruth Vigeland, both musicians, and by my godfather, the conductor Josef Krips, I began my formal Mozart education with several Mozart duets that my childhood piano teacher, Hazel McNamara, assigned to me when I was eight or nine years old. Haidie, as I called her, taught me an appreciation for Mozart’s sense of form, his rhythmic and harmonic nuance, and his love of melody. Sitting with me at the piano bench in the home she shared with her sister and brother-in-law, she reached over with her right hand to correct fingerings and sang my part while I played. Decades later, when I am listening to a favorite Mozart concerto, I can still hear Haidie’s voice and see her smile when I played something well. I owe her a debt of thanks that I can never repay.
My gratitude extends to my brother, Nils, a composer and pianist, who helped me here with questions of music theory and technique. I am also grateful to my wife, Bonnie, who brought home books and recordings for me from the Hampshire College library. Thanks to the artists who mused on Mozart: Emanuel Ax, Sir James Galway, Rob Kapilow, James Levine, Amnon Levy, and Hao Jiang Tian and Lois Morris, who graciously allowed us to adapt a small portion of Along the Roaring River: My Wild Ride from Mao to the Met. Thanks also to Ann R. Maggs at the Amherst College music library, from which, despite tardiness with due dates and the disaster of a midsummer flood in my basement office, I was able to borrow scores and Mozartiana freely and frequently. Professor Norman Sims, the chair of the University of Massachusetts online journalism certificate program, for which I teach a course on writing about music, lent me his enthusiastic encouragement. Moral support came often in the form of e-mails and voice mails from friends, including Denis Laflamme, the founder of the Esselon Café in Hadley, Massachusetts, where I wrote parts of this book, and Larry Pruner, the proprietor of Valley Books. Thanks also to Gwen Briere, Wayne S. Kabak, Stanley J. Rabinowitz, Sandra J. Staub, and Christopher Vyce for advice, friendship, and counsel, and to the Corporation of Yaddo, where I revised my initial drafts during a month long residency. Finally, I wish to thank Jane Moss, artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center and, at John Wiley & Sons, production editor Rachel Meyers, freelance copy editor Patricia Waldygo, and my editor, Hana Lane. Hana first broached the subject of this volume over a sunny Manhattan breakfast and with great patience and tact guided me through the labyrinthine turns inevitably encountered by anyone lucky enough to be writing about Mozart. This is her book, too.
THE HISTORY OF THE MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL
Mozart is the greatest composer of all . . . the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely “found it”—that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed.
—Albert Einstein
 
One genius reflects on another, with the perspective of nearly two hundred years adding to the weight of Einstein’s conclusion. Yet only fifteen years after Mozart’s death in 1791, a court musician wrote: “He was a meteor on the musical horizon, for whose appearance we were not yet prepared.” 1 Admired in his age and in ours, Mozart bequeathed to the ages musical riches in which everyone can delight.
 
 
Lincoln Center’s air-conditioning—still a technological novelty in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but a welcome blessing in the sweltering humidity of a New York summer—presented both an opportunity and a challenge: how to fill the halls to best advantage programmatically and financially during the summer, when the resident companies were not performing. At that time, the “season” began in mid-September and ended in late May, creating the possibility that the plaza could become an urban desert and the halls a financial drain during June, July and August. Yet the Center’s planners were motivated by more than just the need for additional revenue to keep its operations in the black. One of their primary mandates was