The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia [Hardcover]

Cliff Eisen (Editor), Simon P. Keefe (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2006

Mozart's enduring popularity, among music lovers as a composer and among music historians as a subject for continued study, lies at the heart of The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. This reference book functions both as a starting point for information on specific works, people, places and concepts as well as a summation of current thinking about Mozart. The extended articles on genres reflect the latest in scholarship and new ways of thinking about the works while the articles on people and places provide historical framework, as well as interpretation.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

With the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006, there are a number of new books on the ever-popular composer, including this comprehensive encyclopedia. The editors are well-known British musicologists. Eisen has written many articles on the composer, and Keefe also edited the Cambridge Companion to Mozart (2003), a collection of essays on Mozart's music.

The encyclopedia has about 500 alphabetically arranged entries on everything from five pages on Travel to a paragraph on ^ Traeg, Johann, a publisher of Mozart's music, and from four pages on Genius to one paragraph on Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. There are about 50 contributors, the majority from English or U.S. universities. The entries have a consistent style, scholarly but readable. Most entries end with a short bibliography. See references often direct readers from individual works such as 'Coronation' Concerto to entries such as Concertos, but actual mention of the work can be hard to find within the six-page Concertos, which is loosely arranged chronologically by Kochel Number. An index entry with a page reference would have helped, and such problems could be eliminated altogether by an online version.

Although much of the volume discusses the historical aspects of Mozart, there are current references. For example, the entry Mozart in literature mentions current novels based on the composer. There are no musical notations or photographs, but a number of tables are provided; an interesting one lists the date, duration, place, and symptoms of Mozart's illnesses. The appendixes include a complete list of works, a list of Mozart films, a list of operas on DVD and video, and Mozart organizations and Web sites. This encyclopedia is the definitive source for Mozart information and should be a required purchase for music and large public and academic libraries. Christine Bulson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Like all good single volume encyclopedias, this one is also a delight for the casual browser who is not looking for anything in particular. Opening the book to read in an idle moment invariably provides both pleasure and instruction."
-Opera News

"...contains some of the finest writing on Mozart I have read."
-New York Review of Books

"Entries are beautifully and entertainingly written by some of the best Mozart scholars in the world. [...] If all such gifts come as beautifully packaged as this one, it will indeed give Mozart lovers something to sing about."
- American Reference Books Annual

"...the ultimate contribution to Mozart this year. The paper exudes quality and the entries are deft and well-organised."
The Independent

"...a handsome, lavishly produced volume, offers easy access to all the information most music lovers will need about a favourite composer."
Sunday Times

"...for those who must know absolutely every fact about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...the Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia leaves no Kochel number unturned."
- The Times

"With this lovingly fashioned book, volume can sometimes come in the form of minutiae, the details which, ironically enough, give what's essentially a learned tome a narrative thrust. Mozart is lifted from these pages, especially so for those who've long thrilled to his music; no matter how well-versed one is in the biographical chronology: the opera plots, the innuendoes of rivals, the scholarly points of contention, the paper trails of commissions--I'd argue that with this work Mozart the man--at least in the print record--reads as real as we're going to get him, outside of his own letters."
-Fanfare

"This encyclopedia is the definitive source for Mozart information and should be a required purchase for music and large public and academic libraries."
- Booklist

"Cambridge University Press has issued a lavish new Mozart Encyclopedia."
-Tara Pepper, Newsweek International

“Thematic studies, such as “Sources for Mozart's Life and Works” and the biographical article on Mozart, are quite long and packed with useful information. The appendixes offer hard-to-find information about videos of operas and Mozart films, as well as addresses for organizations and Web sites devoted to Mozart and his work. The pool of contributors is a distinguished one of recognized Mozart authorities.”
-Choice

"Aims to serve as a starting point for research as well as a summary of the latest in Mozart scholarship."
-Library Journal

"...this first resource to cover both Mozart's life and oeuvre is a browser's delight. The nearly four dozen contributors are international musicologists noted for their Mozart scholarship, and the editors have done a good job maintaining a consistent style and tone to their entries...An indispensable addition to all collections."
- Library Journal, Larry Lipkis, Moravian College

"An essential referencework that provides comprehensive coverage of Mozart's life and works."
- Nineteenth Century Music

"Extensively cross-checked and indexed, this tome takes advantage of all the latest academic research to provide detailed and comprehensive entries on every person, place or thing involved with the composer's life."
-Gavriel Fiske

"This was a book waitingto happen, a handy reference for all things Mozartean: biography, repertoire, cultural milieux."
- James M. Keller High Fidelity
"...the encyclopedia does an admirable job of covering Mozart's life, his music, and the world in which he lived through concise articles written by leading European and American scholars....[It] should prove to be a valuable reference book for Mozart-lovers of all stripes. By intentionally casting a wide net, the editors and the volume's fifty contributors have created a rich resource that encompasses Mozart's music and it's historical and biographical frameworks."
Laurel E. Zeiss, Baylor University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 674 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521856590
• ISBN-13: 978-0521856591
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,292,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Big Book, A Big Price, But It Really Is Worth It!, July 13, 2006

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (Hardcover)

For those brave souls who are willing to see this beautifully written and designed volume as a major investment for the library, the treasures in store here are plentiful. As the title suggests this is a compendium of all that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote - operas, chamber works, choral works, symphonies, overtures, concerti - they are all here.

Wisely Editors Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe did not venture to write all the entries themselves, but instead solicited some superb essayists, historians, musicologists, and academicians to take us through not only the various works Mozart composed, but also the bits and particles of his life and legacy (e.g. the Salieri Scandal, his medical history, even the omnipresent Austrian Mozartkugeln!) that contribute to the readability of this volume.

Plan to spend time as you wish to pick up this heavy tome and turn to any page at all. Whether analyses of his opera plots and characteristics or performance practices or various composer's plagiarisms or just good gossip suit the tone of the time allotted, there is something to treasure on every page. This is a very fine book, well bound to support a long shelf life of repeated readings, and certainly worthy of inclusion in every Mozartean's library! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 06

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Mozart source!, May 21, 2009

By 

Kashaknishra "Kashaknishra" (Brighton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (Paperback)

This excellent book proves to be a most valuable resource for the research required in writing program notes. And in paperback form, it is quite a bargain. Though its information is scattered into an impressively wide range of topics appropriate to an encyclopedia, the thorough index provides all the cross-references to any chosen topic one could desire. The coverage is both accurate and up-to-date (published 2006), so far as the present musicologist can tell. It reads well, fascinatingly so. I recommend it highly for anyone with a deep interest in Mozart and his music. Though it may well be found in any good music library, it is also a most worthy addition to one's home library, where it will also provide compelling reading.

2.0 out of 5 stars Needs more editing, January 7, 2012

By 

Steve - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (Paperback)

Just opened the book for the first time and already found 2 mistakes. Under piano sonatas: k. 279, 2nd movement is in the parallel minor, not subdominant as the text implies. Also, k. 310 2nd movement is not in the relative major, but is in the major VI of A-minor. Hardly a reliable source for program notes or research. I'm wary as I read any more of that book.