Comprehensive guide by all the best Mozart experts. Some biography, but mostly about his music.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bravo! THE reference guide to own!,
By A Customer
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This review is from: The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart's Life and Music (Hardcover)
I bought this book, read through it's pages, and learned immeasurable amounts of information concerning Mozart's life and works. I will go to this book, time and again, for any info I may need. If you need info, it's here!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very fine book, of a certain vintage, on Mozart's last 10 years,
By G.C. (St. Louis, MO, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: THE MOZART COMPENDIUM: A Guide to Mozart's Life and Music (Hardcover)
H.C. Robbins Landon was one of the leading scholars of his day on the music of Mozart and Haydn, and this book is a very fine example of his scholarship with the former, focusing on the last 10 years of Mozart's admittedly too-short life. For the most part, this book is definitely aimed at the "intelligent layperson" who may not necessarily have a strong technical background in music. It reads clearly on historical grounds, and readers can enjoy it for the coverage of the historical aspects alone. It does contain some relatively brief discussion of a more technical bent on Mozart's skill in composition, particularly in Chapter 8, covering the six quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn as well as a brief survey of Mozart's piano concertos. The book is copiously illustrated as well.
It must be admitted, however, that this book did appear originally in 1989, so that obviously any later scholarship by Robbins Landon and others must, by definition, be missing. Still, with that in mind, this makes a very substantial introduction for those who want to start to understand Mozart from that decade of 1781 to 1791.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slightly flawed, but still an excellent introduction to Mozart's music, personality and times,
This review is from: The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart's Life and Music (Hardcover)
The Mozart Compendium
A Guide to Mozart's Life and Music Edited by Edited by H. C. Robbins Landon. Schirmer Books, Hardback, 1990. 4to. 452 pp. First published in 1990. Contents Reader's Guide Section 1 CALENDAR OF MOZART'S LIFE, WORKS AND RELATED EVENTS (Else Radant) Section 2 A MOZART-WEBER FAMILY TREE (Malcolm Boyd) Section 3 WHO'S WHO (Malcolm Boyd) Section 4 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Church and State (Otto Biba) Currency Economics Enlightenment and revolution Patronage and the place of the musician in society (Andrew Steptoe) Section 5 MUSICAL BACKGROUND The origins of Mozart's style: Opera (Michael F. Robinson) Instrumental (David Wyn Jones) Sacred (David Humphreys) Musical life in Europe: Salzburg (1756-83) (Clemens Höslinger) France (1764-6 and 1778) (Julian Rushton) England and the Netherlands (1764-6) (Julian Rushton) Germany (1763-81) (Otto Biba) Italy (1770-74) (Julian Rushton) Vienna and the Habsburg Domains (1762-91) (Otto Biba) Mozart's patrons (Malcolm Boyd) Section 6 MOZART AS AN INDIVIDUAL Map of Europe in Mozart's Time Family background Mozart's appearance and character Marriage and Constanze Mozart social world (Andrew Steptoe) THE PORTRAITS (plates 1-15) (incorporating essay by Albi Rosenthal) Mozart's income and finances Mozart as a performer (Andrew Steptoe) Freemasonry (Philippe A. Autexier) Mozart's journeys (Amanda Holden) Mozart's illnesses and death (John Stone) Section 7 MOZART'S OPINIONS AND OUTLOOK Religion and politics Sexual morality Ultimate beliefs Reading matter Attitude to environment Composers and composition Opera (John Stone) Section 8 SOURCES FOR MOZART'S LIFE AND WORKS Family letters Documents Autographs Manuscript copies First and early editions Dissemination of Mozart's music (Cliff Eisen) MOZART'S HAND (plates 16-30) Section 9 A CONSPECTUS OF MOZART'S MUSIC 1762-74: apprenticeship and assimilation 1775-80: compositional refinement 1781-88: productivity and popularity 1789-91: the path to a new style (Esther Cavett-Dunsby) Section 10 THE MUSIC Operas: Mozart's contribution to the genre (John Stone) List of works (Amanda Holden) Symphonies (Cliff Eisen) Concertos (Robert Levin) Miscellaneous instrumental (David Wyn Jones) Dance and ballet (David Wyn Jones) Chamber music: Harmoniemusik and other music for multiple wind instruments (Roger Hellyer) Piano and strings (Derek Carew) Strings alone (Alec Hyatt King & John Arthur) Piano: sonatas and other works Mechanical organ and harmonica (Patrick Gale) Sacred music: Masses Requiem Miscellaneous sacred music (David Humphreys) Oratorios, sacred dramas and cantatas: Voice and orchestra Songs, vocal ensembles and canons Arrangements and additions; transcriptions of works of other composers (David Humphreys) Miscellaneous: Fragments and sketches (John Arthur) Doubtful and spurious (H. C. Robbins Landon) Lost (H. C. Robbins Landon) Section 11 MOZART AND THE THEATRE OF HIS TIME (Peter Branscombe) Section 12 PERFORMANCE PRACTICE (Robin Stowell) Section 13 RECEPTION Contemporary assessments Posthumous assessments Myths and legends The Mozartian topic in literature Mozart's influence on later composers and on the history of music (John Stone) MOZART LITERATURE Biography and biographers Analytical and critical studies Other Mozart studies Bibliography (Alec Hyatt King) Select Bibliography List of Illustrations The Contributors Index =========================================== 2011 marks 220 years since the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the most gifted human beings who ever lived. Telling proof of his genius is the simple fact that even today, more than two centuries later, an astonishing proportion of his enormous output is firmly in the standard repertoire and constantly performed worldwide; not to mention that virtually all his works that have survived are available on record, often in various interpretations. If one wants to get closer to the man behind the great composer, or learn more about the facts of his life, there are several important - though fictional - accounts, most notably Milos Forman's magnificent movie Amadeus (1984) and David Weiss' novel Sacred and Profane (1968), certainly one of the finest novelised biographies ever written. Naturally, these works should be explored with great caution - mostly for pleasure, rather than for information - but to dismiss them as irrelevant will not do. But what does one do when one wants expert scholarship and as much historical accuracy as possible, yet is baffled by the enormous literature about Mozart out there? Answer: one picks The Mozart Compendium. The layout is pretty much same as that in the companion volumes in this series of compendia, if I may put it in so confused a way. The only slight difference is the large number of contributors to The Mozart Compendium, full two dozens excluding the general editor, and the fact that the contribution of the latter is very limited indeed, quite unlike the cases of Beethoven or Wagner where Barry Copper and Barry Millington, respectively, are among the major writers in the volumes. But since Mr Landon is a well-known, and renowned indeed, in the field of Mozartian scholarship, we needn't worry about his editorial competence. The contents of the compendium are generally, if not uniformly, excellent, combining in the usual manner high informative content, rigorous scholarship and pleasant readability. As usual, and as explained by Mr Landon in the short Reader's Guide, references are kept to minimum for the sake of clarity, and sources are indicated only in cases of more controversial opinions; there is no need, however, to doubt the integrity of the contributors and those who are hungry for more may start with the jaw-dropping bibliography in the end of the book. There are few mild disappointments, mostly concerned with the part about the music where the treatment is somewhat superficial and rather perfunctory. One may try to understand. Mozart's productivity was astoundingly stupendous - his versatility was even more so. Not only did he compose in more or less every possible genre that existed at the time, but he did create at least several masterpieces in it: symphonies, operas, piano sonatas and concerti, violin sonatas and concerti, string quartets and quintets, piano trios, concerti for flute, oboe or clarinet, serenades and divertimenti, enormous amount of masses and church music - the diversity is mind-boggling. So, indeed, is the quality. Many of Mozart's works, of course, are juvenilia of purely historical interest only, but even among his early creations there sometimes are astonishingly mature and powerful pieces. My personal favourites are the three Divertimenti K. 136-138; it simply defies belief that Mozart was sixteen when he composed these gems for strings, full of passion, joy, longing and sadness that many a great composer never reached even in their maturity. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mozart - I am indebted to Alfred Einstein for pointing out that to me - is that his genius reached the greatest heights both in the instrumental music as well as in the opera. This is something rare, not to say unique, in the history of Western classical music. How many operas did Beethoven compose? Only one on which he worked for years, and he never really was at home with writing for voices anyway, heretical as this may sound. What did Wagner, Verdi or Puccini compose besides their masterpieces for the stage? Very little indeed; though the quality is usually very high, such compositions were almost purely incidental (or, in the case of Wagner, insignificant juvenilia) and they never had the success of their operas; even Verdi's Requiem, which is one of the most popular in its genre (and certainly the most operatic!), never was half as famous as Rigoletto or La Traviata. The situation is no different with composers renowned for their instrumental music, or at best vocal music that extends to the song or oratorio but certainly not to the opera. How many operas did Brahms compose? Not even one. Does anybody remember today the operas of Schubert and Schumann? Hardly. How many operas did Liszt compose? But one - a charming childhood's attempt but nothing more. Needless to say, the instrumental music of all those composers is firmly in the standard repertoire and has long since been recognised to be among the greatest ever composed; so, in many cases, are their songs or choral works. But Mozart's case is radically different. In addition to the enormous amount of symphonies, concerti, serenades etc., there are at least four operas by him that are performed almost everywhere in the world: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Die Zauberflöte (1791). Only slightly less well-known are Cosi fan tutte (1789), Idomeneo (1781) and La clemenza di Tito (1791),... Read more ›
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