Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 [Hardcover]

Stanley Sadie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 5, 2005

The first comprehensive life and works of the composer in over sixty years, by a leading Mozart specialist.

Our understanding of Mozart's life and music has broadened immensely in recent years. Much new material has come to light, including discoveries of musical sources and fresh ways of interpreting known ones. Studies in the chronology of Mozart's works, his compositional process, his relationship to the world around him—these and many other areas have yielded new thinking that has challenged or overturned the inherited wisdom. In Mozart: The Early Years renowned music historian Stanley Sadie discusses all aspects of the composer's life and music, relating them to the social, economic, cultural, and musical environments in which he worked. Drawing substantially on family correspondence, Sadie illuminates Mozart's world and his relationships with employers, colleagues, and family. Individual works are discussed in sequence and related to the events of the composer's life. 16 pages of illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

More a biography of Mozart's music than a study of the man himself, Sadie's final opus—he died this year after publishing some 30 books—should delight musicologists but puzzle general readers. Not only is the music Sadie's primary interest, he does not believe it reveals anything, necessarily, about its composer. Indeed, he reminds readers not to impose contemporary values on Mozart's era. "Romantic eyes," for example, might see certain minor-key compositions as expressions of Mozart's grief over his mother's death, but Sadie argues that there's "no real reason to imagine that he used his music as [a] vehicle for the expression of his own personal feelings." Likewise, modern critics expect to see a certain type of progress in Mozart's oeuvre, with subsequent works building and elaborating former ones, in ways alien to Mozart on his contemporaries. Sadie is deft at situating various styles of musical composition in their cultural context: preferences for serious vs. comic opera, shorter vs. longer works, ecclesiastical vs. lay sponsorship, etc. But Sadie's real forte is his skill at dissecting musical composition—breaking it down to its constituent elements to understand its power—which is why this volume is indispensable for serious scholars, and mostly unreadable by everyone else. Illus. (Dec.)
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From Booklist

Sadie, editor of that Everest of musical scholarship, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, died on March 21, 2005, leaving incomplete a massive biography of that musical Hillary, Mozart. He had finished the first volume, whose 2005 publication makes it the first splash in what may be a tidal wave of Mozart tomes in response to the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth. It is elegant, precise, and highly readable. Each chapter first reports the events of Mozart's life, then analytically reviews his compositions during the period covered. Sadie quotes extensively from father Leopold's letters written while the family toured its two astonishing children (Mozart's sister, Nannerl, was a precocious keyboard player) as well as from eyewitnesses of their performances and Nannerl's much later recollections--all of this is delicious reading in itself. Sadie's music discussions use only commonly defined terms, and his tracing of borrowings and influences is gratifyingly diligent. In short, this is the rare scholarly work fully accessible by the interested common reader. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 624 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (December 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061124
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061123
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,084,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( M ) > Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent biography of Mozart's formative years, November 27, 2007

By 

Mike Birman (Brooklyn, New York USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 (Hardcover)

Stanley Sadie intended to write a general biography of Mozart's life, following the completion of his labors on the titanic New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which he shepherded into existence. Sadie, himself, wrote the splendid Mozart entry, which was published separately. He completed the manuscript of the first volume of his two volume Mozart biography, covering Mozart's formative years in Salzburg and his extensive youthful travel throughout the music centers of Europe, just before passing away. Sadly, we will never see the completed work. Nevertheless, we are fortunate that we have the first extensive new biography of the early, Salzburg Mozart in more than half a century.

The first thing that strikes the modern reader concerning Mozart's Salzburg years is how much of his early music remains only partially known. Many of his youthful operas remain a cypher to the average listener. His extensive number of early sonatas for piano or violin and piano are also still relatively unheard. Most of his adolescent symphonies remain unplayed. It is not until Mozart reaches the advanced age of 19, by which time he has been composing for at least 14 years, when he quickly composes his 5 violin concertos, that we are on familiar compositional ground. The nature and extent of Mozart's numerous journeys in search of employment are a revelation to the average music lover. Europe's complex social and musical scene in the middle 18th Century, one in which Mozart was obliged to operate as a genius endowed with a profoundly independent spirit, is undiscovered country that 21st Century research is only beginning to reveal as a vast mosaic of fierce political repression and incipient rebellion. A landscape that Mozart would effect peripherally before transforming it with his mature, revolutionary operas. These significant aspects of Mozart's early years are carefully discussed in this splendid biography. Ultimately, it is Mozart's nearly incomprehensible genius that Sadie struggles to explain. He succeeds admirably.

And yet.... Despite the occasional Mozartean autograph manuscript exhibiting the evidence of compositional struggle (such as the six Haydn string quartets, with their chiaroscuro pages of cross-hatched deletions, amendations and corrections) offered as proof of his humanity, the sheer number of his masterpieces, written so swiftly and with such apparent effortlessness, prove that there is something inexplicable in Mozart. The spell he wove was miraculous. Mozart's musical martyrdom made him a hero to the Romantic generation whilst raising a sea of questions even Stanley Sadie's splendid biography must leave unanswered. The 19th Century saw something Godlike in Mozart's creative genius. Even now, in the 21st, that thought refuses to die. I recommend this biography for explaining the legend's birth, even though it cannot hope to reveal its wellspring.

Mike Birman

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Debunking a myth: No musical immaturity in young Mozart, January 31, 2010

By 

Roo.Bookaroo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 (Hardcover)

This is a vital book by the leading musicologist and Mozart scholar of our times, who died of ALS before completing the second part of his analysis, covering the famous last ten years (1781-1791).
This first book is aimed at a new generation of music lovers who want to get an appreciation and knowledge of Mozart's early music, from the first compositions scribbled by the child exhibited all over Europe by his father Leopold, up to the decisive year, in 1781, when Mozart, at 25, escaped the stultifying environment of Salzburg, and, in the same stroke, freed himself from Leopold's control.

Sadie's grand purpose is to debunk all the myths about Mozart's music that have accreted like carbuncles since his very childhood, by going back to the music itself, carefully analyzing it, and dissecting it to precisely identify the sources of its unequalled charm and entrancing power. A lot of grounding in musical knowledge and vocabulary is helpful in following his arguments.

This is where Sadie's musical expertise is invaluable. He brings a fresh vision and a professional understanding of Mozart's music, focusing on analyzing its impact and restoring a sense of its intrinsic value. Sadie places himself at the forefront of this new fresh look at Mozart's music, discarding all the popular misperceptions and dispensing with all the established clichés.

To appreciate the shock value of Sadie's radical analysis of Mozart's early music and its "rehabilitation", it is worth contrasting it against the background of cultural and historical conceptions Sadie intends to displace.

In his own time, in the 18th century, from his earliest age, Mozart was considered a young prodigy and supreme musician. But one whose music tended to be too complex and intense for the general public. He was seen as an extraordinarily prolific composer who could not limit his musical imagination and control his non-stop creativity, always keeping the floodgates open to a rushing stream of themes and musical ideas that followed one another in an extremely fast flow.

Aristocratic connoisseurs would complain about this unbounded wealth of musical ideas that went too fast to be even appreciated, even less remembered. Nobody could cope with the unstoppable abundance of his music. His father Leopold tried to remind him of the need to check this torrent-like creativity; professional musicians and singers would occasionally complain. And as far as "humming" it, his audiences knew better to forget about it. Designed for a refined audience of cultivated connoisseurs -- who could sing, play instruments, direct and compose, knowing much more about music than the average modern public -- how could Mozart's music ever become frankly popular, easy to remember, easy to sing?

Even the deeply dramatic and even disturbing side of his music, which rarely failed to appear -- what came to be called the "demonic" side of Mozart -- was criticized for breaching the standards expected by 18th century polite society for which music was primarily a mainstay of social entertainment.

Mozart was regarded as a maverick, an independent soul who went his own marvelous, but incomprehensible and surprising way. The general consensus was that Mozart was too much his own proud master, persistent in having his own way, unmanageable in the framework of any aristocratic court. Throughout his youth he continuously tried to flee his Salzburg employer, the hated but influential archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, and other European courts were hesitant to hire such a free and so self-sure spirit.
Leopold supervised his traveling during all this period, but made the mistake of directing the young Mozart mostly towards continental courts, where subservience was generally expected, whereas he might have been freer and luckier in London, where both Händel and later Haydn managed to succeed.
Mozart's immense stroke of luck in Vienna was to link up with another independent-minded free-lancer, the gifted adventurer and librettist Da Ponte and to create with him unforgettable masterpieces, which secured Mozart's place in the musical pantheon.

In the 19th century, the Romantics seized on Mozart's life as the very example of the misunderstood genius, battling traditions, convention and conformity, always bypassed for the top court jobs by mediocrities, and paying the usual price. Mozart versus Salieri. Mozart's dramatic death just short of 36 became a cause for universal grief and the foundation of an unusual cult to his incommensurable genius.
Mozart's music became appreciated for its grace, lightness, clarity, as the epitome of delicately delightful music favored by young society ladies dabbling in piano music or by orchestras offering pleasant entertainment as an antidote to the soul-wrenching and hyper-heavy music of the Romantics.
Compared to Beethoven, Schumann and Wagner, Mozart's music suddenly took on celestial colors, more fitted for angels than the tortured torments of Romantic music. He became the "divine" Mozart, by opposition to the demented and turbulent music of the 19th century.

In the 20th century, radio and recordings made available Mozart's opera performances and led to a popular image principally based on the few Mozart operas usually favored by theaters for their potential appeal to a large audience. The famous last "five" operas, Die Abführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), the three Da Ponte libretti -- Le Nozze, Don Giovanni, Cosi -- plus the Magic Flute, became the music associated with Mozart, an image buttressed by the last three "great" symphonies, (39th, 40th, and 41st), a handful of the "great" piano concertos, the violin concertos, and the major wind and string serenades, including above all Die Kleine Nachtmusik.
Mozart became the "great" Mozart known essentially for the music of his last ten years, and even more specifically his last five years (1786-1791). He became the iconic example of the "classical" age, by opposition to the "Romantic" age and the "modern" age.

Thus an "established" conception of Mozart tended to be accepted as common currency towards the end of the 20th century, a view still favored by the older generations. This image is taken as a given, and described by ordinary reviewers and commentators with a variety of clichés that have become tired from overuse.

This simplified view roughly goes something like this: Mozart keeps learning, practicing and "growing" until he begins "mature" life at 26 in 1781, when he finally starts "blossoming" into his final works.
The "real", "true," Mozart, in this easy-to-understand scheme, is believed to be the one of the last few years, with everything that came before being interpreted as just a slow progress towards the perfection of the last works. The "essence" of Mozart was assumed to remain in a potential state, in slow gestation, during his early years, to become actualized, the promising seed finally blooming or blossoming, when he connected with Vienna and Da Ponte.
This is still strongly an Aristotelian and medieval view of an "essential" Mozart lying in wait in the "latent" Mozart of the European travels and the Salzburg years, until he got his famous kick in the butt by Count Arco on June 8, 1781, and was forced to find his freedom and fly on his own wings, abandoning Salzburg and settling for good in Vienna.

It is clear that musical historians have not been immune to the influence of the concept of universal "progress" spread initially in Europe by the Enlightenment and further enshrined in the world views of most major thinkers of the 19th century. Time became destiny. Reality was revealed at the end of history. And, as it happens, we were the lucky ones to know what the end of history was meant to be.
This new view of universal progress and growth, marching towards a final state of perfection, has been applied to everything -- culture, history, technology and science, and the human species as well. And this is still the accepted, unquestioned, credo of Western popular culture.

Similarly, the progress of any artist was seen as gradual improvement until he or she reached a "fully" developed stage. In this context, the so-called "maturation" of Mozart became an unquestioned given.
However, in the specific case of Mozart, at the end of the so-called "maturation" period, in 1791, came la Clemenza di Tito. What was that? Regress? Return to immaturity? Or simply the constraints of a troubled trip at a troubled time of Mozart's life? Still containing magnificent music, even if it puts to sleep all the tired New York businessmen who affect to go to the Met at the end of a long day at the office.

So, it is undeniable that there's a subtle distortion in the popular image of a "true" Mozart revealed only in his last few years. It is an illusion to think that all of Mozart's earlier phases were only a prelude to the great blooming of the 1781-1791 period.
If Mozart had survived in the 1790's and the 1800's, the "mature" Mozart would have sounded very different, in a way that nobody will ever know.
But we stopped the clock in 1791, when we assumed that the "essential" Mozart had supposedly finally emerged and was set for good in the popular imagination.
But this is only the Mozart of our perception, as we know him, fixated in the late 1780's and early 1790's by an early death. The psychological illusion is to set the last period of Mozart's short life as the measure of all earlier works and the consecration of his full potential.

But the so-called "maturation" was not over, some could claim that it was only beginning. If it ever was going to take place, it was still a long time away. After all, Mozart in 1791 was still barely a young adult in his early... Read more ›