Customer Reviews

Mozart And The Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment, Freemasonry, Josephinian reforms, and Mozart converged upon Vienna in the 1780s to produce perhaps the most intensely creative epoch in the history of the human race. Till takes you there and serves it all up as has no other author I have read. The wealth of information here is too great to be absorbed in one reading, but just as one continues to enjoy Mozart's music with successive exposures, so may one expect re-reading of Till to be informative and pleasurable.

This study by Till really makes a Mozart lover re-think some of the ideas or preconceptions he had about the opera's.
The author doesn't approach the opera's as a musicologist might do (no musical analysis or musical examples) , but analyses the literary and philosophical contents of each work very carefully. It offers a lot of background and really tries to capture the essence of each piece separately.
Really strong is the part about Don Giovanni, where Till argues that the introduction of the divine is not simply a remnant of the old Molière-play, but is in fact one of the central elements of Enlightened thought. It shows convincingly that Mozart nor his audiences had any sympathy for Don Giovanni (unlike most people today) and that he is not at all a free-thinking liberal who willingly says no to God. This goes to the heart of the opera and reveals to us that even today, this opera is poorly interpreted by directors and scholars alike.
The most disappointing part of the book is perhaps the chapter on Die Zauberflöte. This is the only opera which Till has trouble explaining some of the oddities involving Enlightened thinking in connection with this opera. He doesn't develop the Masonic context as well as one should expect and that's a pity, since Mozart's central message of universal respect regarding other peoples religion, thoughts and lifestyle is so tremendously important, especially today!
However, Till does a good job putting Mozart's work in there proper philosophical and cultural context and really makes his reader consider aspects that never before occurred to him.
The book is really well written, has excellent structure and is thought provoking. For this price, you cannot miss!

'An erudite mix of music, history, philosophy, biography, sociology, and even depth psychology adding up to a triumphant study of Mozart's supreme masterworks...Few books provide such a satisfying exploration of the thoughts and feelings from which great art is born. The subtlety and richness of Till's argument cannot be conveyed by precis: A feast for the intellectually adventurous.' Kirkus Review

This is a very fascinating book, and worth reading in many ways. For all its virtues it is seriously flawed and misinformed on the subject of Mozart and Freemasonry. I have recently published an article which argues at length with some of Till's contentions, and presents a more informed view of Freemasonry in relation to this great man. It can be read on the Masonic Music site, under Mozart: A Resolution of Mozart and Freemasonry: Enlightenment and the Persistence of Counter-Reformation By Peter Paul Fuchs, 32nd Degree in PDF.