Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief and Deception [Hardcover]

Professor David Schroeder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0300075421 | ISBN-13: 978-0300075427

The complex relationship between Mozart and his father has fascinated music lovers for centuries, and much effort has been spent examining the letters exchanged by the two men. This provocative book offers a new reading of these letters, placing them in the context of the stylized strategies of the eighteenth-century epistolary tradition and arguing that they reveal a rebelliousness deep within Mozart's life and work.

David Schroeder contends that Mozart's father, Leopold, intended to write a biography of his son and designed his correspondence to be published as a type of moral biography. He bombarded his son with letters that often began with amusing anecdotes and then offered a torrent of advice on every imaginable subject. Dealing with these often biting letters presented Mozart with a challenge. He could react with anger, but that type of revolt only fired Leopold's criticism, and it proved much more effective to be evasive or dissimulating. Mozart's letters, in contrast to the moral German-styled letters he received, came closer to the more wily French letters of the philosophes, Voltaire especially, whose style he would have discovered while living in Paris. Eventually Mozart turned the correspondence into an epistolary game, willfully making his letters unprintable and deliberately subverting his father's plans.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The prevalance of the epistolary novel in the eighteenth century led Leopold Mozart to conceive of a biography of his son Wolfgang that would be crafted from their letters. Wolfgang rebelled at the moralistic advice in the letters Leopold wrote him, however, and inserted deliberate deceptions--descriptions of events that never happened--into his own letters. Wolfgang also rebelled against the Enlightenment that Leopold embraced, preferring the rebelliousness of Voltaire. Wolfgang's operas, especially The Magic Flute, expressed support of the people against authority subtly, to escape court censorship. Also, the carnival season before Lent was his favorite time of year; he played Harlequin and the German equivalent, Hanswurst, in real masquerades and in scatological letters to close friends. Several biographers, Schroeder points out, take the filthy letters as evidence of a deranged, childish personality. This, however, misreads the intelligent wit in the letters as a whole and their artfulness in playing to the general public and the particular recipient simultaneously. Wolfgang may have deceived his father, but Schroeder exposes him as the playful person he was. Alan Hirsch

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300075421
• ISBN-13: 978-0300075427
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 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: #538,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( M ) > Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
  • #60 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Composers & Musicians > Classical

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dearest Father, June 21, 2006

By 

A reader from Boston, MA (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief and Deception (Hardcover)

For those of us with an obsessive curiosity about this extraordinary human being (yet one with whom we can so easily identify because of his many ordinary faults and trials), Mozart in Revolt illuminates a very revealing and rich aspect of his life: his correspondence. The author's main theme is that Mozart, in the course of his 1778 sojourn in Paris, and as a result of his friendships with sophisticated Parisian personalities, learned and developed a then-fashionable mode of correspondence based on concealment, subterfuge, half-truths and lies. In this way he was able to parry his father's moralistic and oppressive letters and avoid both rejection of the father he loved and the humiliation of having to introject the disrespect implicit in letters that might have been intended for a callow teenager, and not the early-20s young man that he was. Mozart continued to correspond in this manner for the rest of his life, adjusting his letter-writing personality for each correspondent and occasion. The author describes the importance of letter writing in 18th century Europe, its historical context and its significance in a developing popular culture. In the course of discussion we learn many interesting facts about Mozart's life, such as the practice of creating pictorial targets with timely and personal themes for the apparently highly enjoyable pasttime of shooting airguns in the parlor with one's friends and family. Mozart had a wide circle of correspondents besides his father -- his wife, his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, friends, possible/probable lovers, fellow Masons, et alii -- but the bulk of this book deals with contemporary letter writing in the context of the lengthy and ultimately sad history of his correspondence with his father.

5.0 out of 5 stars How to love a parent and at the same time keep your sanity., December 18, 1999

By 

Deborah Lovelace - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief and Deception (Hardcover)

A refreshing examination of the interesting relationship between a father and son. This is a reinterpretation of Mozart's own words in light of the cultural "wit" of the time.