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Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief and Deception

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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.

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.