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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
the most natural coincidence easily becomes an oracle,
By
This review is from: Mozart's Journey to Prague and a Selection of Poems (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
When I came across this novel (a Penguin Books edition, without the poems) I had no idea that Morike had written novels - I was aware of his poetry through the music of Hugo Wolf. So what would a novel be like by the man who wrote this?
Let me be,O World!/Do not tempt me with gifts of love,/Let this heart keep to itself/its joys and its sorrows. I do not know what I mourn for/it is an unknown grief;/only through tears I see/the sun's clear light. Often (I am hardly conscious of it)/bright joy flashes/through the gloom that oppresses me;/bringing rapture to my heart. Let me be,O World!/Do not tempt me with gifts of love,/Let this heart keep to itself/its joys and its sorrows. It is a beautiful poem, and so is the novel. But the novel is so different - full of rapture - the bright flashes are sustained. But there is also just a touch of distress - just what an author needs to keep the reader alert. This is a beautiful novel about Wolfgang and Costanze. Did Morike have any real knowledge of the Mozarts that he could produce such a convincing image of the scurrilous, caring but often-distracted Wolfgang? And what of Costanze - she is so wonderful in this novel. Perhaps Morike helped frame the vision we have of Mozart, but perhaps he also reflected common understanding of the man and his character accurately.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A genius with fits of melancholy,
This review is from: Mozart's Journey to Prague (Oneworld Classics) (Paperback)
Mozart's Journey to Prague (first published in 1856) is a briefly written novella of 91 pages. German composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, living in Austria, is on his way from his home in Vienna to Prague with his wife Constanze in September 1787. At the age of 31, he is about to stage the first production of "Don Giovanni." In Vienna audiences thought his production of "Il Seraglio" was delightful; "Cosa rara" was charming; and "The Marriage of Figaro" was an unexpected and lamentable failure. But the people of Prague loved Figaro. He returned their praise with a composition written specifically for Prague.
On the way to Prague in a horse-drawn carriage he stopped not far from Schrems in the Moravian mountains of Austria, 30 hours driving from Vienna. During the respite, he takes a walk by himself and plucks an orange from a tree. He is caught in the act by the estate's gardener. Mozart admits his guilt and pens a note to the lady of the house, who subsequently welcomes Mozart and his wife into her home. There he plays one of his own concertos at the piano and regales her family with stories. In turn, the Countess tells her guests about the orange tree. The fictional Count and Countess have a betrothed daughter, Eugenie. She and her beau are smitten with the composer's performance and she is enchanted with his stories. But she is silently shocked that Mozart had mentioned his own forebodings, similar to hers - premonitions of his early death. Later, as she recollects his hands running over the piano keys, her conviction "grew upon her that here was a man rapidly and inexorably burning himself out in his own flame." The German author, Morike, best known for his poetry, writes a psychologically revealing expose of the composer's problems in a society unaccustomed to the temperament and talent of a true artist. He writes of Mozart that "despite his passionate nature, his susceptibility to all the delights of this life and all that is within the reach of the human imagination, and notwithstanding all that he had experienced, enjoyed and created in the short span allotted to him, had nonetheless all his life lacked a stable and untroubled feeling of inner contentment." Mozart never declined a social invitation, would bring guests straight off the streets into his home unannounced, played billiards in coffee-houses, adored dancing and riding, and would devote his evenings to creativity - composing scores of music. Throughout his creative endeavours, Morike foreshadows Mozart's fits of melancholy and his premonitions of his own death. Premonitions that came true: he died four years later, at the age of 35, in Prague. Morike presents the 'darker side' of the gregarious portrayal of Amadeus, but not in an intense exposition. On the other hand, it is rather humorous. And while the focus is on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his wife Constanze is the strong heroine in the novella.
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointment,
By Brian (Tacoma, WA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mozart's Journey to Prague and Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Edition)
Mozart's Journey to Prague disappointed me on two counts: 1) Mozart, and 2) Prague.
Prague The cover of the Penguin Classics edition is adorned with Mozart's Journey to Prague written in large script, and a beautiful image of the Prague skyline. For all that, Prague appears in exactly 0% of the book. I don't think the word "Prague" is ever even mentioned. Mozart This is a short fictional story about Mozart and his wife attending a wedding where all the guests kiss his ass because he's such a celebrity. Maybe that could be made interesting, if Mozart were an engaging character. But he isn't. In the movie "Amadaeus", he's an unpretentious, fun-loving genius, and a bit of a renagade. In this book, he's an idiot-savant with a flat affect. One scene has him standing entirely too long under a tree in a sort of autistic stupor, transfixed by the appearance of an orange hanging from one of the branches. Later, in a numbing eight page soliloquy, Mrs. Mozart describes how her husband falsely believed for YEARS that his home had a garden. He even bought his wife gardening tools, which she graciously accepted, without clarifying the truth. Only in the very last ten pages is the reader treated to a glimpse of Mozart's genius, as he is writing his opera Don Giovanni. Then, out of the blue, in the final scene, the bride from the aforementioned wedding has a premonition that Mozart will die at a young age. WTF? Finishing on that note, I kind of expected Alan Funt to emerge from a corner and explain to me that the whole book was a gag for "Candid Camera". (kids: substitute "Ashton Kutcher" and "Punk'd" if you don't know what I'm talking about) Adding to my perplexion is the foreword by Penguin Books, which explains that this is one of two books written by Eduard Friedrich Mörike, and of the two, Mozart's Journey to Prague is by far considered his masterpiece! Apparently the work was so popular, Mörike eventually withdrew from public life and became something of a hermit to avoid the chaos of celebrity life. (I'm trying to picture Mörike ducking out the back door of a restaurant to escape hundreds of screaming fans, like the Beatles being rushed into a limousine after a concert!) What did all those people see that I didn't see?
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