Constanze, Mozart's Beloved

Rating:
Summary: Constanze, Mozart's Beloved
Review: Constanze Mozart is a woman who has been much maligned in the past as a featherbrained spendthrift at best, and a murderous slattern at worst. Agnes Selby's CONSTANZE, MOZART'S BELOVED attempts to find middle ground, but ends up portraying Constanze as a woman who martyrs herself to her husband's legacy at the expense of her children, her second husband, and, ultimately, herself.

A lay person reading this book will probably not see many of the inaccuracies and contradictions, but they will tire of the repeated bits of information employed by the author as padding. Too, even a nominal fan of Mozart's music knows there is no "Donna Laura" character in Don Giovanni (one assumes the author meant Donna Anna), while those who take this composer more seriously know that it was at a rehearsal of the C minor Mass (not Idomeneo) in Salzburg, where Mozart broke down in tears and fled the company.

The author cannot seem to come to an agreement with herself on the financial state of the Weber family, either. On one page she describes the family as living in "abject poverty," on another this is changed to "near poverty." On still another page, the Webers are wining and dining the famous Mozart in their home for weeks on end. Moreover, I would like to ask why, if Fridolin Weber was so poor that he was, by necessity, the sole music instructor of his daughters -- the stellar Aloysia, the spectacular Josefa, and Constanze, who "had often been the first to sing Mozart's arias so that he could, with her help, judge their effect" -- why did he not take up a career as a music instructor rather than a lowly prompter and copyist? It is known that Aloysia was trained by Theobald Marchand. And while both Aloysia Weber (Constanze's sister) and Karl Thomas Mozart (Constanze's eldest son) are deemed as bread-winning adults at the age of sixteen, Selby calls Constanze at that age a "little girl" and refers to that time of her life as her "childhood," thus justifying her subject's convenient memory lapses.

Constanze is called in one moment a "soothing influence" who provided "peace and tranquillity" for her gifted husband, then is described in the next moment as a woman who "enjoyed a good fight." She is also depicted as a widow living in Dickensian poverty the year following Mozart's death, but the author's own information shows, with a little simple adding, that during that year alone, Widow Mozart received well over four times her husband's yearly salary, and had many of her husband's debts covered by charitable individuals and organizations. In addition, the pages fairly hum with phrases such as "may have," "must have," "might have," and "it is reasonable to assume," when the author would press us to see her subject as she does.

This book attempts to show Constanze as a muse -- a virtual Sheherezade to two husbands, but what it succeeds in revealing is a woman who is levelheaded, shrewd, ambitious, and dismayed by her extraordinary husband's erratic lifestyle and behavior, but unable to do much about it. It also reveals a Constanze Mozart who is mercenary, materialistic, dour, controlling, pretentious, and who played favorites with her sons, putting her eldest as far away from her as possible both geographically and emotionally, and probably would rather have not been bothered by the youngest until he grew up and could be of some comfort to his twice-widowed mother, and of use to her "selfless" crusade.

I am sure that those who prefer to think of Constanze Mozart as a tragic madonna and a martyred wife of a beloved genius will read this book and gloss over its inconsistencies. Others, however, with no holy icon to bear up, will see her as a woman struggling against the patriarchal system at any cost, which devotion in the end, reveals her to be all too human, left alone with only her memories and the faithful who pilgrimage to the shrine of her husband for whom she created a new, scrubbed and sanitized image.

Rating:
Summary: The story of an enterprising woman.Having been a lover of Mo
Review: Having been a lover of Mozart's music, I have always felt the need to explore his private life. I never found enough information about Mozart's wife although his letters reveal his great love for her. The biographies I have read have mostly treated her as an unimportant or even a hindrance to his artistic talent. This well written and easy to read book has given me the information I have been looking for. As I suspected, Constanze was not the stupid, helpless woman depicted in the film, "Amadeus" but a surprisingly enterprising and forceful character. This is the first book to give her full credit for repaying Mozart's many debts as well as supporting herself and her two children in an age when women were not supposed to leave their "kitchen". Even more amazing is that she took on a member of the aristocracy and won her fight to keep the Requiem in Mozart's name. The book also supplied me with information regarding Mozart's sons which is not easy to come by in the English literature. It is a satisfying book to read for anyone interested in Mozaert's family life as well as the prolonged fight Constanze had to keep Mozart's music before a public which was constantly seeking new compositions for entertainment in an age devoid of radio and recordings.

Rating:
Summary: The story of an enterprising woman.Having been a lover of Mo
Review: Having been a lover of Mozart's music, I have always felt the need to explore his private life. I never found enough information about Mozart's wife although his letters reveal his great love for her. The biographies I have read have mostly treated her as an unimportant or even a hindrance to his artistic talent. This well written and easy to read book has given me the information I have been looking for. As I suspected, Constanze was not the stupid, helpless woman depicted in the film, "Amadeus" but a surprisingly enterprising and forceful character. This is the first book to give her full credit for repaying Mozart's many debts as well as supporting herself and her two children in an age when women were not supposed to leave their "kitchen". Even more amazing is that she took on a member of the aristocracy and won her fight to keep the Requiem in Mozart's name. The book also supplied me with information regarding Mozart's sons which is not easy to come by in the English literature. It is a satisfying book to read for anyone interested in Mozaert's family life as well as the prolonged fight Constanze had to keep Mozart's music before a public which was constantly seeking new compositions for entertainment in an age devoid of radio and recordings.

Rating:
Summary: Constanze rises beautifully from the dust of history
Review: I was up hours past my bedtime reading this book, unable to put it down.

Constanze Mozart is one of the great unsung heroines of history. To this small, modest musical woman from a musical 18th century household belongs the credit of preserving a great deal of Mozart's work when he died so tragically young. For the 50 years she survived him she never ceased to work on behalf of his music; she lived it and, even in her very old age when her hands were almost too crippled to hold a pen, wrote letters promoting it, arranged for its publication, and could sing its themes. Not only did she win Mozart's love but the love of her second husband, her sons and most everyone whom she met.

Her world comes alive in this excellent biography: Vienna during its height and after war had devastated it; Salzburg when no longer an ecclesiastical court but a run down small city with grass growing between the cobbles; her brief but highly affectionate and utterly trusting marriage to Mozart; her telling of stories to him all night so he could stay awake to write the Don Giovanni overture; her kindness and financial support of his sister who was never anything but critical to her; and her return to their rooms after his death, unable to be aired and smelling of emptiness. She was a widow of not yet thirty years old with two young sons and a pile of debt.

The first part of the book ends with his death; the second part follows Constanze's determination to claim the Requiem as Mozart's own and to have it completed from his gathered scraps of paper, her concerts to keep his name alive, the publication of many of his unpublished works, and the gathering of information for his biography, written by Constanze's second husband and published after his death.

This biography should be on the shelves of all Mozart lovers. Mozart was a high strung, impulsive genius. Constanze, his beloved wife, gave him the stability he needed. Agnes Selby had written a much needed and beautifully composed biography.

Rating:
Summary: It's about time...!
Review: Of all the wives and lovers of great artists, probably none has been as misjudged and misunderstood as Constanze Mozart. This book is the first truly thorough look at her life, based on meticulous research and study. The author didn't just blindly copy down things pulled from other bibliographies, parroting things written and repeated by people whose main source for information is someone else's book--she went to the actual sites, read and studied original documents (including many which are usually glossed over by more biased investiagtors), and even spoke with indirect descendants of the Weber family.

For many years I have felt that Frau Mozart was given short-shrift by those who, like Mozart's jealous and possessive father, automatically assumed that no woman was "good enough" for his little boy. This wonderful book shows the Constanze that I can believe in--a woman who loved her husband more than any of us can possibly imagine, who sacrificed much, fighting to keep his name, his memory, and his glorious music alive for fifty long, gruelling years. A tiny, frail-looking woman, she had to fight against the prejudices of a world that resented a woman who had a head for business and who would not back down when they tried to wrest her mission away from her--which is probably the true source for many of the unkind things often written about her.

Mozart would have been very proud of his Constanze and the things she accomplished--and he would have been very proud of Mrs. Selby and others like her who have dedicated so much effort to restoring her dignity and her place of honor and respect in the world of music.

A big, Five-Star rating for this much-needed document!

Rating:
Summary: Balance, Not Bias
Review: Previous works concerning Constanze, Mozart's wife, have painted a very dark and frankly angry picture of this person. Authors such as Hildeshmeimer, Gartner and Abert (to name three influential ones) have simply painted Constanze as brainless, spineless, over-sexed and, in the end, an inadequate partner to a Great Man. However, it should be noted that Mozart was, by all accounts, very happily in love with her. Until now, there has simply been no real attempt to delve into the facts and produce a book that shows a true portrait.

Agnes Selby has done a great job in searching out the original documents, notes and paperwork in order to bring out the Constanze that Mozart knew and loved. Unfortunately, there are voids within the life of Constanze where no one now can know exactly (or even approximately) what occurred then, let alone the "why," "how" or by "whom." However, this book, by its intensive use of original materials, get the reader as close as one can hope, to this quietly remarkable woman.

Every good biography is the result of the collection of evidence and facts, then attempting to discern the truth from them. Previous efforts regarding Constanze have started out with assumptions and/or presumed truths, and then built a story around those items selected that validate the author's opinions. Agnes Selby instead presents us with the truths with a minimum of editorializing and allows the reader to view the subject on their own terms.

Neither simply just levelheaded, a madona, or martyr, or mercenary, or a promoter or a loving wife, Constanze was no doubt forced by circumstances at times to be any or all of the above. When Mozart died, he left debts of approximately $150,000, a wife and two small children, piles of manuscripts of his music (mostly unpublished) and perhaps $4000 in funds. Being a woman of those times, she couldn't even official manage what money there was herself. For any other widow, this could have spelled disaster. One might have expected her to throw up her hands at the injustice of it all, dump the manuscripts for some quick money and then quickly fade off to find a new husband. For Constanze, it spelled an opportunity.

Her efforts over the next 50 years resulted in Mozart's fame and music growing, not dying out, as was the usual practise; these efforts help create the Mozarteum, paved the way for the Kochel catalogue of all of Mozart's works, and created an image of Mozart that, while cleaned up of blemishes and polished up for the times, has endured to the present. At this point in time, deceased composers and their music were quickly forgotten for newer faces. Mozart is the first one (of many, J. S. Bach is another) to become a brighter "star" after death. Obviously, she was not the only force behind these efforts, but she WAS the most persistant one. This was not accomplished by a shy, retiring, background figure, rather instead by someone with smarts and drive. Not always successful but always making the effort; this is the Constanze that comes out in these pages.

In the end, the author has left in the facts as she has discovered them, allowing the reader to finalize their own opinion of Mozart's beloved. There are still gray shadow areas that cannot be illuminated with facts, which means that after reading this book no two people may view Constanze in exactly the same light. Opinions thus work to fill the voids left by gaps in research. However, this is a hallmark of all good books; allowing the reader to come up with an informed opinion, as opposed to the author's preconceived one. As noted earlier, visciously preconceived works on Constanze have tended to be the normal approach. It is refreshing at last to see an honest approach successfully taken instead.

The fact that this book reveals far more of the truths about Constanze Mozart (formerly Weber) than any other work does allow the reader to make up their own minds as to the true face of this person who has been too long left in the shadows of Mozartean research.

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Summary: A long-awaited scholar research...
Review: Saint Cecilia be praised, someone has had the courage and energy to tackle one of the most misunderstod and ill-researched part of Mozartian history... that is, the *wife* of the great little man...

It was about time !!

No composer's wife or girlfriend has been as historically debased than that most intelligent and courageous woman. Maybe because posterity wanted her to be a sort of Alma Mahler of Fanny Mendelsohnn, when she was "only" a refined 18th century woman. A "product" of her century. As was Mozart... Not a romantic heroine coming from a novel from ETA Hoffman!

Some scholars try to deny the right to Mozart to have been madly in love with his wife. Why deny him his lifelong love ? Is the wish to become closer to Mozart's music such an incentive to deny him a wife he choosed by his own free will and loved till he died ? Romanticism has come between us and Mozart' era and blinds us about this.

This well-researched book has gone back to the roots : public and private archives, letters, scores, ... and doesn't hide the difficulties of making always incomplete archives "talk' to us. True, "all" the truth isn't uncovered, as is the case in everyone's life, but we get a very close look of the woman and the two surviving sons she gave Mozart... But it enables us to fully understand the "reasons" of his choice.

Any serious historian knows that the past is somtimes hided to us. But Agnes Selby , with an 'investigation historian' tenacity and thouroughness, has given us the most that could be given from the pieces left to us. The author has the deep honesty of giving some possible clues of less known (and understandable) motives of Constanze Mozart's choices (according to the sociology of the 18th century) and never impose those as truths when it is still obscure.

Constanze Mozart appears slowly before us as a refined, courageous, intelligent and ressourcefull woman, who took great care of her family and of the legacy her husbang left her. She found the will to outlive Wolfgang Amadé and most of her children, fighting for the recognition of her late husband's works (no 18th century musical corpus this diverse has escaped time destruction this well) and trying to nurture her children abilities, the best she could, as much as her time period allowed her. This book is a testimony of the slanders wrote about her by generations of mozartian scholars, who blindly believed -without checking- ALL that Mozart himself has written to his father (when he was only trying to gain his paternal blessing, in the stupidest way that was possible)

If not for Constanze, most of Wolfgang-the-man and Mozart-the-composer would be definitively lost to us. Constanze fought with all her love and might the entropy that engulf us all...

She must have been a truly remarquable woman. And she deserves the praise and love of all those who listen to Mozart music today...

(Please forgive my mistakes, english isn't my 'mother tongue')

Last word of advice : just buy it !!!

Rating:
Summary: About time, for Constanze!
Review: What more can I say after reading previous superb reviews? Most of my thoughts echo these eloquent reviewers, but in sincere appreciation to Agnes Selby's remarkable achievement in producing this book, I am compelled to signify my added thoughts.

This book is an evocative portrayal of Constanze, beloved of Mozart in the real sense, her world after her husband's death still much revolving about his genius and his music. Constanze is much historically degraded as the composer's wife. It might be said by other authors that Constanze, in order to survive after Mozart's death, made shrewd use of his manuscripts. Couldn't she have done it out of her profound love for her husband, and not merely to support their two sons and herself? It is indeed unfortunate that there are gaps in the life of Constanze where nobody knows much more.

Constanze, Mozart's Beloved is a historical account which beautifully captures the worth of Constanze Weber and the challenges of her commitment to her departed endeared husband, the genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Agnes Selby captures a bewildering enigma with a fluency and ease of tone that is all her own. It is through her expert research and her meticulous execution of the facts that we get to taste at close range the historical exploration of this novel. Agnes Selby, thank you.