Rating: 
Summary: Mozart's A Delight and Gay's Got Him
Review: The Penguin Lives series continues to serve me well as I rebel against the opposing current of plodding steamer trunk-sized biographies. In under 200 pages, the Penguins neatly shake off obscurity and/or legends that have grown up around a significant life and tell its story neatly, in light of the individual's environment and enduring contributions to culture. Peter Gay's Mozart is a good example of the series' strength. The narrative flows gracefully, allowing Mozart's character to come out in full. As Gay says, his genius was special in many ways: he built on an early precocity; he did not live in a garret, he was popular in his own time, he participated in a community of peers rather than in a vacuum. Mozart's life has been clouded in legend and Gay makes it his business to sift out the truth. Sometimes the truth dovetails with the tales, as in being booted in the rear by Count Arco upon being released from his Saltzburg duties, after whining about wanting out. The guy had his bratty moments. Other legends are celebrity gossip: his death was prosaic illness, he and Salieri seemed to get along, and his money problems were probably not so terrible as he himself would tell it, though productivity is directly connected to patronage. Gay does a good job of portraying the complex relationship between Mozart and his tyrannical stage father. Likewise, he effectively describes Mozart's relationship with his social environment, late in the Enlightenment. He also tracks his creative development, revisiting the genius of many works, especially the later operas. Working within only 163 pages, though, something gets left out: we know nothing of Mozart's own children and Gay drops almost any mention of his sister, Nannerl, past their childhood. He says that Leopold, Mozart's father, continued to exploit his son's gift after his death but does not say how when it comes time to discuss it. Those are minor flaws. Mozart's a delight, the writing's a delight. It's like a fizzy drink packed with nutrients.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Lightweight Account of Mozart
Review: This is an great book to read if you want a nice quick and very easy to read account of this great man. As the other reviews state its not a deep searching biography but its size does not detract from an excellent account of this man and his times. From page one I was drawn into the narrative and learnt quite a few interesting pieces of information about Mozart, his music and his personality. This book wets your appetite for more information about Mozart and his music and any book that can do that much then the author has done a decent job. Read it and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: A Triumph of Genius over Preociousness
Review: This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject are directed to other sources. When preparing to review various volumes in this series, I have struggled with determining what would be of greatest interest and assistance to those who read my reviews. Finally I decided that a few brief excerpts and then some concluding remarks would be appropriate. On misconceptions of Mozart (e.g. the "willful child" unable to grow up, the "miracle worker" who never needed to revise a single note): "These tenacious caricatures are distortions rather than fabrications; most of them, as we shall discover, contain a kernel of truth....But Mozart's life in music is fascinating enough without embroidery; his reputation as a genius is not threatened by mundane truths." (Page 2) In a letter to his father (1781): "Nature speaks as loudly in me as in anyone, and perhaps louder than in many big, strong lugs. I cannot possibly live like most of the young men today. -- First, I have too much religion; secondly, too much love for my fellow beings and too honorable a disposition to seduce an innocent girl; and thirdly, too much horror and repugnance, dread and fear of diseases, and too much care for my health to scuffle with whores." (Page 70) Peter Gay on Salieri: "There is an all-too-well-known melodramatic tale about Antonio Salieri poisoning Mozart. It began as a rumor and was first given literary form in the 1820s in a verse playlet by Pushkin. It is a malicious, preposterous fabrication, but hints at the envy Mozart's rivals had every right to feel. Yet Mozart, too, had grounds for envy: Salieri, born in Italy but long settled in Vienna, occupied privileged posts that Mozart would have deserved but, given Emperor Joseph's predilection for Salieri, could never hope to obtain." (Page 100) Mozart's last year: "[It] has often been described as one long preparation for death. But in that time, Mozart wrote two operas, a piano concerto, a large number of minuets and counterdances, a clarinet concerto, a Masonic cantata, two quintets, and most of the Requiem. His creativity was still working at full speed." (Page 156) I am among those who have seen the film Amadeus many times, admiring it more each time. For dramatic purposes, those who produced Amadeus focus on several of the "tenacious caricatures" to which Gay refers. What I especially appreciate about this biography is that Gay duly acknowledges all of Mozart's human limitations and inadequacies while examining Mozart's creative discipline in ways and to an extent which the film does not. With regard to this biography's context, Gay tells his reader only what is essential to know about the various cities in which Mozart lived and worked during various periods in his all-too-brief life (January 27,1756-December 5, 1791). Rather than create an historical or cultural context, Gay prefers to focus primarily on Mozart's art. As he notes, the renewal of interest more than a century after Mozart's death raised his music -- "all of it -- to the eminence it deserves."
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