Mozart and Posterity - Hardcover

Gruber, Gernot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555531946 ISBN 13: 9781555531942

Publisher: Northeastern University Press, 1994

In the first comprehensive history of the changing reception of Mozart and his music over the last two hundred years, Gernot Gruber skillfully charts Mozart's evolution from forgotten composer to "a youth beloved of the gods." He considers Mozart's waning reputation during the decade preceding his death in 1791, and thoroughly examines how Mozart was deified by the Romantics, sanitized by the Victorians, and commercialized in the 1980s and early 1990s. This insightful volume probes beyond the sphere of music into literature, philosophy, the fine arts, and theology to provide a refreshing discussion of the shifting ideas, images, interpretations, and questions surrounding Mozart over the last two centuries. With profound knowledge of the relevant literature, Gruber shows how figures such as Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Felix Mendelssohn, Soren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Hermann Hesse, Marc Chagall, Ingmar Bergman, and Peter Shaffer attempted to define the elusive nature of the composer's genius in their quest to discover the "true" Mozart. The volume includes provocative perspectives on the impact of Milos Forman's highly successful film Amadeus and on the commercial packaging of Mozart for mass consumption. Gruber's compelling account of the evolving perceptions of Mozart's music reveals as much about the changes in European ideology and culture as it does about the composer of his music.

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Synopsis:

In a comprehensive history of the changing reception of Mozart and his music over the last 200 years, Gruber (musicology, Hochschule fnr Musik, Munich) charts Mozart's evolution from forgotten composer to "a youth beloved of the gods." He considers Mozart's waning reputation during the decades preceding his death in 1791, and examines how Mozart wa

About the Author:

Gernot Gruber is Professor of Musicology at the Hochschule fur Musik in Munich.

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