Mozart

Rating:
Summary: Colorful portrait
Review: Gay's book is a colourful portrait of the genius Mozart. It's lively not boring and gave me more than enough information on the man himself but very little on his marriage. I would have preferred more info on that aspect of his life but admittedly Gay does a splendid job on the early and Mozart and giving me a better understanding of what made the Great Composer tick.
And the best of the Penguin lives series that I've come across so far.

Rating:
Summary: Superb introduction to Mozart's life
Review: In this book, Peter Gay offers an excellent, concise summary of Mozart's life and greatness. This is not a balanced recounting; Gay compresses the Mozart's active childhood of tours and performances into a single chapter, while his frustrating years at Salzburg are similarly condensed to a few pages. Yet such an approach is more than justified given the purpose of the 'Penguin Lives' series, which is to offer brief introductions to their selected subjects.

A distinguished intellectual and cultural historian, Gay brings considerable knowledge of Mozart's world to bear in examining the details of his life, connecting it to the broader historical developments of his time. Chapters 6 and 7 break away from the biographical narrative to focus on Mozart's achievements as a writer of symphonies and operas, which allows Gay to turn his finely honed analytical abilities to evaluating Mozart the artist. While there is nothing new in his analysis, it nonetheless provides the best introduction available to the life of this brilliant musician and composer.

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.