Rating: 
Summary: MUSIC TO MY EYES!
Review: Marrying Mozart brings us back to 18th century Germany and Austria, through the eyes of the aged Sophie Weber. The Webers are a musical family consisting of a mother, father, and four daughters, Josefa, Aloysia, Sophie and Constanze. Herr Weber is a music copyist who struggles to make ends meet while his wife Maria Caecilia schemes to get her daughters married `up' but as yet, they're all still without suitable suitors, and all under 20. But their lives are never the same when they cross paths with 21-year-old Wolfgang Mozart, a struggling musician from Salzburg. He boards at the Weber house, and first becomes involved with Aloysia, who eventually spurns him and breaks his heart, but he soon becomes enamored of the younger Constanze, not quite as beautiful, talented, or saucy as Aloysia. Meanwhile, Mozart's domineering father, Leopold, tries to run Mozart's career as well as his love life, long distance from Salzburg, making it very difficult for the young Mozart as well as Constanze, who he tries to talk out of marrying Mozart, hardly diplomatic in voicing his belief that the Webers are socially inferior to the Mozarts: "I think perhaps your family is not the best to marry into...he would not be wise to choose to marry the daughter of a boardinghouse keeper." Despite all these obstacles, not the least of which was poverty, Mozart and Constanze married when he was 26 and she 19.
All four sisters loved Mozart in their own way, and it's even said that he actually died in Sophie's arms. What really sparkled was Stephanie's voice, which sang throughout, and her attention to historical detail, the rickety steps, the rain pouring down to the dirt path. I wish the story didn't have to end, I wanted to stay in the 18th century much longer, but of course that's a story for another time.
Diana Rubino, author of I LOVE YOU BECAUSE, WWW.DIANARUBINO.COM
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Blend of Reality and Fiction
Review: Marrying Mozart is a richly woven poignant love story of a musical genius and four young women and their collective affection in his music and his passion. Set in Mannheim, Munich, Salzburg and Vienna, the novel is a unique insight into the lives of the four Weber sisters and their relationship with the passionate and resolute composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his early 20s. Intelligent and unpretentious, this is a story of family relationships, longing and belonging, told by Stephanie Cowell in such an excellent manner that's interestingly charming. Alternative in time, after some 60 years, the story is being narrated warm-heartedly by Sophie Weber, the youngest of the sisters. Deliberately and brilliantly told, it starts when Mozart and his mother arrive in Mannheim from Salzburg and meet Fridolin Weber, a music copyist and father of the four sisters. The second eldest daughter captivates the young Mozart, who finds her singing talent only matched by her beauty. But she dreams of fame and fortune as an opera singer, something the struggling composer couldn't provide. She elopes with a portraitist. Mozart is broken-hearted, little does he know that love lies with another Weber sister who eventually becomes his wife. Marrying Mozart is a well thought out novel - distinct, eloquent and a confident ode which can only be captured by a brilliant and sensitive literary novelist who is also a coloratura soprano and a musician herself. The descriptions of each of the Weber sisters trying to make sense as related to each other, and their impact on the young Mozart, are particularly beautiful. Never mind that it happened long time ago in Europe, the author's conventional portrayal of the themes of love and family relationship borders on ordinary people like the Weber family, who we can relate to, a real resonance to typical lives of present day situation. Stephanie Cowell possesses a fountain of historical knowledge. She knows how to bring history to life, making it readable and relevant by creating characters that are all too human in their foibles and desires. Marrying Mozart is as rich as a Mozart music and as demanding as Cowell's task of perfectly blending fact and fiction. She pieces together more than a century's events and experiences, and tells it with impact undiminished through the years. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey back in time. Magnificent.
Rating:
Summary: "Four girls trying to be beautiful on a few yards of cloth."
Review: Mozart isn't my favorite composer, but there's no denying that he was a musical genius and that his personal life was quite interesting. Stephanie Cowell, a former opera singer, has successfully married fact to fiction in her well-written and delightful book, MARRYING MOZART. This isn't Cowell's first period piece; she's written three previous novels, all set in Elizabethan England, my favorite being THE PLAYERS: A NOVEL OF THE YOUNG SHAKESPEARE. MARRYING MOZART begin in Mannheim, Germany in 1777 when the then twenty-one year old Mozart pays a visit to the home of a sweet-tempered, impractical and perpetually impoverished music copyist and teacher, Fridolin Weber and his not-so-sweet-tempered wife, Maria Caecilia. Mozart is having almost as rough a time as is Herr Weber. He is too old to market himself as a child prodigy and he's finding out that marketing himself as a composer in the world of adults is a bit more difficult. However, there might be work for him in Mannheim and this is what brings Wolfgang to the Weber's apartment. Fridolin loves to host musical soirees every Thursday night, much to the dismay of his wife, who dislikes preparing the sweet treats and cinnamon dusted hot chocolate the group consumes as well as the cost of buying the food. Fridolin and Maria Caecilia just happen to have four daughters, two of them quite gifted musically. Josefa, nineteen and Aloysia, sixteen, both have lovely soprano voices and, Aloysia, in addition, is a beauty to look at. Then there are the younger girls, Constanze and Sophie. Of course, Mozart, being a man, immediately falls in love with beautiful Aloysia, but Mozart, despite his genius, is not quite the man Maria Caecilia had in mind for her most marketable daughter. Of course, readers even marginally familiar with the personal life of Mozart will know which daughter he eventually ends up marrying and they will also know the choice was probably the very best one, for this daughter remained devoted to Mozart until the end of his all too short life. One gets the idea, however, that even if Mozart's life had been extraordinarily long, Frau Mozart would have been by his side, no matter what. During their nine-year marriage, the couple did have six children and Frau Mozart devoted the remainder of her life to protecting the work her husband had produced. MARRYING MOZART is a fun book to read and it's filled with details about 18th century Europe. The book takes us, not only to Mannheim, but to Salzburg, Munich and Vienna as well. Viennese coffee, cake and chocolate fill the pages of this book, as do the more undesirable details of everyday life in Mozart's day. Readers who are looking for a biography of Mozart should be warned: he is not the prominent figure in MARRYING MOZART and that's definitely not a criticism of the book, simply an observation. In MARRYING MOZART, it's the Weber clan, and especially the interaction between the four girls and their manipulative mother, that takes center stage. Cowell has done a marvelous job of bringing this family to life and she concentrates on their "bad" qualities as much as on their "good." MARRYING MOZART is a charming and delightful book that is extraordinarily well written. It's not for musical scholars or those wanting a biography of Mozart, but it is definitely for anyone who wants to read an extremely entertaining book that doesn't take itself so seriously it can't, at times, have a little fun.
Rating:
Summary: ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINING
Review: Music emanates from the very heart of coloratura soprano/novelist Stephanie Cowell's richly imagined novel. She has said, "I wanted to write a novel in the spirit of Mozart's great operas, where many things can and do go wrong but in the end the characters come together singing that all is well." With "Marrying Mozart" she has done just that. Set in Mannheim in the year 1777 we find the 21-year-old Mozart climbing five flights of rickety wooden steps to the home of the Weber family - father, mother, and four daughters. The father makes a hand-to-mouth living as a music copyist; the mother dreams of advantageous marriages for her daughters. On this Thursday evening, as it is each week, it is open-house music evening. Candles are lit, the elder Weber is seated at the clavier. Nearby are the four daughters, ages 11 to 19. Some 60 years later Sophie, the youngest, remembers that night as though it were yesterday. She is our narrator and guide. It was quite a different world a half a century ago. Having once known privilege the mother of these four beautiful girls is determined that they will make rewarding marriages. Mozart, as it is known, had an eye for the ladies. In addition, he was 21. Frau Mozart would have been pleased if he did not marry as he supported their family. The Weber sisters were more than simply beautiful - they were intelligent and each had a dream. They wanted to own their own music shop, but 1777 society would surely have frowned on such an endeavor, to say nothing of Frau Weber. So, here we have high drama: Mozart is spellbound by the girls. However, their mother is conniving; his mother is ultra possessive. How can he possibly pair with one of them? The answer to that question is found in the pages of this enormously entertaining story with its bits of musicality, pieces of family dynamics, and glimpses of history. - Gail Cooke
Rating: 
Summary: A fabulous meal with an okay dessert
Review: Rarely do I complain that a book isn't long enough. This book captivated me, even though I was expecting it to be the story of Wolfgang and Constanze's romance. (I think it suffers from mis-titling.) Instead it's more of a portrait of how he touched the lives of each of the Weber sisters, which was very absorbing. The physical and scenic descriptions are perfect, not too overwhelming, not too scant or showy; each of the characters is entirely believable. Ironically, the action seems to slack off only once Wolfi meets Stanzi. Since she's the one who actually marries Mozart (hope I didn't blow the ending), I had expected at least a bit more depth--the fact that it comes nearly 300 pages into the novel clued me in that it wasn't going to be just about them. But their courtship and marriage seems rather shallow and rushed; her confrontation with Mozart's father seems hurried, as though Cowell couldn't wait to get it out of the way. I see their deepening conversations and their small quarrels and jealousies; I see her determine to break up with him and then go back, determine to break up and then go back again. I see them going down the aisle together on their wedding day, smiling and crying. What I don't see is them falling in love, or getting to know one another. Every single one of the complex and intertangled subplots was more real, more engrossing and better developed than theirs. So it's a novel about Stanzi and her sisters, not Mozart; the title could have reflected this a bit more accurately.
Rating:
Summary: The Marriage of Music and Passion
Review: Stephanie Cowell has done it again! After reading her first three novels, "Nicholas Cooke," "The Physician of London," and "The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare," I was hopeful that this literary novelist could once again make the world of a time and place not my own come alive for me. I am happy to report that she has done it. "Marrying Mozart" brings all the earthy, day-to-day details, as well as the sweeping themes of time and place, alive in a remarkable way. One feels that the characters are real people, with hopes and fears that are accessible, things we've all felt. It might be easy to paint someone like Mozart in grand and glorious colors that make him seem beyond human limits, but here we see a young man filled with lust, passion, frustration, family conflicts, and the desire to know love and security...in other words, themes every adult has faced. That this is Mozart the great genius doesn't mean he can't feel what I've felt, and fall in love, and have his heart broken, and mended. Certainly we see the genius, and it commands respect and is awesome, as one would expect. But we also see a man in love, a man who wants someone to come home to after the great opera has been performed. Someone has said applause is great but you can't take it to bed, and Mozart wants both -- opportunity for his genius to be recognized, and someone to snuggle with apart from all the world. Cowell's ability to create this complex mix within the character of Mozart, and the other characters in the novel, is nearly legendary. Details of how people lived, rich and poor, are sensitively written. Themes build, secrets are revealed, the human heart is shown for the complex, wonderful, tender instrument it is. Youth, old age, memory and longing each find their place in Cowell's novel. She has done it again.
Rating:
Summary: Who wants to marry a musical genius?
Review: Stephanie Cowell's 'Marrying Mozart' is a novel about the young Mozart and his relationship with the Weber family, mainly their daughters, one of whom he went on to marry. The family is first introduced to Mozart on one of their musical Thursdays, when he shows up as a guest, and in a bit of retrospective humour the author has the mother dismiss him as someone whose society it isn't worth cultivating. Oh that Mozart, young men like him are a dime a dozen! As the story continues, the Weber family struggles with poverty, and the girls grow into young ladies, searching for love and independence, trying to find their place in life. In the end, of course, one of the daughters marries Mozart. I won't say which in case you don't know and don't want it ruined for you. Each of the characters, while based on real people, is something of an archetype (I don't say stereotype, because this isn't a bad thing), almost like you'd find in fairy tales or even operas. Yes, the author gives them emotional dimensions, but at their essence they have a universal quality. There's Sophie, the virtuous innocent; Constanze, the quiet one who lives in her mind; Aloysia, the prima donna who really lives up to the name; Josefa, the mysterious one; and of course their evil mother, whose backstory helps to understand how she became what she is. We've met these people before in various fictional incarnations, which makes it easy for the reader to really get into the story and invest in the characters' fates. Cowell's prose doesn't often draw attention to itself-- it's mostly the sort that breezes along in an easy flow of words-- but when it does it's justified in wanting the attention. Hers is a very pleasant, effortless style of writing. The story moves quickly, never dwelling for too long on one aspect to the point of tedium, just telling you what you need to know. This isn't the Neal Stephenson school of historical fiction, so no lengthy discourses on Mozart or aspects of 18th century life. If you like a good love story and/or historical fiction, this is an excellent read.
Rating:
Summary: Superb historical novel
Review: Stephanie Cowell's superbly evocative, wonderful novel takes the reader from Salzburg in 1842, where an English biographer is interviewing the last surviving Weber sister, back to the Weber home in Mannheim in the 18th century and the era of Mozart, when their relationships with him all began. It tells the riveting, moving stories of all three sisters and the era itself is evoked in a fascinating wealth of detail, so that we are truly back in it. Ms. Cowell's writing is so exquisite, so romantic and so realistic at the same time that we can even feel the weather and the cold winter snow, so perfectly does Ms. Cowell bring it to life with telling detail. Her characters are living, breathing human beings, and we have a highly credible, complicated, real, completely believable Mozart. Here at last is the little man who wrote the great music, and we can feel his genius and his sensitivity in all its complexity. The Weber family, all of them, including the extended family of in-laws, is a powerful, sensitive evocation of the life of the century with all its differences in customs, and the life of Vienna and the court and the world of music are all engrossingly, lovingly, and magnificently depicted. There are startlingly beautiful scenes and a story that is compelling from beginning to end. You must buy and read and reread this magnificent recreation of a long-gone time and of the brilliant people who inhabit it!
Rating:
Summary: Warm and engaging literary music
Review: Stephanie is a wonderful writer -- evoking the period and milieu in beautifully observed details of life as a musician and weaving together fact and fiction of this fascinating period in Mozart's life. Mostly, though, the characters are extremely well-drawn --funny, sweet, big-hearted, scrappy, noble, passionate, and very human. I was completely drawn into the story of Mozart and the Webers. The ebullient Fridolin is a great creature, and the rivalries and cammaraderies, wishes and frustrations, of the four sisters are so well depicted. The story has a fluid, rich, cinematic quality -- which I mean as a compliment! This is such a critical time in Mozart's life -- he was falling in love, struggling to find his place in that musical world (Mannheim, Salzburg, Paris, Vienna), coming into his personal and musical maturity and breaking free of his entertaining prodigy identity -- and working on one of his first big "hits" (Abduction from the Seraglio). Thank you Stephanie for giving us such a marvelous book that explores these important years of his youth! And music fans who know of Aloysia and Josefa Weber -- perhaps two of the greatest coloratura sopranos in history -- will be delighted with the attention that their vocal art gets and innate understanding that Stephanie, a coloratura singer herself, brings to the music. The power of music and love, afterall, is what it is all about. I highly recommend this warm work of historical fiction. It is a great, transporting read.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderfully written story
Review: The fictionalized story of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's entanglement with the Weber sisters proves to be a compelling one. Rather than re-tread familiar territory with a primary focus on the composer, Stephanie Cowell instead spotlights his future wife, Constanze, and her sisters. She injects personality into these characters, who before mostly stood in the background. In characterizing Mozart, she breaks from the idea made famous in "Amadeus", that he was nothing more than an irresponsible man-child. Here, he is a young genius, full of passion and determination to make his way in the world. The period and historical details are excellent, even though some key dates are rearranged (the author acknowledges this herself in the back of the book). One thing I particularly admired was Cowell's restraint from using lewd depictions of sexual acts, something that I find all too often in modern historical fiction. If you're like me and are a huge fan of Mozart, or enjoy historical fiction (or just a great read), then I thoroughly recommend "Marrying Mozart".
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