Mozart: A Life

Maynard Solomon

HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995 - Composers - 640 pages

Mozart: A Life is based on an unsurpassed knowledge of the documentary sources, including numerous documents that have not previously appeared in any biography of the composer. It offers a beautifully written and absorbing narrative of Mozart's life, from his birth in 1756 and childhood in Salzburg to the extraordinary decade of acclaimed performances in the capitals of Europe, where he was honored by royal families and adoring audiences, to his emergence as a prolific young composer, his status as Salzburg's favorite son in the 1770s, his conquest of Vienna, his marriage there, his financial vicissitudes, his later journeys to Prague and Germany, his deepening melancholia, his final triumphs, and his premature death in 1791. Narrative chapters alternate with rich and imaginative in-depth explorations of issues crucial to understanding Mozart - his antic disposition, his penchant for the bawdy, his enigmatic Zoroastran riddles, his perplexing adoption of the code name "Adam", his brilliance as an impresario, his tangled finances, his Masonic creed, and his rending contest with his father, which continued to shadow him even after Leopold Mozart's death in 1787. And in a series of highly original chapters, Solomon probes such musical topics as the finding of Mozart's personal voice in his early serenades; the innovative character of his slow movements; the blend of strangeness and ecstasy in some of his most beautiful instrumental works; and the disquieting effect of his later operas.

What people are saying

MOZART: A Life

User Review  - Kirkus

Finally, a Mozart biography that evokes a believable portrait of a striving, powerfully creative human being. Solomon, author of the ground-breaking life of Beethoven (1977), now turns his attention ...

Mozart: a life

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

Solomon (music, Stonybrook Univ. and Harvard) follows up his well-received Beethoven (LJ 11/15/77) with another ambitious biography. The author explores Mozart's life and works with a wealth of facts ...

Contents

• The Myth of the Eternal Child: 3
• BEGINNINGS: 19
• Leopold Mozart: 21

About the author

Maynard Elliott Solomon was a musicologist and record producer. He was born on January 5, 1930 in Manhattan. His family later moved to Brooklyn. When he was young, he worked in his father's art supply store. He played the piano and studied the cello. In 1950, he earned a BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY. He pursued his graduate studies at Columbia University, 1950-1952. Also, in 1950, he co-founded Vanguard Records with his brother, Seymour Solomon. It was an influential label for not only classical music but folk and blues music as well. He is best known for his biographies of the classical composers, Beethoven, Mozart, and an article on Schubert. His works include, Beethoven (1973); Marxism and Art (1973); Beethoven Essays (1988); Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini (1989) (a research article in the book, 19th-Century Music); Mozart: A Life (1993); and Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination (2004). Maynard Solomon died on September 28. 2020 in Manhattan at the age of 90.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Mozart: A Life
• Author: Maynard Solomon
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: May 12, 2010
• ISBN: 0060190469, 9780060190460
• Length: 640 pages