Described in Germany as the 'most thought-provoking' book of the bicentennial year, Georg Knepler's acclaimed study of Mozart is now available in paperback. The book explores Mozart's life and works from many new perspectives, providing fresh insights into his music and the tempestuous times through which he lived. Based on a close reading of the family correspondence and a careful consideration of Mozart's entire musical output, the book sheds new light on the composer's creative psyche, his political leanings, his relation to the thoughts and currents of the Enlightenment, and the underlying basis of his musical expression.
This study has been revised to include new finds about the composition dates of several Mozart works. A new bibliography and a collation with the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe edition of letters, edited by O.E.Deutsch, W.A.Bauer and J.H.Eibl: Baerenreiter, 1962-75 is also included.
"A wonderful collection that gives Mozart a voice as a son, husband, brother and friend." —New York Times Book Review "Mozart's honesty, his awareness of his own genius and his contempt for authority all shine out from these letters."—Sunday Times (London). " In Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life, Robert Spaethling presents "Mozart in all the rawness of his driving energies" (Spectator), preserved in the "zany, often angry effervescence" of his writing (Observer). Where other translators have ignored Mozart's atrocious spelling and tempered his foul language, "Robert Spaethling's new translations are lively and racy, and do justice to Mozart's restlessly inventive mind" (Daily Mail). Carefully selected and meticulously annotated, this collection of letters "should be on the shelves of every music lover" (BBC Music Magazine).
The demand for math and science skills in our technology-driven world is at a premium, and yet U.S. students continue to lag behind many other industrialized countries in these areas. This book, based on studies conducted on 8000 elementary school-aged children, proposes that not only is there a relationship between music and math comprehension, but that music can be utilized to heighten higher brain function and improve math skills. The enclosed CD-Rom includes (1) a recording of Allegro con spirito from Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K. 448), by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu, courtesy of Sony ClassicalTM, and (2) a descriptive interactive version of S.T.A.R.TM (Spatial-Temporal Animation Reasoning) software program. While this book's discussion of the breakthroughs in understanding of spatial-temporal reasoning abilities will be of particular interest to neuroscientists and cognitive researchers, the book is also accessible to parents and educators. Presents the theory that music exercises higher brain function and can enhance math comprehension Details how music training coupled with special-temporal reasoning (thinking in pictures) can dramatically impact a child's ability to understand and master math Includes an interactive CD-ROM with math games
This deluxe hardcover edition of Mozart's violin concerti reproduces the composer's original manuscripts from a rare limited edition. Includes two additional pieces, Adagio in E, K. 261, and Rondo in B Flat, K. 261a.
From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart’s singular imagination was at work in every direction. He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always hilarious. He went at every piece of his life, and perhaps most notably his social life, with tremendous gusto. His circle of friends and patrons was wide, encompassing anyone who appealed to his boundless appetites for music and all things pleasurable and fun. Mozart was known to be an inexplicable force of nature who could rise from a luminous improvisation at the keyboard to a leap over the furniture. He was forever drumming on things, tapping his feet, jabbering away, but who could grasp your hand and look at you with a profound, searching, and melancholy look in his blue eyes. Even in company there was often an air about Mozart of being not quite there. It was as if he lived onstage and off simultaneously, a character in life’s tragicomedy but also outside of it watching, studying, gathering material for the fabric of his art. Like Jan Swafford’s biographies Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Mozart is the complete exhumation of a genius in his life and ours: a man who would enrich the world with his talent for centuries to come and who would immeasurably shape classical music. As Swafford reveals, it’s nearly impossible to understand classical music’s origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself.
The letters of one of the world’s greatest composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—seen variously as a child prodigy, musical genius, tragic Romantic artist, and cultural icon—is among the most written-about of all composers. This fascinating set of his letters offers a new understanding of his life story—his marriage, compositions, performances, occasional money worries, opinions of fellow musicians, and complex relationship with his father—and a revealing portrait of both the man and the musician.
