Austria Books

Here is biographical study blended smoothly with murder mystery. The cause of Mozart's death remains a mystery after many attempts to explain it. Despite the great success of Amadeus, the idea that the composer Salieri poisoned Mozart out of jealousy is generally not credited. Francis Carr skillfully reopens the question of poisoning, but with a new and plausible suspect, having set the stage with an analysis of Mozart's and Constanze's marriage.

It may seem hard for the general reader to believe that so little is known about parts of the life of so great a figure as Mozart. No matter which biography of Mozart you pick up, you find efforts to explain certain blanks in the life of a man so celebrated in his own time. So, too, the odd manner of his funeral and burial. Carr's thesis brings together and explains a number of these mysteries.

In the second half of the book, Carr does a superb job of documenting inconsistencies and reopening the question of why Mozart's remains were treated the way they were. In this matter he masterfully sweeps away the weak explanations of major biographers, especially those around the burial laws of Emperor Joseph II.

The book has a good many passages quoted from Mozart letters, a practice that I generally find less than happy, being so often used as padding. But here the letters are skillfully used to establish Mozart's feelings and attitudes towards his wife as well as providing key testimony from figures such as Constanze's sister Sophie. The absence of letters at certain times, presumably destroyed by Constanze, is itself a line of evidence. Because the heart of the book - Mozart's relationship with his wife and what happened to cause Mozart's death and strange burial - can be little more than an extended essay, the author may be forgiven some padding.

The book is well enough done that you may find yourself reading it in one sitting, just as I did.

If you had previously rejected the idea that Constanze was an inappropriate wife for Mozart, believing it based in prejudice and being aware, through letters, of Mozart's great affection for her, this book may just change your mind.

If you are looking for information on what was going on around Vienna during Mozart's life time, then this book is for you. In between Mozart's two stays in Vienna, the author excerpts, (from an earlier publication of the times), a near complete listing of minute details of Vienese life. Fashions, wages, religious happenings, crime and punishment, the different people living in the city, the pubs, coffeehouses, and so much more. Great book to have in your Mozart collection for reference. I learned a lot. At these prices, you can't lose!

Braunbehrens' book is a well written account of Mozart and the intellectual, political, economic and cultural milieu that existed during the ascendant part of his creativity. Braunbehrens' is not the first Mozart biography I have read that explores these aspects of Mozart, nor is this book as lavishly illustrated as others. However, for my amatuer self, it the best written and most accessible; scholarly, but not academically dry or pedantic.

Braunbehrens dispelled for me the myth which has come down to amateurs since his death that Mozart was an unrelentingly tragic, Romantic and impoverished figure. Certainly that myth is not descernible in his music. Braunbehrens erudite insights have enhanced my listening experience, and have given me greater appreciation of this man of the Enlightenment.

I so enjoyed this biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that I could hardly put it down. Siepmann does a good job of putting Mozart's life into a clear context, both in terms of the events surrounding him as well as the wider historical and musical world. Also, there is a good balance here between biographical and musical discussions. Interestingly, Siepmann chose to discuss most of Mozart's music in separate chapters that he calls "interludes," so while this is somewhat disjointed from a biographical standpoint, it makes the book more useful as a musical reference after you've read it. The book is concise, though, at just 170 pages of main text, so there's not a great deal of detail for those who already know the main outline of Mozart's life and work. I like the fact that Siepmann chose to include extensive quotations from Mozart and others to give a better sense of their thinking. And the 2 included CDs are fun to listen to along with reading the bio, or on their own, especially as the selections are complete movements. The associated web site on Naxos gives most of the works in full that are represented by single movements on the book's CDs, and has more music and information as well. All in all, a very enjoyable and useful book.

This book/CD combination gives a brief introduction to Mozart's life and his compositions. I recommend it if you are new to the world of Mozart and want to learn about him and hear a sample of his music for a good price

Stanley Sadie intended to write a general biography of Mozart's life, following the completion of his labors on the titanic New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which he shepherded into existence. Sadie, himself, wrote the splendid Mozart entry, which was published separately. He completed the manuscript of the first volume of his two volume Mozart biography, covering Mozart's formative years in Salzburg and his extensive youthful travel throughout the music centers of Europe, just before passing away. Sadly, we will never see the completed work. Nevertheless, we are fortunate that we have the first extensive new biography of the early, Salzburg Mozart in more than half a century.

The first thing that strikes the modern reader concerning Mozart's Salzburg years is how much of his early music remains only partially known. Many of his youthful operas remain a cypher to the average listener. His extensive number of early sonatas for piano or violin and piano are also still relatively unheard. Most of his adolescent symphonies remain unplayed. It is not until Mozart reaches the advanced age of 19, by which time he has been composing for at least 14 years, when he quickly composes his 5 violin concertos, that we are on familiar compositional ground. The nature and extent of Mozart's numerous journeys in search of employment are a revelation to the average music lover. Europe's complex social and musical scene in the middle 18th Century, one in which Mozart was obliged to operate as a genius endowed with a profoundly independent spirit, is undiscovered country that 21st Century research is only beginning to reveal as a vast mosaic of fierce political repression and incipient rebellion. A landscape that Mozart would effect peripherally before transforming it with his mature, revolutionary operas. These significant aspects of Mozart's early years are carefully discussed in this splendid biography. Ultimately, it is Mozart's nearly incomprehensible genius that Sadie struggles to explain. He succeeds admirably.

And yet.... Despite the occasional Mozartean autograph manuscript exhibiting the evidence of compositional struggle (such as the six Haydn string quartets, with their chiaroscuro pages of cross-hatched deletions, amendations and corrections) offered as proof of his humanity, the sheer number of his masterpieces, written so swiftly and with such apparent effortlessness, prove that there is something inexplicable in Mozart. The spell he wove was miraculous. Mozart's musical martyrdom made him a hero to the Romantic generation whilst raising a sea of questions even Stanley Sadie's splendid biography must leave unanswered. The 19th Century saw something Godlike in Mozart's creative genius. Even now, in the 21st, that thought refuses to die. I recommend this biography for explaining the legend's birth, even though it cannot hope to reveal its wellspring.

Mike Birman

This is an important book. Peter Henisch has style and he has ideas--and he has courage, because this is a book--completely based on his own life's experience, and that of his father--that deals with an astonishing story: that of a man (his father) who knew he had a Jewish background, who, from force of circumstances, and his own ambition, spend WW II as a leading photojournalist for the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front. What a story. And how interesting pyschologically! I don't know of any young Austrian writer (Henisch was born in 1943) who tries to come to grips with the texture of Nazism just this way--and how it appealled to people, even a partly Jewsih person. There is no book like this. It should be read.

This is the first book I reach for when I want basic information on Mozart. It is compact enough to read straight through in a few hours; it is also well-organized for reference by subject. There is succinct coverage of everything you'd want in a composer's biography: dates, events, family, colleagues, works; there is a good amount of musical analysis, a few pages of autograph manuscript, portraits of the composer, a lengthy bibliography, and a work list. This includes dates, key, forces required, title where applicable, and Koechel number(s).

There is no mental analysis or minute examination of the Baesle letters or anything of the sort here, just the "hard facts" on Mozart--and plentiful guidance on where to look next if you need more information on a great composer.

Lauda hits the sweet spot with this book. You are taken behind the scenes of Formula 1 from an insider's insider. You learn what it is like to drive for "The Old Man" Enzo Ferrari and Mclaren's Ron Dennis. What I found fascinating was how Lauda applied his cold non-emotional approach to racing to his life in general. In days where superstar athletes are out 3 months for a hamstring injury, Lauda was back racing after receiving "the last rights" from his near fatal crash at the Nurburgring. If you love racing, you will love this book.

This book is a rare historical work which combines readability and depth of insight. While I have read others that also achieve this mark, OIL EMPIRE is one of the few that does so and still maintains the specificity of an academic work. At times I found the author violated Orwell's dictum to use the simplest vocabulary to convey an idea, but this did not distract from the pleasure of reading this book. I tend to focus more on classical histories, and new nothing about the history of Galicia before I started, but I found the the author was able to situate her research so that this was not a problem. When I finished the book I was reminded of the old saying that to understand a large problem we must first understand a small problem. After the events of 9/11 it is no longer just the leftists who assert that control of the oil economy is at the heart of our foreign policy. This book provides a case study of how the same ambitions that we have today were played out on a smaller scale at the turn of the last century. I look forward to seeing what the author has in store for her next work.