Mozart in Revolt : Strategies of Resistance, Mischief and Deception


Printed:	1999	Author:	David P. Schroeder
Publisher:	Yale Univiversity Press	ISBN:	0300075421
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Hardcover - 224 pages (June 1999), usually ships within 2-3 days.
Amazon Review
From Booklist May 1, 1999
The prevalance of the epistolary novel in the eighteenth century led Leopold Mozart to conceive of a biography of his son Wolfgang that would be crafted from their letters. Wolfgang rebelled at the moralistic advice in the letters Leopold wrote him, however, and inserted deliberate deceptions--descriptions of events that never happened--into his own letters. Wolfgang also rebelled against the Enlightenment that Leopold embraced, preferring the rebelliousness of Voltaire. Wolfgang's operas, especially The Magic Flute, expressed support of the people against authority subtly, to escape court censorship. Also, the carnival season before Lent was his favorite time of year; he played Harlequin and the German equivalent, Hanswurst, in real masquerades and in scatological letters to close friends. Several biographers, Schroeder points out, take the filthy letters as evidence of a deranged, childish personality. This, however, misreads the intelligent wit in the letters as a whole and their artfulness in playing to the general public and the particular recipient simultaneously. Wolfgang may have deceived his father, but Schroeder exposes him as the playful person he was. Alan Hirsch
Book Description
Mozart`s father, Leopold, bombarded his son with advice-filled letters in the German style of the times; Wolfgang first responded angrily, but then evaded and dissimulated in letters similar to those of the French philosophers. In this provocative new analysis of the Mozart father-son letters, David Schroeder contends that Mozart subverted his father`s ambition to publish the letters by turning the correspondence into an epistolary game and making his own letters unpublishable.