Mysterious Mozart by Philippe Sollers (review)

Idiosyncratic, at times petulant, frequently disjointed, but never boring or pedantic, this charming, slim volume offers the reader an intimate view of the author’s formidable intellect, curiosity, and intense love of his subject rather more than any new insight into the life and works of Mozart. The expertly done translation begins with an introduction, in which Professor Mortimer has made the writing of this review somewhat superfluous, since he has thoughtfully laid out the themes and conclusions of the book in his clear and readable preface. In the body of the book, his work as a translator is hardly noticeable, by which I mean the highest praise for a job that must have been a long and arduous but, one hopes, rewarding process. The text reads effortlessly and captures both the philosophical meditations and the sometimes emotional outbursts without strain or condescension.

But what of Sollers’s text itself? It is a clarification and not a disparagement to say that this is neither musicology nor other original research. We get an idea of Sollers’s approach by looking ahead at the sections into which he has divided the book: The Body, The Soul, and The Mind. The first section begins in the vein of travel writing with a taxi ride across Paris to the strains of the Requiem and visits to Salzburg, Dürnstein, and Vienna. In a way the whole book is a kind of voyage representing Sollers’s travels through Mozart’s world and music in which he is guided by his curiosity, his passion, and his idiosyncratic likes and dislikes.

Sollers quotes from many of the letters of Mozart and his family, and he is intimately acquainted with the musicology of H. C. Robbins Landon and Alfred Einstein. He understandably relies most heavily on the French work of Jean and Brigitte Massin but omits reference to the eminent G. de Saint-Foix. He does not mention many of the standards of Mozart research—Albert, Hildesheimer, Solomon, Dent, Nettl, Zaslow. He writes extensively about the operas without reference to Steptoe’s definitive The Mozart-DaPonte Operas of 1990. But, as was stated previously, his book is not intended as musicology, and Sollers’s personal rather than comprehensive approach frees him, perhaps, to pick and choose. Still, one often feels that he chooses too often to rely on one source, that of the Massins.

As Sollers’s ramble through the letters progresses from Mozart’s childhood to his youth and maturity, his own amazement and affection for Mozart’s personality and genius is infectious. Yet he sometimes appears overly, almost Victorianly, fascinated with the scatological passages in the infamous Bäsle (“little cousin”) letters. These passages of what seem to many to be surprisingly puerile humor are probably of more use in helping exasperated music professors wake up their listless undergraduates than in illuminating Mozart’s character or works, as their language was common currency in the class and circles to which Mozart belonged. To be fair, Sollers does mention that there are similar passages in letters of other family members.

Sollers seems to be of two minds when he writes about Mozart’s marriage to Constanze, as have been many others. Reviled in the nineteenth century for not caring for her husband, later accused of dallying with the never-identified “N.N.” mentioned in the letters written while she was at the spa in Baden bei Wien, raised to almost heroic stature in the film Amadeus, Constanze has had a checkered career in literature. While Sollers acknowledges the unusual intimacy and depth of affection between the pair that comes through the letters, he cannot resist ascribing sexual liaisons to Mozart on the slim evidence of opportunity.

It is strange to read that Sollers finds Mozart’s attitude and behavior upon the death of his mother during their stay in Paris in 1778 unfeeling. While he writes in other passages of Mozart’s firm and uncomplicated Catholic faith, in this instance Sollers seems to hold his belief in Providence against...