Mozart Studies 2 ed. by Simon P. Keefe (review)

By now books with the title Mozart Studies have been popping up for the better part of a quarter of a century, and the current one, following in the tradition, offers a scholarly miscellany of something for everyone. As such, the nine essays, edited by Simon P. Keefe, do not follow any particular theme or methodology, but explore a diversity of musicological approaches and areas of interest to Mozartians, with a formidable group of Mozart scholars as the authors. Each essay simply stands on its own, although in one or two cases connections arise, which may in fact have been inadvertent.

The volume leads off with Ulrich Konrad’s ‘Mozart the letter writer and his language’, which delves into the linguistic creativity of Mozart’s letters, showing his brilliance as a letter writer. He begins with the claim that ‘Mozart was an eminent letter writer, the most eloquent among musicians of his time, of almost unparalleled vitality of word and clarity of formulation’ (p. 1), and backs this up with numerous examples of his ingenuity, cleverness, and solecisms. He rightly points out that Mozart’s use of language can be difficult for the twenty-first-century reader to understand fully, requiring that we take into account aspects of dialect, semantics, and phonology from the time. Konrad wrote the article in German and William Buchanan translated it into English; one only wishes that the excerpts from the letters had been included in German as well, so readers without ready access to Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen could enjoy the cleverness in the original language.

Looking at the linguistic breadth of the letters has not prevented Konrad from taking a fairly literal approach to them, especially the correspondence with Mozart’s father Leopold, where he takes most of what Mozart says at face value. Mozart knew some of the finest letter writers of the eighteenth century, Louise d’Épinay for one, whose apartment he shared in Paris, and surely learned something of the art of epistolary dissimulation from her, among others, including one of her favourite correspondents, Voltaire. As well as understanding the linguistic approaches, one must also be aware of what the eighteenth century itself called ‘epistolary commerce’—the broader public implications of letters.

Keefe follows this with one of his own two articles, ‘Mozart “stuck in music” in Paris (1778): towards a new biographical paradigm’, also with a strong focus on letters, and whether intended or not, it contradicts the previous piece by Konrad. Keefe tries to explain the bizarre letter that Mozart wrote to his father about his mother’s death, a letter that goes into much detail about his ‘Paris’ Symphony and also berates Voltaire, who had just died. Keefe tries to explain this away by claiming Mozart lacked the skill to write the letter properly, but needed music to express himself, and cites Mozart’s own words to this end, that ‘I cannot write in verse; I am no poet … But I can do it through sounds; I am a musician’ (p. 31). Now we have a problem: do we accept Konrad’s view of Mozart’s epistolary brilliance, or Keefe’s of his inadequacy? While we should not necessarily be put off by disagreements, it seems curious that the editor would appear to undermine the first article by following it directly with his own dissenting position.

Konrad makes a convincing case, but Keefe does not. Mozart, in the Voltairian style of writing letters, wrote what his correspondent would want to hear, as he did about Voltaire the person, whom his father despised. Mozart had nothing but the highest respect for Voltaire, but anyone reading this letter would think the opposite; on this and many other issues, Mozart dissimulates when writing to his father, and that probably includes what he has to say about his own abilities as a writer. Keefe expands his article with musical discussion to counter the notion that Paris had been a...