W. A. Mozart (review)

Listeners deeply engrossed in the music of Mozart have been especially numerous during the past half century. The English speakers among them are now able to consult the comprehensive German-language biography, published in 1923–24, by Hermann Abert. Turning away from what he called the “musical fairyland” of heroic biography to examine works in specific historical and musical contexts, Abert in effect provided Mozart’s listeners with over a thousand pages of high-level program notes. Cliff Eisen has produced a valuable critical edition of Abert’s text, updating details and adding an astute commentary of his own on aesthetic issues involved. Some of what Abert wrote was in need of updating, but some may be a corrective to our own distortions. Whereas Abert wrote that Mozart’s creativity “sprang from the heart,” musicologists now stress that his career was, as Neal Zaslaw puts it, that of a “working stiff.” But while recent commentators have stressed Mozart as part of the Enlightenment, Abert wisely portrayed him acting strategically—setting sacred texts either in orthodox or in mystical terms and turning to the Freemasons for collegiality and composing opportunities. Though driven by an “inner force,” Abert suggested, Mozart had a “keen eye for the world around him” but “was not a political animal.”