The Cambridge Companion to Mozart (review)

The Cambridge Companion to Mozart examines the composer and his music from a variety of perspectives. Seventeen complementary essays address the contexts in which Mozart lived and worked, the music itself and its reception, and issues of performance. Intended for students and scholars, as well as general readers, the book "aims to bridge the gap between scholarly and popular images of the composer" through presenting "up-to-date scholarship" (p. 2).

Practically all the volume's essays do indeed challenge popular conceptions of Mozart and his music. The opening chapters on context tackle one of the more persistent falsehoods: the belief that the composer was neglected and mistreated during his lifetime. Chapter 1, written by Cliff Eisen, discusses musical life in Salzburg during Mozart's tenure there. He concludes that the city was "hardly a musical backwater" (p. 13) and while Archbishop Colloredo was undoubtedly "a difficult employer . . . the Mozarts [father and son] were not good employees" (pp. 19-20). He further argues that the Mozarts deliberately provoked the Archbishop by flagrantly ignoring certain compositional and professional expectations; therefore they were partly, if not mostly, responsible for their supposed mistreatment. Similarly Dorothea Link's essay on Vienna challenges the myth that the Viennese court ignored Mozart and that the composer's last decade was largely unsuccessful. Although Mozart experienced some lean years near the end of his life, she demonstrates that he actively pursued and achieved some success in all the professional avenues open to him, including winning a desirable court appointment.

Two chapters deconstruct the image of Mozart as a childlike genius who was out of touch with the world. In "Mozart and Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics," David Schroeder draws on Mozart's family correspondence and other evidence to prove the composer was "keenly aware" of the era's philosophical, political, and aesthetic trends (p. 48). William Stafford's discussion of "The Evolution of Mozartian Biography" clearly explains why the early biographies incorporated fictions and "placed undue emphasis on . . . [Mozart's] wondrous childhood" (p. 203). After laying this foundation, Stafford then discusses prominent themes in biographies of the composer, using them in part to trace how concepts of genius have transformed over time. Both essays suggest that popular images of the composer unfairly "downplay the element of skill and craft" in Mozart's music (p. 208) as well as the influence of his environment.

Challenging long-held assumptions also extends to the chapters on music. Although Die Zauberflöte, for instance, is often assumed to be without precedent, David Buch shows that it stems from a fashion for fairy tale operas. As Buch notes, most scholarship has focused on allegorical interpretations of the opera. Wisely he does not address these in detail, but focuses instead on placing the opera in its theatrical context. His research leads him to reject a basic premise about the work: because fairy tale operas prior to and following Die Zauberflöte have no "demonstrable [allegorical] content," according to Buch, he questions whether or not Die Zauberflöte is in fact an allegory, a stance that will surely raise some eyebrows (p. 166).

Other essays in the collection also question prevailing assumptions and discuss how views of Mozart and his output have changed over time. Today most listeners consider the composer's music to epitomize beauty and elegance, but to his contemporaries it seemed "congested," even "rough [and] bizarre" (p. 176). David Levin's essay on performance practice builds upon this point. While many strive for a serene, legato surface when performing Mozart, Levin argues passionately that frequent changes in texture, articulation, harmony, and topoi are fundamental to Mozart's music; performers, therefore, should exploit this "volatility of character" (p. 228). Just as perceptions of Mozart's music have altered since the 1700s, so have definitions of virtuosity. In an essay titled "Mozart the Performer," Katalin Komlós demonstrates that it...