Mozart: A Cultural Biography (review)

Mozart: A Cultural Biography. By Robert W. Gutman. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999. [xxii, 839 p. ISBN 0-15-100482-X (cloth); 0-15-601171-9 (pbk.). $40 (cloth); $20 (pbk.).]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has prompted more literature, critical and popular, than almost any other composer. The reasons are as varied as they are numerous. First, Mozart's remarkable artistic achievement, accomplished within a lifetime that lasted a mere thirty-five years, encompassed every musical genre of his era. He transformed established forms and created realms of aesthetic beauty in music of unparalleled emotional expression and intellectual profundity. Second, Mozart lived during a period of remarkable change--political, social, philosophical--and his career outlined the role of the independent musical artist in society. Third, a large body of primary sources, notably the correspondence of Mozart and his family, is extant, uniquely illuminating his life and career.

Given the extensive literature, both specialized and general, devoted to the composer (a large amount generated during the anniversary year 1991), it might be fair to question the need for another book on Mozart. It is noteworthy, then, that this biography by Robert W. Gutman (well known as author of the somewhat controversial Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind and His Music [New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968]) represents a significant achievement that should be welcomed by the Mozart specialist as well as the general reader. Gutman, taking cognizance of current historical and musicological research, provides a fresh, enlightening portrait of his subject, filtered through the cultural lens of eighteenth-century European life.

Scholars have long availed themselves of the various editions of the letters and source documents to establish and refine Mozart biography, gain hints about Mozart's process of composition, and ascertain details of contemporary musical life. Though many writers have variously evaluated the Mozart correspondence, Gutman's balanced and critical interpretation of these sources arises from a commanding knowledge of history, general and musical. Accordingly, his observations are perceptive, his arguments compelling.

Gutman amply considers Mozart's travels --as a child, adolescent, and young man--in twenty-six chapters. Travel played a significant part in Mozart's life and development as a composer. His perspective was immensely broadened and his musical experience deepened through contact with leading musicians, patrons, and musical establishments; the full effect and influence of these travels resist adequate measure. But travel also increased the peril of contemporary existence. In view of the many illnesses and epidemics that afflicted the populace of eighteenth-century Europe, it is surprising that Mozart survived even to age thirty-five. As a child, he suffered various illnesses during the three-and-a-half-year grand tour; in 1765, in the Netherlands, he contracted typhoid fever, fell critically ill, and remained bedridden for four weeks. Nor was he immune to the scourge of smallpox. In 1767, an outbreak claimed the life of Archduchess Maria Josepha, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, and the Mozart family quit Vienna for Moravia to wait out the epidemic and the official mourning period. In Olmütz, the eleven-year-old Wolfgang became infected with the disease, which caused grotesque swelling of his small body, blindness that lasted for nine days, and permanent scarring.

Gutman devotes nine of his thirty-five chapters to Mozart's life in Vienna, discussing the extraordinary musical accomplishments of the years 1781 through 1791 --operas, orchestral compositions (including piano concertos and symphonies), chamber music, solo keyboard works--his marriage to Constanze Weber, the birth of their six children (of whom only two sons survived to adulthood), and the composer's untimely death.

As typical of the era, most of Mozart's large compositions were commissions or related to an appointment the composer had or sought. His letters give a view into the creative workshop of Idomeneo (1781) and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782). The success of Entführung proved decisive; it was produced at the Burgtheater (one of three imperial theaters), enjoyed popularity with a range of the Viennese classes, and established Mozart...