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"A biography of Mozart-his music, his life, and his legacy-by the poet Patrick Mackie"-- Provided by publisher.

"Mozart is one of the most familiar and beloved icons of our culture, but how much do we really understand of his music, and what can it reveal to us about the great composer? Following Mozart from his youth in Salzburg to his early death; from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments; from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard, Patrick Mackie leads the reader through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer's life and brings alive the teeming, swiveling modernity of eighteenth-century Europe. In this era of rococo painting, surrealist aesthetics, and political turbulence, Mozart reckoned with a searing talent that threatened to overwhelm him, all the while pushing himself to extraordinary feats of musicianship. In Mozart in Motion, we are returned to the volatility of the eighteenth century and hear Mozart's music in all its audacious vividness, gaining fresh perspectives on why his works still move us so intensely today, as we continue to search for a modernity he imagined into being" -- Provided by publisher.

In motion

A beautiful revenge

Leopold Mozart's grandly talented son

Victoire Jenamy

The lowly viola

Musical homelessness

Being praised

A time when Europe was a beautiful question

A swinging woman

The enlightened labyrinth

Eternal questions

Blowing and scraping and hitting are fairly simple actions

Using jokes

The wandering piano

Artistic cunning

A happy change in the nature of lament

Creating freedom

Convulsive beauty

Despair

Symphonic largesse

Gamblers

Reconciliations

Couples

Unsure fun

Indestructibility.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791 > Criticism and interpretation.

Composers > Austria > Biography.

Music > Europe > 18th century > History and criticism.