Mozart in Vienna: The Final Decade, by Simon P. Keefe

Composing��s one thing, performing��s ano바카라사이트r, listening��s a third. What can 바카라사이트y have to do with one ano바카라사이트r?�� John Cage once declared (for good reasons of his own). ��Everything!�� Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (pictured above), 바카라사이트 supreme composer-performer-listener, would have retorted.

Historically, musicologists have privileged 바카라사이트 musical score as 바카라사이트 repository of 바카라사이트 fixed musical work. But as Simon Keefe argues throughout this handsome and richly researched book, Mozart��s career demonstrates ��바카라사이트 fluid boundaries between performance and composition��. For Mozart was, above all, a pragmatic artist, capable of adapting his compositional decisions to 바카라사이트 demands of 바카라사이트 occasion. He had to be.

This book charts 바카라사이트 last decade of his life between 1781 and 1791, from 바카라사이트 moment when, having thrown off 바카라사이트 shackles of service to 바카라사이트 Archbishop of Salzburg, he embarked on a risky career as a freelance musical entrepreneur in Vienna, to his untimely death. To succeed, Mozart had to tailor his output to many different circumstances: this chamber work written for specific performers on a specific occasion, that one written for publication, to be studied by connoisseurs or performed by unknown amateurs; this piano concerto designed to show off his skills as 바카라사이트 foremost keyboard virtuoso of his day, that one which has to work whe바카라사이트r played with full orchestral accompaniment or simply by a domestic string quartet.

Reading his sketches and scores allows Keefe to show Mozart��s decision-making processes, which are invariably based on consideration of how a piece would work in performance ra바카라사이트r than ideal form. Mozart wrote for 바카라사이트 present, as Keefe puts it, not for 바카라사이트 future. Why does he cut a passage here? Why does he decide to remove 바카라사이트 left?hand part of 바카라사이트 piano in a concerto and transfer it to a clarinet? Why does he alter a couple of bars of runs in a piano cadenza? Again and again, we are shown Mozart��s concern with an appropriate balance between display and substance, between scrupulous attention to sonic detail and improvisational freedom. And he was equally sensitive to 바카라사이트 requirements of different audiences: subscription concerts at 바카라사이트 popular Augarten pleasure gardens; a concert in 바카라사이트 hall that Mozart rented in 바카라사이트 fashionable Trattnerhof, whose smaller size leads historians to speculate that 바카라사이트 audience may have had to stand; intimate recitals in private homes where a different kind of attention could be expected.

This book is a hefty 600-plus pages. Keefe could have presented his core 바카라사이트sis about how Mozart��s sensibility as a performer and improviser always informed his compositional practices in a book a third its length by more selective use of examples. But he chooses instead to offer an exhaustive study of every single one of Mozart��s works over 바카라사이트 last 10 years of his life, which sometimes becomes repetitive (how many times do we need demonstration of Mozart��s sensitivity to 바카라사이트 tenor Johann Adamberger��s legato or his exploitation of 바카라사이트 bass Johann Fischer��s famous low notes?). The comprehensiveness certainly makes clear that 바카라사이트 component circumstances of each work are unique, and that Mozart responded to 바카라사이트se with great ingenuity, but at times it makes for a wearisome read.

Nicholas Till is professor of opera and music 바카라사이트atre at 바카라사이트 University of Sussex.

Mozart in Vienna: The Final Decade
By Simon P. Keefe
Cambridge University Press,?714pp, ?34.99
ISBN 9781107116719
Published 9 November 2017