Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music by Jane Glover Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.75 You Save: $10.20 (64%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.36 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music
Book Review: A conscientious and fascinating work
Summary: 4 Stars
By her through investigation on Mozart's women, Jane Glover let us know the very details and fresh information on them which other authors have overlooked to describe. In line with these freshness, such new finding by this female conductor as the very opening gesture of the Requiem is almost a quotation from the introduction to his own aria,' Ah, non sai qual pena sia' (K416), impress us favorably. Her excellent and fine sentences make us read this book without boredom.
Shuji Fujisawa(Yokohama, Japan)
Book Review: A Most Enlightening Biography
Summary: 5 Stars
For those who have a special love of the music of Mozart, and there must be many, MOZART' WOMEN, offers a very special insight into the way Mozart composed and the role women played in his creative genius. His mother and his sister were especially important. The four Weber sisters, one of whom was to become his wife, greatly influenced his music. As Jane Glover, a well qualified musician, indicates that once Mozart became involved in opera, he was to write some of the loveliest of music, drawing on the female soloists, who were to play the many roles, as his inspiration.
In addition to Mozart's life, Jane Glover provides an interesting insight into C18th Europe, its courts and its cities. Jane Glover writes well.Her effort is based on thorough research and is well documented.
Book Review: A Polite, Sensible Biography
Summary: 5 Stars
If you hope to share vicariously any of Mozart's amatory escapades, this book will disappoint you. There are cautious suggestions of romantic entanglements, but there is also the overwhelming depiction of Mozart as a man who spent most of his waking hours composing and playing music, as any reasonable person should imagine. If you hope to penetrate very deeply in Mozart's pysche or intellect, you may also be slightly disappointed; author Jane Glover chooses to approach the composer largely from the outside, from the influence on his career of his father, wife, and the many women musicians with whom he worked. With those two warnings in mind, I can strongly recommend the book as compelling reading. The text is segmented: The first third is a concise biography of Mozart from his birth to his early death, focused chiefly on his struggle to make an independent living as a musician. The second third addresses the practical factors of performance and specific performers that shaped Mozart's operas. The third follows the lives of Mozart's sister, wife, and other women companions after Mozart's death. One could choose to read each segment as a separate article, and I suspect most readers will be most thrilled by the first third of the book. There is something eminently sensible and polite (dare I say British?) about Jane Glover's writing style, which I found delightfully incongruous when applied to the rambunctious, impish, scatological, scattered manchild who composed such grand music.Book Review: Interesting, even for the uninitiated
Summary: 5 Stars
In this focused bio Glover lovingly relates Mozart's short life and musical immortality with a focus on Mozart's relationships with women. Inextricably woven in this is his realtionship with his emotionally abusive father, Leopold.
Leopold, makes his 15 year old son feel a failure for not securing what "grown ups" with vast accomplishments could not. This same all knowing patriarch relegates his talented daughter, Nannerl, to a life of shadows while he piddles away his own presumed talent, to better his life through his son whom he emotionally undermines.
Mozart's first true love is similarly undermined by his father. Later, Leopold invokes mysogenistic ideals to retain his authority when Mozart finally marries. Sadly, Mozart's sister Nannerl is sidelined by the marriage since she is no longer first in her brother's attention and affections. She becomes totally dependent on Leopold.
Why Loepold takes custody of his grandchild by Nannerl is not clear. My speculation is that he had married Nannerl off to a person of wealth who, unspoken to both of them, was accepted as more abusive than he.
A chapter called "Mozart's Women" covers the women critical to his performance career. The chapter title is ironic. These are the women for whom he writes parts. The real "Mozart Women" appropriately consume the larger part of the text. These are his mother, sister, wife and other members of the Weber family.
Mozart's father's support of his son is conditional on Mozart's success in supporting the family/(him). Any generosity from Leopold is dubious. His emotional support of Wolfgang is generally negative. The women never let him down, in life and thereafter.
I recommend this book for all those who love Mozart's music. If, like me, you are unschooled in the particulars of Mozart's work, skim the chapter called "Mozart's Women". You will find the material surrounding it interesting, informative and inspirational.
Book Review: Mozart's Women is a Superb Look at the Life and Times of a Pure Musical Genius
Summary: 5 Stars
Dame Jane Glover has heard many bravos in her lifetime as a
conductor and a musician. As a lover of Mozart
(and anyone who doesn't love his music can't love life!) this
reviewer gives her high marks for this outstanding biography.
Mozart was mischevious; enjoyed vulgarity in his letters and
language but was a good, faithful husband; loving father and
arguably the greatest genius in the history of music.
Who were Mozart's women?
a. His mother Maria Anna whom young Wolfgang loved. She
traveled with him on his musical tours.
b. His musical sister Nannerl with whom he was billed as a child
prodigy. Their relationship was loving and complex. As they
grew older Nannerl had to stay home in Salzburg while Wolfgang
traveled to the great courts of Europe. They did not correspond
from 1783 to 1791 (the year of the 35 year old Mozart's death).
c. The four Weber sisters of Mannheim. Mozart married Constanze the middle sister. They had a good marriage and two of their children Carl and Wolfgang lived to adulthood. Constanze saw to
many of Mozart's works being published and contributed biographical information to early chroniclers of the genius.
She married a Danish diplomat and lived a long life but never
forgot Wolfgang's love for her.
d. The many female opera singers whose careers were guided by
Mozart's genius.
Glover dissects the major operas of Mozart. He loved women and
his operatic writing for them and insight into the feminine soul
is the most profound in the history of opera.
Mozart's women is beautifully illustrated; elegantly written
and leaves warm memories of this force of nature called Mozart.
If you read one book this year about music make it this one.
The strongest figure in his life was his father Leopold.