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: Mozart intimately seen through the women in his life
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a valuable and engrossing new look at Mozart where the women in his life are mercifully not presented as pale additions or indeed obstacles to his creativity. In "Mozart's Women," his family, his loves, his wife, and the singers and musicians with whom he worked come vividly to life as he saw them and they saw him; they influenced him, cheered him on when no one would hire him, sat up all night with him when he finished an overture in a rush, lent him fortepianos, sewed buttons on his coats, sang his music and fell apart when he died. What must it have been like for one of the greatest singers of the 18th century to find across the room at the piano as her composer a small boy of fourteen? How tender are his older sister's memories of him as a child!
Particularly fascinating for me is Jane Glover's depiction of the four Weber sisters, one of whom he married, one who broke his heart, one for whom he wrote The Queen of the Night, and the last one his dear friend to whom he always sent a thousand kisses and in whose arms he died. I know these women well as I am the author of the Viking Penguin novel "Marrying Mozart" (2005) which concerns the relationship of all four Weber sisters (Aloysia, Josefa, Constanze, and Sophie) with Mozart when he was in his early twenties and tells of his complicated path to marrying the right one!
I devoured Ms. Glover's book. It was all I could have hoped.
Book Review: Mozaet's Women
Summary: 5 Stars
A beautiful book with continuously unfolding detailed facts providing overall an unexpected gripping human story. My only criticism is the painstaking musical detail,understandable coming fron a musician at the top of her profession. But the hunanity of the story,or rather stories,is so good & Jane writes so well that the musical analyses would come best in a separate Volume or Appendix. Iam 88 & first read a biography of Mozart in 1936. This was by Marcia Davenport. It was highly readable,romantic,& thought authentic in its facts;but Jane has showed that many of Marcia's facts were glaringly wrong & that But the true facts make an even better story Book Review: Interesting New Look at the Maestro!
Summary: 5 Stars
This beautifully done book about Mozart and his woman friends, associates, and relatives is probably a feminists dream, in showing the huge influence various women had on Mozart, the Man and his Music! Starting with his sister and mother, moving along with his wife, and some musicians and singers, Mozart seems to have been very, very comfortable in their company, and a true gentlemen (despite a slightly diffent view in "Amadeus"). The last days of his life are also decribed, and this is completely different from "Amadeus" as well.His death and funeral are beautifully rendered, and it is noted that the "pauper's funeral/grave" is an exaggeration ,in that the current Viennese politicos wanted to keep funeral and burials very low key for health and social/financial reasons. All in all, a very fine view of an often overlooked aspect of the Great Composer! Book Review: Glover's time machine
Summary: 5 Stars
While you're in Amazon, try searching "Mozart" in the "Books" category [don't even attempt it in "Classical Music"!]. Over three thousand offerings will be displayed. Refining that search to "Constanze Mozart" returns barely two dozen. While that might be expected, the fact that "Mozart's Women" appears in none of the lists seems a distortion.
Glover has successfully offered something innovative in Mozartiana - his life and that of the women in it. With so many seeing Mozart's wife Constanze through the film "Amadeus", Glover's view may be something of a shock. Her depiction of Constanze and the other Weber daughters, along with Mozart's sister Nannerl, is more than a rehabilitation. It is almost an upheaval of the traditional view of the lives of 18th Century composers and performers. Moreover, the tale is done with such verve and enthusiasm that you are caught from the first lines and held captive until the story's complete.
Does anyone who's read this far need an introduction to music's most eminent figure? The boyish, extroverted, discouraged and often distraught man who produced so much, yet died before his peak productive years? Glover manages to re-acquaint us to the child who found strength and inspiration through the presence of his sister. Their times apart were difficult for both, leading them to exchange a constant stream of letters in their younger years. They played together, with more than just music, since Wolfgang would bring home games when Leopold dragged him to some distant city. Only his relocation to Vienna broke the link, further sundered by his marriage to Constanze. Glover traces Nannerl's life in parallel to Wolfgang's. That existence fits more appropriately the image we have of the time - marriage to an unpleasant man and enforced exile away from music centres.
Mozart's eye for the ladies rarely let up until his marriage. Constanze's sisters attracted his gaze in his younger years and his ear in the later ones. Glover's division of this book into three "family" segments seems simplistic at first glance. Her logic is demonstrated as she follows the sibling, then marital relationships. It is the third segment, "Mozart's Women", that allows the author to achieve her fullest expression, however. It's no longer games nor domestic bliss, but Mozart's compositions and how he worked with singers and musicians. In his operas, he targetted particular performers - disappointed when certain vocalists were unavailable, appalled when substitutions were forced by circumstances.
As Glover recounts the development of librettos and cast assemblages, she draws you into each story with commanding passion for her topic. It is her depictions of the performances that jar the modern reader. She is able to evoke the quality of the singers' efforts as if she had personally witnessed them. You "hear" Calavieri's poignant ability, Alyosia Weber's soaring escalations to the highest pitches, and listen to the ways Mozart found to utilise the voices of young children. His tenors were no less carefully selected, with Wolfgang rewriting scores to accommodate the loss of power in an older performer. The entire segment reads as if Glover was sitting in the second row of the music halls furiously scribbling notes as the music washes over her. Her recounting of what she "heard" should melt the resistance of the most hardened opera avoider. It did me. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]