This volume of essays on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart reflects scholarly advances made over the last thirty years. The studies are broad and focused, demonstrating a large number of viewpoints, methodologies and orientations and the material spans a wide range of subject areas, including biography, vocal music, instrumental music and performance. Written by leading researchers from Europe and North America, these previously published articles and book chapters are representative of both the most frequently discussed and debated issues in Mozart studies and the challenging, exciting nature of Mozart scholarship in general. The volume is essential reading for researchers, students and scholars of Mozart’s music.

    Contents: Introduction. Part I Biographical Perspectives: Mozart and Salzburg, Cliff Eisen; Court, government and society in Mozart’s Vienna, Derek Beales; Mozart’s appointment to the Viennese court, Dorothea Link; Mozart in the market place, Julia Moore; The Rochlitz anecdotes: issues of authenticity in early Mozart biography, Maynard Solomon. Part II Vocal Music: Contexts and Interpretations: Goldoni, Opera Buffa, and Mozart’s advent in Vienna, Daniel Heartz; Sentimental and anti-sentimental in Le nozze di Figaro, Stefano Castelvecchi; The fandango scene in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Dorothea Link; Mozart’s felix culpa: Così fan tutte and the irony of beauty, Scott Burnham; Mozart and the theater auf der Wieden: new attributions and perspectives, David J. Buch; Requiem, but no piece, Thomas Bauman. Part III Instrumental Music: Sources and Influences: Haydn and Mozart’s 1773 stay in Vienna: weeding a musicological garden, A. Peter Brown; The sincerest form of flattery? Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets and the question of influence, Mark Evan Bonds; Cadenza contra text: Mozart in Beethoven’s hands, Richard Kramer; Another look at the ‘corrupt passage’ in Mozart’s G minor Symphony K. 550: its sources, ‘solution’ and implications for the composition of the final trilogy, Cliff Eisen; ‘We hardly knew what we should pay attention to first’: Mozart the performer-composer at work on the Viennese piano concertos, Simon P. Keefe. Part IV Performance: Performance practice in the music of Mozart, Robert D. Levin; Manuscript parts as evidence of orchestral size in the 18th-century Viennese concerto, Dexter Edge; ‘Ich praeludirte und spielte Variazionen: Mozart the fortepianist, Katalin Komlós. Name Index.

    Biography

    Simon P. Keefe is James Rossiter Hoyle Chair and Head of Music at the University of Sheffield, UK.