Author Description

In the first comprehensive history of the changing reception of Mozart and his music over the last two hundred years, Gernot Gruber skillfully charts Mozart's evolution from forgotten composer to "a youth beloved of the gods." He considers Mozart's waning reputation during the decade preceding his death in 1791, and thoroughly examines how Mozart was deified by the Romantics, sanitized by the Victorians, and commercialized in the 1980s and early 1990s. This insightful volume probes beyond the sphere of music into literature, philosophy, the fine arts, and theology to provide a refreshing discussion of the shifting ideas, images, interpretations, and questions surrounding Mozart over the last two centuries. With profound knowledge of the relevant literature, Gruber shows how figures such as Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Felix Mendelssohn, Soren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Hermann Hesse, Marc Chagall, Ingmar Bergman, and Peter Shaffer attempted to define the elusive nature of the composer's genius in their quest to discover the "true" Mozart. The volume includes provocative perspectives on the impact of Milos Forman's highly successful film Amadeus and on the commercial packaging of Mozart for mass consumption.. Gruber's compelling account of the evolving perceptions of Mozart's music reveals as much about the changes in European ideology and culture as it does about the composer of his music.