Mozart in Motion

May 1, 2023
In an intriguing blend of biography and deft musical analysis, poet Mackie creates a gallery of the composer's masterpieces expertly framed in the cultural setting of eighteenth-century Europe. Contemporary art, politics, music, and society are used to great effect as background for a score of Mozart's compositions. Piano sonatas (in A minor, C, A and F), symphonies (in E flat, G minor and C), operas (Don Giovanni, The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Idomeneo), and more are discussed in musical terms as well as from the historical perspective of a turbulent century on the brink of modernity. Mackie skillfully draws from the composer's voluminous correspondence, observing, "Mozart's ranging letters comprise the second most important source for coming to understand him, his musical work being of course the first by far," and mines the best of Mozartian scholarship, writing in clear and insightful prose. After perusing the pages of this thoughtful and beautifully written book, readers will want to discover, or rediscover, the timeless music of this beloved composer.

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Starred review from June 15, 2023
A unique, wide-ranging study of the canonical composer. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) lived "in a blur of needs and actions," writes poet Mackie. He was a whirlwind of a man who was always on the move and whose music moved with him. Because our own time is as turbulent as Mozart's--the latter poised on the brink between classicism and romanticism and, beyond that, a politically and culturally revolutionary era--"we listen in inexorable motion, too." Indeed, Mozart's heady blend of the serious and the sarcastic is a soundtrack for our time. "New sorts of dynamism and restlessness were the motors of Mozart's style," writes Mackie, perfect for the "ceaseless volatilization [that] has turned out to be the heart of modern living." The author is a careful listener to the music on its own terms and in its own time, noting how challenging Mozart's operas were when they found their first audiences, then how Mozart pivoted to write three symphonies that have "qualities of urgency, colour and imaginative extremity that traverse and test innumerable flickering ideas about the world, and they grab hold of their listeners with veering aplomb." If nothing else, Mackie's absorbing book, with its large dramatis personae, makes it clear that Tom Hulce's performance as Mozart in the film Amadeus was an understatement: The man himself was a bundle of ADHD tics, constantly drumming his fingers and humming, frequently picking up and moving from city to city. Mackie also emphasizes Mozart's utterly groundbreaking blend of seriousness and giddiness, the sense that if apocalypse is around the corner, we might as well have fun with it. Throughout his short life, for all its tumult and the turbulence of the Europe around him, Mozart "kept creating." Ambitious and brilliant: a book that rethinks Mozart's place in history and one that should win him new fans along the way.

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