Keny long biography of mozart

1.

Another book in English on Mozart might not seem to be a pressing need just now after the extravagant outpouring of the 250th anniversary of his birth last year, but we have waited a long time for this one.

When, eighty-eight years ago, Hermann Abert’s W.A. Mozart appeared, it was recognized as the most authoritative survey of the composer’s life and works. (It claimed to be a revision of Otto Jahn’s pathbreaking life of Mozart of 1882, but in fact almost nothing was left of Jahn; when one of Jahn’s observations does appear in Abert, it is quoted as if from an external source, so it is just as well that Jahn’s name is no longer displayed on the title page.)

Abert managed to set down practically everything of interest about Mozart’s life that was known in 1919, and he added a complete overview of Mozart’s works, very many of them discussed in great detail and related to a masterly account of the music world