This critical reevaluation of the causes of many of Beethoven's illnesses offers detailed accounts of the treatments applied by his physicians and a comprehensive rendering of the composer's final illness, death, and burial. Separate chapters discuss the causes of many of Beethoven's illnesses, his autopsy and the exhumations. Following the rediscovery of the original Latin autopsy report in 1970, the author has discovered two faulty translations, which he argues contributed to errors in earlier medical assumptions. New evidence disputes earlier assertions that Beethoven's deafness resulted from syphilis. This fascinating account of Beethoven's ailments should appeal to Beethoven enthusiasts and to both the medical and music communities.

From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart’s singular imagination was at work in every direction. He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always hilarious. He went at every piece of his life, and perhaps most notably his social life, with tremendous gusto. His circle of friends and patrons was wide, encompassing anyone who appealed to his boundless appetites for music and all things pleasurable and fun. Mozart was known to be an inexplicable force of nature who could rise from a luminous improvisation at the keyboard to a leap over the furniture. He was forever drumming on things, tapping his feet, jabbering away, but who could grasp your hand and look at you with a profound, searching, and melancholy look in his blue eyes. Even in company there was often an air about Mozart of being not quite there. It was as if he lived onstage and off simultaneously, a character in life’s tragicomedy but also outside of it watching, studying, gathering material for the fabric of his art. Like Jan Swafford’s biographies Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Mozart is the complete exhumation of a genius in his life and ours: a man who would enrich the world with his talent for centuries to come and who would immeasurably shape classical music. As Swafford reveals, it’s nearly impossible to understand classical music’s origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself.

(Amadeus). Mozart: An Introduction to the Music, the Man, and the Myths explores in detail 20 of the composer's major works in the context of his tragically brief life and the turbulent times in which he lived. Addressed to non-musicians seeking to deepen their technical appreciation for his music while learning more about Mozart the man than the caricature portrayed in the 1986 movie Amadeus , this book offers extensive biographical and historical background debunking many well-established Mozart myths along with guided study of compositions representing every genre of 18th-century music: opera, concerto, symphony, church music, divertimento and serenade, sonata, and string quartet. Author Roye E. Wates, a Mozart specialist, has taught music history to thousands of non-musicians, both undergraduates and adults, as a Professor of Music at Boston University and from 2002-2004 as director of Boston University's Adult Music Seminar at Tanglewood, summer residence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mozart: An Introduction to the Music, the Man, and the Myths provides a unique combination of biographical detail, up-to-date research, detailed musical analyses, and clear definitions of terms. Amateurs as well as more advanced musicians will gain a greater understanding of Mozart's encyclopedic mastery.

The real key to this distinctive book lies in its subtitle. The book's core is an astonishingly detailed medical history of Mozart, spanning his entire life, compiled with great ingenuity and skill from varied and sometimes surprising sources. Davies, a British physician specializing in internal medicine, has already established his credentials with a series of substantial journal articles concerning Mozart's final illness and death. Here he expands and consolidates his research, offering a presumably definitive account of the intricate cluster of ailments and disabilities, some stretching back over many years, that eventually contributed to Mozart's early death. After reading Davies, one wonders not at Mozart's early end but, rather, how he survived for so long. . . . Davies advances unexpected medical causes for some Mozartean peculiarities of behavior, and surely these ideas will provoke much interest among Mozart scholars. For college or university libraries that already have the `basic' Mozart items, here is a unique and most rewarding addition. Choice There have been many studies of Mozart, but few offer as rich an understanding of the composer's character as this book. Mozart in Person appraises the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of Mozart's health and its effect on his creativity. As Erna Schwerin says in the introduction, Mozart emerges as a human being, realistically perceived with twentieth-century sensibility, yet retrospectively in the light of eighteenth-century mores. This is the first volume to describe all of Mozart's known illnesses and to present a detailed discussion of the controversial cause of his premature death, with a convincing refutation of the alleged poisoning theories. Davies defines Mozart's enigmatic, complex personality, and presents fascinating insights into Mozart's relationships with his pastimes and stresses. The health of Mozart's family, especially the personality, illnesses, and death of his father are discussed. The author explores many of the myths surrounding this great and often misunderstood composer and clarifies our understanding of Mozart's flaws and shortcomings through authentic documentation, thereby eliminating some of the distortions created in recent popular plays and films. There is a detailed review of Mozartian economics, including the composer's debts, extravagance, and gambling proclivities. Yet another highlight of the book is an up-to-date account of exciting recent research on Mozart's skull and the bronze death mask. The first book in English devoted entirely to Mozart's physical and mental health, Mozart in Person contains a comprehensive bibliography of books and articles from musical and medical literatures. The state of medical knowledge in eighteenth-century Europe and glossary of medical terms are presented. Although suitable for nonspecialist research, this volume will also have wide academic appeal in the study of medicine, psychology, and music, and will be a welcome addition to all general libraries.

Both a beguiling portrait of the artist and an idiosyncratic self-portrait of the author, Mysterious Mozart is Philippe Sollers's alternately oblique and searingly direct interpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's oeuvre and lasting mystique, audaciously reformulated for the postmodern age. With a mix of slang, abstractions, quotations, first- and third-person narratives, and blunt opinion, French writer and critic Philippe Sollers taps into Mozart's playful correspondence and the lesser-known pieces of his enormous repertoire to analyze the popularity and public perceptions of his music. Detailing Mozart's drive to continue producing masterpieces even when saddled with debt and riddled with illness and anxiety, Sollers powerfully and meticulously analyzes Mozart's seven last great operas using a psychoanalytical approach to the characters' relationships. As Sollers explores themes of constancy, prodigy, freedom, and religion, he offers up bits of his own history, revealing his affinity for the creative geniuses of the eighteenth century and a yearning to bring that era's utopian freedom to life in contemporary times. What emerges is an inimitable portrait of a man and a musician whose greatest gift is a quirky companionability, a warm and mysterious appeal that distinguishes Mozart from other great composers and is brilliantly echoed by Sollers's artful tangle of narrative.

Long before the word Super Star was coined, Saint-Georges was the original. Many people throughout history have been famous for one reason or another. Many have made great contributions to civilization and left great legacies. Their paintings and sculptures we still admire. Their discoveries have made our lives better; their music we still play and sing, but no one in history was as talented in so many areas as Saint-Georges. For a time, he was the greatest fencer in the world. He was an exceptional violinist and along with his teacher, Gossec, he pioneered the composition of the String Quartet. Even Mozart came to Paris to study this new form of music. Saint-Georges was an unequaled equestrian, an exceptional marksman and an elegant dancer. The wealthy copied the way he dressed, and the common people admired him as he walked through the streets, and whispered his name. He was a true Renaissance man and a super star in the Paris of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. What is even more remarkable was the fact that he was a mulatto.

A picture of Mozart's "character and of the personalities and events that exercised a decisive influence upon it. The works that are mentioned are not described, but characterized from the point of view of their time and--so far as possible--of our relation to them." --Preface.

Much Has Been Written about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but relatively little on the religious dimension of his person and his music. In this book Hans Kung offers an intriguing theological probing into Mozart's musical work. Kung begins by discussing Mozart's Catholic background--something that, surprisingly, has hardly been treated by Mozart scholars. He moves on to explore how Mozart's music itself displays to the keen ear "traces of transcendence," giving intimations of a mysterious bliss transcending even all music.