Life Of Mozart (Volume 1 of 3)

The book which is the result of this combination of toil, intelligence, ability, knowledge, and affectionate devotion, could only have been successful by the addition to these qualities of a remarkable amount of literary tact and skill. The plan of the work is one which few English authors could by any possibility adopt. It is immense; at first sight its plan is bewildering. The book is not a Life of Mozart so much as an Encyclopaedia of musical art and biography. It opens with a minute account of Mozart's father, and of his method and his works, amounting to sixteen pages. Not only have we the narrative of the life of Mozart himself from his cradle to his grave in the smallest particulars, with a detailed examination of each work-in the case of the operas, both text and music, amounting in single operas to forty, fifty, and even ninety pages—but we have the history of the rise and progress of each branch of music that Mozart touched—and he touched them all—up to the date of his life. Witness the long notices of the Opera, the Oratorio, and Church music, and the chapter on Instrumental music in Vol. I.; the account of the French Opera, and of Lully, Rameau, Gluck, and Piccinni, in Vol. II. We have also full accounts of the social and musical condition of the various cities visited by Mozart, such as Paris, Mannheim, Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna; and biographical notices, longer or shorter, of every person with whom Mozart came into contact, or whom his biographer has occasion to mention.