Mozart: A Life

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Pull quotes

• The tours made money – lots, by Solomon’s forensic reckoning – but Leopold’s hopes of a dual post whereby he could improve his own status and also maintain control of his golden-goose-child remained unfulfilled.
• Mozart’s first years in Vienna allow Solomon to dismantle another Mozart-myth: the myth of the irresponsible spendthrift.
• To read of his activities as a composer, pianist, teacher and entrepreneur is to marvel at his capacity for hard work, smart time management and pure courage.

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Pull quotes

• Solomon shows us this complex, many-faceted individual while making it poignantly clear that the events of his short life above all, what Solomon feels was the severe abuse heaped upon him by his father eventually proved so emotionally crippling that he could no longer cope.
• Masonry lay at the center of everything he did musically, socially, intellectually.
• When Solomon comes to the composer's final year he sets before us the picture of a man so emotionally exhausted that he returns unwittingly to fields of youthful glory.

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Pull quotes

• Solomon speculates that Leopold probably contributed to some of Mozart's early compositions, but that Mozart was clearly a supernatural talent and quickly surpassed his father's talent.
• Although Mozart was struggling financially at the time of his death, he was still producing music that was popular and produced significant income.
• Solomon believes the eternal child myth is exaggerated, but leaves the door open to the question.