A brief but satisfying introduction to the life and music of Mozart, perfect for someone (like me) who knows little about Mozart's life except that he died young (and what could be gleaned from the movie "Amadeus"). Johnson is obviously lovingly familiar with the music, and he has intertwined a basic biography with discussions of Mozart's use of existing and newly introduced instruments, his encyclopedic knowledge of their possibilities, and his staggering contributions to various musical forms, such as the concerto, symphony, and opera. His relationships with his father, wife, and fellow composer Salieri, so colorfully presented in the film, are also examined, with Johnson disagreeing with those negative characterizations. The book ends with an essay on Mozart's visit to London when he was a child (covered more briefly in the book proper), with the author given as Daniel Johnson, with no information on who this is. This essay has an oddly snarky tone to it, and there are several grammatical errors which change the meaning of their sentences. An odd way to end the book. ( )

Paul Johnson’s new biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is certifiably adjective-y. It’s short, sweet, inspiring, exasperating, jam-packed, opinionated, whimsical (at times), terse, and fun. For the most part, it’s a straightforward chronology of Mozart’s life and work. He only lived for 35 years (1756-1791), but produced the most interesting, most complex, most wonderful pieces of classical music in history. Starting at age five, he composed over 600 works, ranging from masses to concertos to operas to choral pieces to symphonies and everything in between.

One of the more amazing aspects of Mozart’s compositional history was his need to understand instruments from the inside out. He would learn everything about an instrument’s construction, then learn to play it, then learn which individual instruments were better than others and appropriate them for his orchestra, and then compose with only those instruments in mind. When he learned the violin, he quickly wrote five stunning concertos. When the clarinet was being perfected in the late 1700s, he sought out the best player and composed an intriguing concerto before his death. And so on and so forth.

Johnson’s biography is dutiful and has a lot of information, but at times is too chockablock with information to really get a fully fleshed out sense of the man behind the music. He does a great job, however, of trying to set some of the record straight with regards to previous tales of tragic hubris and indebtedness. It’s clear that Johnson has a great love of classical music and tries very hard to not use a lot of jargon. This book made we want to go out and immediately get tickets to a symphony (but sadly, I have more books to read). If you’re at all interesting about Mozart, this will be a very good place to start. A quick, concise, and engaging read. ( )

Johnson's short biography of Mozart is commendable for how much light it sheds on Mozart's music. Johnson also effectively defends Mozart's father and his wife against their detractors. I also like the fact that this biography doesn't dwell so much on the tragedy of Mozart's short life. The author shows that Mozart's life was generally a quite happy one. He also convincingly shows that Mozart's money problems we're not as bad as many biographers have made them out to be. Johnson's love of music and understanding of Mozart's work is evident from the first page to last. Much less satisfactory is an epilogue to the book, written by a different author, discussing Mozart's time in London when he was eight years old. This is a pointless exercise of "what if" speculating what Mozart's life might've been like had he decided to stay in England. The author soon goes off track, however, and spends most of the chapter in a general defense of Englishness that doesn't belong in this biography at all. ( )

A brief, overly opinionated biography of Mozart. There must be better out there. ( )