Mozart's Ghosts Haunting the Halls of Musical Culture

by Everist, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780195389173
• ISBN10: 0195389174
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-07-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Mozart's Ghoststraces the many lives of this great composer that emerged following his early death in 1791. Crossing national boundaries and traversing two hundred years-worth of interpretation and reception, author Mark Everist investigates how Mozart's past status can be understood as part of today's veneration. Everist forges new paths to reach the composer, examining a number of ways in which Western culture has absorbed the idea of Mozart, how various cultural agents have appropriated, deployed, and exploited Mozart toward both authoritarian and subversive ends, and how the figure of Mozart and his impact illuminate the cultural history of the last two centuries in Europe, England, and America. Modern reverence for the composer is conditioned by earlier responses to his music, and Everist argues that such earlier responses are more complex than allowed by a simple "reception studies" model. Closely linking nine case studies in an innovative cultural and theoretical framework, the book approaches the developing reputation of the composer from death to the present day along three paths: "Phantoms of the Opera" deals with stage music, "Holy Spirits" addresses the trope of the sacred, and "Specters at the Feast" considers the impact of Mozart's music in literature and film.Mozart'sGhostsadeptly moves the study of Mozart reception away from hagiography and closer to cultural and historical criticism, and will be avidly read by Mozart scholars and students of eighteenth-century music history, as well as literary critics, historians of philosophy and aesthetics, and cultural historians in general.

Author Biography

Mark Everist is a muscologist whose field of study includes the music of Western Europe, 1150-1350, music in France between the Restoration and Commune, Music and Cultural Transfer, and Mozart reception. He is Professor of Music and Associate Dean at the University of Southampton and President of the Royal Musical Association.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Music Examples

List of Tables

List of Figures

Introduction

Phantoms of the Opera

Phantoms of the Opera

Mozart and L'impresario

The Commendatore and the Clavier

Holy Spirits

"Mozart's" "Twelfth Mass"; Case Closed?

Enshrining Mozart: Don Giovanni and the Viardot Circle

Specters at the Feast

Mozart in Two Worlds: the Writings on Music of Blaze de Bury

Speaking with the Supernatural: E.T.A. Hoffmann, George Bernard Shaw and Die Oper aller Opern

The Specter at the Feast: Elvira Madigan and its Legacy

Conclusion: The Mozart Effect

Bibliography

Index

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