Mozart's Ghosts traces 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's Ghosts adeptly 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.

Meet Anna, a thirtysomething Midwesterner living alone in New York City. A schoolteacher by day, she is a medium by night, covertly helping people reunite with their lost loved ones. Anna leads a double life, guarding her secret as much as she guards her heart—until Edward, a gangly yet quietly handsome concert pianist, moves into her building. Edward’s music fills Anna’s apartment with beautiful sounds that disturb her concentration and her lines of communication with ghosts. She and Edward fall for each other fast, but Anna is conflicted: By exposing her true identity, does she risk losing what may be her true love? And is music really his true love? Then a ghost begins to interfere—Mozart’s ghost—and while making a pest of himself to Anna, he begins to play matchmaker with unpredictable results.... An enchanting and irresistible love story in the tradition of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Mermaid Chair, Mozart’s Ghost will win Julia Cameron a whole new galaxy of fiction readers.

This volume of essays on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart reflects scholarly advances made over the last thirty years. The studies are broad and focused, demonstrating a large number of viewpoints, methodologies and orientations and the material spans a wide range of subject areas, including biography, vocal music, instrumental music and performance. Written by leading researchers from Europe and North America, these previously published articles and book chapters are representative of both the most frequently discussed and debated issues in Mozart studies and the challenging, exciting nature of Mozart scholarship in general. The volume is essential reading for researchers, students and scholars of Mozart's music.

This wide-ranging study explores how Czech and German nationalism influenced the reception of Mozart's operas in Prague over the centuries. It demonstrates the role of politics in the construction of the Western musical canon, revealing how both Czech and German factions in Prague used Mozart's legacy to promote their political interests.

The vibrant intellectual, social and political climate of mid eighteenth-century Europe presented opportunities and challenges for artists and musicians alike. This book focuses on Mozart the man and musician as he responds to different aspects of that world. It reveals his views on music, aesthetics and other matters; on places in Austria and across Europe that shaped his life; on career contexts and environments, including patronage, activities as an impresario, publishing, theatrical culture and financial matters; on engagement with performers and performance, focusing on Mozart's experiences as a practicing musician; and on reception and legacy from his own time through to the present day. Probing diverse Mozartian contexts in a variety of ways, the contributors reflect the vitality of existing scholarship and point towards areas primed for further study. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of late eighteenth-century music and for Mozart aficionados and music lovers in general.

Demonstrates that the concept of genius is as vitally needed as ever and can illuminate the workings of Mozart's creative imagination. Much recent, distinguished Mozart criticism has set out a critique of the concept of genius. Whether following the scientist seeking greater objectivity, the postmodernist proclaiming the death of the author, the historian concerned about anachronism, or the critic who warns about making despotic claims, this demystifying literature has taken the weakening of genius's accumulated cultural authority as an indispensable step in arriving at a clarified Mozart. Mozart, Genius, and the Possibilities of Art advances a contrary claim. It proposes that anti-Romantic accounts of Mozart's genius themselves get lost in both the infinitely big--in utopianism and millenarianism--and the infinitesimally small--in materialism and process. Throughout, the book buttresses this argument with probing readings from contemporary documents ranging from ephemeral periodical literature to Kant's Third Critique, along with original analyses of the music itself. Goehring's book goes on to detail a contrasting Romantic portrait of Mozart's genius, one that allowed for ambiguity, embraced experience, and did not scorn reason. In Mozart's day, the term genius spoke to the unquantifiable and unpredictable in human inventiveness. And it continues to do so today. Goehring shows how the persisting fascination with an ingenious Mozart wells up from the middle of things, from the particularity of human beings--their "genie"--and the visible yet complex world of human intention and action.