The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s precocity is so familiar as to be taken for granted. In scholarship and popular culture, Mozart the Wunderkind is often seen as belonging to a category of childhood all by himself. But treating the young composer as an anomaly risks minimizing his impact. In this book, Adeline Mueller examines how Mozart shaped the social and cultural reevaluation of childhood during the Austrian Enlightenment. Whether in a juvenile sonata printed with his age on the title page, a concerto for a father and daughter, a lullaby, a musical dice game, or a mass for the consecration of an orphanage church, Mozart’s music and persona transformed attitudes toward children’s agency, intellectual capacity, relationships with family and friends, political and economic value, work, school, and leisure time. Thousands of children across the Habsburg Monarchy were affected by the Salzburg prodigy and the idea he embodied: that childhood itself could be packaged, consumed, deployed, “performed”—in short, mediated—through music. This book builds upon a new understanding of the history of childhood as dynamic and reciprocal, rather than a mere projection or fantasy—as something mediated not just through texts, images, and objects but also through actions. Drawing on a range of evidence, from children’s periodicals to Habsburg court edicts and spurious Mozart prints, Mueller shows that while we need the history of childhood to help us understand Mozart, we also need Mozart to help us understand the history of childhood.

Part I. Clouds of feeling: excerpt audio recordings. Imagining excerpts; Rhetorics of seduction; Demons and dandies; All too human -- Part II. Invented works : complete audio records. The visual stage; Cruel laughter; Dancing in time -- Part III. Partial visions : video recordings. Zooming in, gazing back; Trauma retold; Libertines punished.

Publisher description

Wye Jamison Allanbrook’s widely influential Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart challenges the view that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music was a “pure play” of key and theme, more abstract than that of his predecessors. Allanbrook’s innovative work shows that Mozart used a vocabulary of symbolic gestures and musical rhythms to reveal the nature of his characters and their interrelations. The dance rhythms and meters that pervade his operas conveyed very specific meanings to the audiences of the day.

"Mozart today is known as one of the foremost composers in Western music; yet, during his lifetime, his compositional mastery seemed to pale in comparison with his achievements on the concert platform. Mozart knew that his fame was due to his piano playing and improvisations; and, as a result, much of the music he wrote was intended to serve a single aim: to set the stage, quite literally, for compelling and captivating performances. In his piano works, symphonies, and operas he sought to amuse, stir, and ravish an awe-struck public. Mozart the Performer brings to life this elusive side of Mozart's musicianship. Over the course of five "variations," Dorian Bandy traces the influence of showmanship on Mozart's style, imbuing his output with a theatricality and evanescence easily lost behind the scrim of familiarity. This insightful and imaginative book reveals the countless ways performance influenced Mozart's compositional habits, ultimately offering a genuinely novel understanding of why, centuries later, Mozart's music still captivates us and inspiring new ways of listening to it"--

This “thrilling study of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 8 . . . makes a strong case for its quality . . . we shall never listen to it in the same way again” (Guardian, UK). On September 12, 1910, Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony had its world premiere at Munich’s new Musik Festhalle. It was the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his life. An array of royals and stars from the musical and literary world were in attendance, including Thomas Mann and the young Arnold Schoenberg. Also present were Alma Mahler, the composer’s wife, and Alma’s longtime lover, the architect Walter Gropius. In The Eighth, Stephen Johnson provides a masterful account of the symphony’s far-reaching consequences and its effect on composers, conductors, and writers of the time. The Eighth looks behind the scenes at the demanding one-week rehearsal period leading up to the premiere—something unheard of at the time—and provides fascinating insight into Mahler’s compositional habits, his busy life as a conductor, his philosophical and literary interests, and his personal and professional relationships. Johnson expertly contextualizes Mahler’s work among the prevailing attitudes and political climate of his age, considering the art, science, technology, and mass entertainment that informed the world in 1910. The Eighth is an absorbing history of a musical masterpiece and the troubled man who created it.

The Mind Illuminated is a comprehensive, accessible and - above all - effective book on meditation, providing a nuts-and-bolts stage-based system that helps all levels of meditators establish and deepen their practice. Providing step-by-step guidance for every stage of the meditation path, this uniquely comprehensive guide for a Western audience combines the wisdom from the teachings of the Buddha with the latest research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Clear and friendly, this in-depth practice manual builds on the nine-stage model of meditation originally articulated by the ancient Indian sage Asanga, crystallizing the entire meditative journey into 10 clearly-defined stages. The book also introduces a new and fascinating model of how the mind works, and uses illustrations and charts to help the reader work through each stage. This manual is an essential read for the beginner to the seasoned veteran of meditation.