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Tina Chancey(EDITOR)
Jane Glover. 416 pages. Harper Collins, 2006.
Reviewed by Liane Ellison Norman .
This is a lovely book, written with energy, tact, and insight. Despite sound scholarship, it's a good read, which shouldn't be a surprising combination, but often is. Jane Glover is a woman in a man's world, and she confesses to having identified with Mozart's gifted and ultimately frustrated sister, Nannerl. Glover, however, has conducted Mozart's works with the London Mozart Players and Chicago Music of the Baroque as well as the Glyndebourne and English National Opera companies. She knows music and can explain clearly how Mozart's relationships with family, associates, and friends are expressed in his musical compositions. She makes the case that Mozart's genius was nourished by these relationships, which accounts for the emotional depth of his work.
Mozart biography has tended to isolate the figure of prodigy in an uncomprehending, even hostile environment. It's as if the idea of genius is inherently anti-social, as if something is subtracted from great achievement if intimate others are involved. I suspect this has to do with Romantic notions about greatly talented individuals preferring to starve alone in a garret rather than mix it up with family, friends, and colleagues.
Mozart's father, Leopold, is partly to...