Mozart the Performer - by Dorian Bandy (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

An innovative study of the ways performance influenced Mozart's compositional style.

We know Mozart as one of history's greatest composers. But his contemporaries revered him as a multi-instrumentalist, a dazzling improviser, and the foremost keyboard virtuoso of his time. When he composed, it was often with a single aim in mind: to set the stage, quite literally, for compelling and captivating performances. He wrote piano concertos not with an eye to posterity but to give himself a repertoire with which to flaunt his keyboard wizardry before an awestruck public. The same was true of his sonatas, string quartets, symphonies, and operas, all of which were painstakingly crafted to produce specific effects on those who played or heard them, amusing, stirring, and ravishing colleagues and consumers alike.

Mozart the Performer brings to life this elusive side of Mozart's musicianship. Dorian Bandy traces the influence of showmanship on Mozart's style, showing through detailed analysis and imaginative historical investigation how he conceived his works as a series of dramatic scripts. Mozart the Performer is a book for anyone who wishes to engage more deeply with Mozart's artistry and legacy and understand why, centuries later, his music still captivates us.

Review Quotes

"In Mozart the Performer, Bandy encourages readers to hear familiar works afresh and performers to adopt a more dramatic, lighthearted approach and to take more risks. The author builds on an impressive array of secondary sources and presents his case studies with verve."-- "Notes"

"Ambitious and finely wrought. . . . The most valuable contribution this important and engaging book makes is its invitation to imagine the performative, theatrical Mozart's compositional process, and to interpret, play, and listen to his music differently as a result. . . . An original and compelling portrait of Mozart the performer."
-- "Newsletter of the Mozart Society of America"

"Finding something new to say about Mozart is no easy feat. In Mozart the Performer, Dorian Bandy tackles this challenge by focusing on a crucial component of Mozart's musical life--performance--and using insights gleaned from it to illuminate previously unconsidered aspects of Mozart's compositions. . . . Bandy skillfully crafts an original, insightful thesis, offering an impressive model for scholars to emulate. . . . In doing so, Bandy is advancing musicological efforts to humanize composers like Mozart who have accumulated centuries of mythological baggage."-- "Journal of the American Musicological Society"

"The joie de vivre of Mozart's performerly approach to composition is echoed in Bandy's own inviting prose. Structuring the book as a theme and variations, he welcomes the reader into that growing ensemble celebrating the tactile, the playful, the parodic, and above all, the humane in Mozart."-- "Adeline Mueller, Mount Holyoke College"

"Mozart the Performer is a fresh attempt to demythologize Mozart, to ground his creativity in real-world experiences and concerns, as opposed to the image of a 'divine' composer, the beauty of whose music somehow floats above mundane explication. Mozart the Performer is a striking expansion of scholarly horizons."-- "W. Dean Sutcliffe, University of Auckland"

"Mozart the Performer offers a genuinely new way to process Mozart's music, one that answers to a widely varied range of evidence at once musical, historical, and biographical. It constitutes a bold attempt to reimagine Mozart's creative process--particularly as that of a self-conscious performer, an 'inveterate showman' playing to an audience--and to draw extensive interpretive conclusions from that reimagining."-- "Scott Burnham, the Graduate Center, City University of New York"

About the Author

Dorian Bandy is associate professor of musicology and historical performance at McGill University's Schulich School of Music.