Mozart in Motion

His Work and His World in Pieces

by Patrick Mackie

Description

The music and life of one of modernity's most prevalent figures through the compositions that shaped him, from a dazzling new writer of non-fiction

Mozart is one of the most familiar and beloved icons of our culture, but how much do we really understand of his music, and what can it reveal to us of the great composer? In exhilarating, transformative prose, Patrick Mackie mixes biographical storytelling with deep dives into the experience of listening to Mozart''s music to reveal a musician in dialogue with culture at its most sweepingly progressive, when Europe was caught between two historical worlds.

We follow Mozart from his adolescence in Salzburg to his early death; from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments; from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard. Mackie leads the reader through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer''s life and brings alive the teeming, swivelling, modernity of eighteenth-century Europe. In this era of rococo painting, surrealist aesthetics and political turbulence, Mozart reckoned with a searing talent which threatened to overwhelm him, all the while pushing him to extraordinary feats of musicianship.

Returned to the volatility of the eighteenth century, we hear Mozart''s music in all its audacious vividness, gaining fresh perspectives on why his works still move us so intensely today, as we continue to search for a modernity he imagined into being.

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Rights Information

Granta handles translation rights in this title.

Author Biography

Patrick Mackie has published books of poems with Carcanet and CB Editions and was a visiting fellow at Harvard

Copyright Information

(c) 2021, Patrick Mackie.

Granta Books

Granta Books

Granta Books is one of the most independent-minded and prestigious literary publishers in the UK.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Granta Publications
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781783785995
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatHardback
  • Primary Price 20 GBP
  • ReadershipGeneral
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Copyright Year2021
  • Page size368 (234 x 153) mm

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