Mozart's Death: A Corrective Survey of the Legends Surrounding His Death Book

The death of Mozart intrigued his contemporaries and has continued to fascinate posterity. Many different accounts, often dramatic and colourful have been woven about it. Stories proliferated about Mozart during his life, and his death left an unresolved enigma. How could so prodigious a genius be, apparently neglected and in despair at the time of his death, yet so celebrated only a few years later? Why was the death such a turning point? Contemporaries, and their biographers up to the present day, have constructed their narrative to cope with this enigma. This book attempts to expound and explore the most important of these, arguing that they are narrative strategies and as such not simply neutral summaries of established facts. It weighs the evidence for and against each narrative identifying in each case the primary evidence on which it is based and critically assessing the reliability of that primary evidence. Not only does the book consider accounts of the immediate clinical causes of death but it is also concerned with those stories which relate Mozart's death to his extraordinary life. Was the death of Mozart the necessary, inevitable consequence of that life and the manner of its living, or was it an unnecessary, accidental death?Read More