The Mozart Handbook

"Combining the best features of biography and guidebook, this unique handbook offers a handy and complete source of reference to the music of Mozart, a readable and detailed companion to his operas, and a book for leisure reading on his life and times, his loves and his letters. All in all, this is the first and only book to bring together in one volume, with continuity and pattern, all of the features necessary to form a complete picture of the great composer. The Mozart Handbook represents the successful fruition of an idea: to consider Mozart from every possible angle, as he was known and seen and thought of by many minds from many countries, and to achieve as close a living composition of the man and the composer as is possible from the record of his existence and from the monument of his music. Divided into three parts, the book treats "Mozart in His Life," beginning with a word-picture of his birth-place, Salzburg, and going through the major themes of his biography; "Mozart and His Music," in which every important category of composition is thoroughly covered, with backgrounds and analyses; and "Mozart in His Death" through the eyes and pens of those who saw, knew, and ministered to him. Here, in short, is the ideal book for Mozart lovers and for those who would become Mozart lovers, planned for lifetime use as a reference reader or for leisurely study — a fascinating three-dimensional approach to one of the world's most astounding geniuses."