Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in fiction

The celebrated composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) led a life that was dramatic in many respects, including his extraordinary career as a child prodigy, his struggles to achieve personal independence and establish a career, his brushes with financial disaster, and his somewhat mysterious death in the course of attempting to complete his Requiem. Authors of fictional works have found his life a compelling source of raw material. Such works have included novels, plays, operas, and films.

Fiction

• The first major works of literature inspired by Mozart were by the German writers E. T. A. Hoffmann and Eduard Mörike. Hoffmann published his Don Juan in 1812,^[1] Mörike his Mozart's Journey to Prague in 1856.^[2] Mozart also appears in Hermann Hesse's novel Der Steppenwolf.^[3]
• In 1968, David Weiss published Sacred and profane: a novel of the life and times of Mozart,^[4] a narrative account on the composer's life drawing heavily on the documented historical record, but with invented conversations and other details. It is in the same style as Naked Came I, the same author's bestselling 1963 historical novel based on the life of sculptor Auguste Rodin.
• In modern fiction, the mystery surrounding the composer's death is explored within a popular thriller context in the 2008 novel The Mozart Conspiracy by British writer Scott Mariani,^[5] who departs from the established Salieri-poisoning theory to suggest a deeper political motive behind his death.
• Mozart has also featured as a sleuth in detective fiction, in Dead, Mister Mozart^[6] and Too many notes, Mr. Mozart,^[7] both by Bernard Bastable (who also writes as Robert Barnard). Bastable's stories involve the conceit of an alternate history scenario in which the young Mozart remained on in London at the time of his childhood visit to England, where he has lived a long - though not very prosperous - life as a hack musician, rather than returning to his native Salzburg or Vienna to die young and celebrated.
• Charles Neider's Mozart and the Archbooby^[8] is an epistolary novel wherein the young Mozart writes to his father about his new life in Vienna and his new problem, the Archbishop of Salzburg. Stephanie Cowell's Marrying Mozart: A Novel^[9] provides a fictionalised account of Mozart's relationship with Aloysia Weber before his marriage to her sister, Constanze.
• Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) is a defining cyberpunk short story collection, edited by Bruce Sterling. It contains a story, the "Mozart in Mirrorshades" by Bruce Sterling an Lewis Shiner,^[10] in which Mozart appears as a DJ wannabe instead of being the real Mozart after he met the people and culture of his future.

Drama

• Aleksandr Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri^[11] is based on the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, particularly the idea that it was poison received from the latter that caused Mozart's death. This idea is not supported by modern scholarship.^[12]
• Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus^[13] focuses on the difference between true and sublime genius (Mozart) and mere high-quality craftsmanship (Salieri). Shaffer seems to have been especially taken by the contrast between Mozart's enjoyment of vulgarity (for which historical evidence exists, in the form of his letters to his cousin) and the sublime character of his music.
• In 2007, he was portrayed by John Sessions in the Doctor Who audio adventure 100 in a story that explored the ramifications of Mozart being granted immortality.^[14]

Film

• Shaffer's play was subsequently made into a film, Amadeus. The scene where Mozart dictates music to Salieri on his deathbead is entirely an author's fancy, created especially for the film; for the question of whether Mozart did any dictation on his deathbed at all see: "Death of Mozart"

Opera

• Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart and Salieri, based on Pushkin's play, treats the Salieri poisoning legend.
• In Reynaldo Hahn's comédie musicale Mozart with words by Guitry, Mozart has amorous adventures in Paris in 1778.
• Michael Kunze's and Sylvester Levay's musical, Mozart!, premiered in 1999 to portray an older, more sensually inclined Mozart as he struggles with the spectre of his chaste and productive "porcelain" boyhood. The musical was composed in German but is currently performed in Hungarian.
• The French musical Mozart, l'opéra rock premiered in September 2009 in Paris. Mozart is played by Italian singer Mikelangelo Loconte with Florent Mothe as Antonio Salieri.

Children's literature

• Children's author Daniel Pinkwater has Mozart appear as a character in several of his books, including The Muffin Fiend,^[15] in which Mozart helps solve a crime involving an extraterrestrial creature who steals muffins from Vienna's bakeries.
• Little Amadeus, television show produced in Germany in 2006, focuses on Mozart's life as a child in Salzburg. It has aired in English in Australia (ABC) and North America (KQED Kids).
• Mozart (as well as his sister Nannerl) are a major component in the second "39 Clues" book, One False Note.^[16]

Video games

• The early pitch-based hybrid music game, Amadeus Revenge (1988, Commodore 64) has the player play as Mozart to defend the integrity of his Piano Concerto No. 25 from the corrupting influence of rival musicians. The NES game The Adventures of Captain Comic features Sonata in A major, (K.331) in the coast stage.

Notes

1. ^ Hoffmann 1814
2. ^ Mörike 1856
3. ^ Hesse 1974
4. ^ Weiss 1970
5. ^ Mariani 2008
6. ^ Bastable 1995
7. ^ Bastable 1996
8. ^ Neider 1991
9. ^ Cowell 2004
10. ^ Sterling & Shiner 1986
11. ^ Pushkin 1830
12. ^ Solomon 1996, p. 587
13. ^ Shaffer 1981
14. ^ Shearman 2007
15. ^ Pinkwater 1986
16. ^ Korman 2008

References

Biographic

• Solomon, Maynard (1996). Mozart: A Life (1st ed.). New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0060926929. OCLC 34162413. http://books.google.com/books?id=OR3eCAX8BikC. 

Mozart in fiction

• Bastable, Bernard (1995). Dead, Mr. Mozart. London: Little, Brown and Co.. ISBN 9780316911689. OCLC 34876132. http://books.google.com/books?id=4WZfHQAACAAJ. 
•            (1996). Too Many Notes, Mr. Mozart (1st ed.). New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 9780786703159. OCLC 34583885. http://books.google.com/books?id=1oV2HAAACAAJ. 
• Cowell, Stephanie (2004). Marrying Mozart. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780143034575. OCLC 655746875. http://books.google.com/books?id=5SgVhNOMLRUC. 
• (German) Hesse, Hermann (1974). Der Steppenwolf: Erzählung. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 175. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. ISBN 9783518366752. OCLC 29769128. http://books.google.com/books?id=IwpmAAAAMAAJ. 
• (German) Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1814). "Don Juan". Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier. Bamberg: Kunz. http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Don_Juan. Retrieved 2010-09-27. 
• Korman, Gordon (2008). One False Note. 39 Clues. 2. London: Scholastic. ISBN 9780545090605. OCLC 245561056. http://books.google.com/books?id=1P3IaTKWQ3oC. 
• Mariani, Scott (2008). The Mozart Conspiracy. London: Harper Collins Avon. ISBN 9781847560803. OCLC 225446674. http://books.google.com/books?id=rQhSPQAACAAJ. 
• (German) Mörike, Eduard Friedrich (1856). Mozart auf der reise nach Prag: Novelle (2nd ed.). J.G. Cotte. http://books.google.com/books?id=sZs5AAAAMAAJ. 
• Neider, Charles (1991). Mozart and the Archbooby. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780140154023. OCLC 22983811. http://books.google.com/books?id=TFGxAAAAIAAJ. 
• Pinkwater, Daniel (1986). The Muffin Fiend (1st ed.). New York: Lothrop Lee & Shepard Books. ISBN 9780688042745. OCLC 12051996. http://books.google.com/books?id=_wannut31Z8C. 
• (Russian) Pushkin, Alexander (1830). "Motsart i Salyeri". Malenkie tragedii. http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82_%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B8_%28%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD%29. 
• Shaffer, Peter (1981). Amadeus (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 9780060140328. OCLC 6791087. http://books.google.com/books?id=ObA6PddJ2VMC. 
• Shearman, Robert (Writer), John Sessions (Actor), Nicholas Briggs (Director) (2007). My Own Private Wolfgang. Doctor Who: 100. Maidenhead, England: Big Finish Productions. ISBN 9781844352869. OCLC 181037109. http://www.bigfinish.com/100-Doctor-Who-100. 
• Sterling, Bruce; Lewis Shiner (1986). "Mozart in Mirroshades". Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. New York: Arbor House. pp. 223–239. ISBN 9780877958680. OCLC 13945407. http://books.google.com/books?id=QhPzAAAAMAAJ. 
• Weiss, David (1970). Sacred and Profane: A Novel of the Life and Times of Mozart. London: Hodder Paperbacks. ISBN 9780340128039. OCLC 26290980. http://books.google.com/books?id=4-AYQQAACAAJ.