WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: The Greatest Pure Musician the World Has Ever Known (Great Biographies)

About all I knew of Mozart was that he was a great musician and composer. This is a short concise book that tells of his life, however, it is mainly factual and not an in depth view of the man himself as a full-fledged biography would be. Also, he only lived to be 35 years old, but he packed a huge amount of music and composition into those years.Mozart was one of seven children, but only he and his older sister Nannerl survived to adulthood. They were both child prodigies, Mozart on the piano and Nannerl on the violin. In fact, Mozart was so gifted that he already began composing small pieces of music at age 5. The main part of the story is mostly coverage of all of the touring around Europe that the children and their father did, playing in public concerts or private shows for nobility. This part could get rather boring after a while, but the author doesn't spend a lot of time on each stop (of which there were many) and therefore keeps things moving.He never had any formal schooling, but was home schooled by his father where he learned music and became fluent in several different languages. He was quite sickly throughout his childhood, probably due to the demanding schedule of gigs that the father kept the children on. As Mozart grew older, the goal was to get him a permanent position in one of the courts in Europe, a goal that was never sufficiently obtained.Eventually he reached an awkward age where he was no longer a child prodigy and not quite yet a mature musician. As time went on however, it was amazing how many operas, symphonies, sonatas, etc. that he composed. It is this area when the name of the compositions and the key that they are played in would become more interesting to people who have a better knowledge of classical music than I do.There is also an explanation as to how often times, being a great musician did not necessarily transfer to great wealth due to them being a bit ahead of their time. They were not always in great demand due to the public being unready yet for their newer editions of music. Nevertheless, there was a time when Mozart was doing quite well and earning a good deal of money. The problem was that he never knew how to save a dime and his wife was worse yet. They squandered all of it on living luxuriously and at the time of Mozart's death, playing for commissions wasn't done much anymore and the couple were living rather impoverished.Of course there is more to the book than what I've covered here, including other famous musicians of the time that he corroborated with, such as Haydn and Beethoven. There were some grammatical errors in the book and the writing itself is not among the very best that I've read, but it was informational and I'd recommend it to people who are looking for some basic learning about Mozart's life. As I said before, it may be more preferable to those who are more well versed in classical music.

Obviously written by two people . first section was a recitation of his works and no translations . Carelessly written. Second part was more informative, far, far better written and with titles translated. I appreciate the idea is to condense biographies but the first part could have been picked up from Wikipedia . I learned from it but found it anaemic.

I enjoyed very much reading this book. It gave me insight into this great composer. I also found the book itself to be quite readable and will use it in the future for a reference when I listen to Mozart.

To limited and only seem to focus on what he wrote. Wanted more insight to how he thought and whatMotivated him

very boring.