Mozart's Grace

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Description

It is a common article of faith that Mozart composed the most beautiful music we can know. But few of us ask why. Why does the beautiful in Mozart stand apart, as though untouched by human hands At the same time, why does it inspire intimacy rather than distant admiration, love rather than awe And how does Mozart's music create and sustain its bu

Reviews

Winner of the 2014 Otto Kinkeldey Award, American Musicological Society One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013 "Here is analysis and commentary written with considerable enthusiasm and affection... Mozart's Grace is written with great fervour and yes, grace, together with a deep love of Mozart's music."--Classical Music Magazine "The premise: identify some of the best bits in Mozart's works, then discover why they succeed so well. The idea is so starkly simple that one could expect a puerile result. However, Burnham, an eminent teacher, writer, and Mozartean, produces something rather wonderful... [Mozart's Grace] is a book that does justice to its subject matter."--Choice "This book has only deepened my admiration for its author."--Leo Black, Musical Times "Mozart's Grace is written with great fervor and yes, grace, together with a deep love of Mozart's music. In these tough economic times one is heartened to see the publication of such a book."--John Robert Brown, Classical Music "Burnham offers a stirring, erudite, and deeply poetic treatment of around fifty select passages as a culmination of some three decades of thought and discussion... Through delightfully written prose bursting with musical metaphors that extend to all five senses, Scott Burnham argues persuasively for why we relentlessly submit ourselves to Mozart."--Steven D. Mathews, Notes "[Burnham's] writing, sentence by sentence, is clear as air yet shimmers with revelatory understanding of the effects that Mozart's music makes on the listener, illustrating and supporting his discoveries with penetrating and meticulous explication of details in the musical examples. In doing so he offers some of the most sensitive, nuanced, perceptive, and eloquent commentary about music (of any kind) I've read."--American Record Guide "Rarely does love pour from musicological writing as generously as it does from Scott Burnham's ingenious, congenial paean. At 169 pages of text including generous musical examples throughout, Mozart's Grace teaches us a great deal about Mozart, concision, and well-turned prose."--David Schneider, Music and Letters

Author Bio

Scott Burnham is the Scheide Professor of Music History at Princeton University. His books include Beethoven Hero (Princeton) and Sounding Values.