Mozart Finds A Melody

An imaginative story about Mozart's many inspirations, now in paperback! Wolfgang Mozart must compose a new piano concerto to perform at the famous Burgtheatre in Vienna. But Mozart can't think of a note to write. When he hears his hungry pet starling sing out melodiously, his creativity begins to flow. Before he can put notes to paper, however, his muse escapes through the window, and Mozart is off on a frantic search to bring her back. Will Mozart find both his friend and song in time? Based on a true story about the famous composer and his beloved pet starling, this enchanting tale celebrates inspiration in any form it takes.

A stunning, rhythmic picture book biography of African American composer Scott Joplin, whose ragtime music paved the way for jazz. There was something special about Scott Joplin… This quiet kid could make a piano laugh out loud. Scott, the son of a man who had been enslaved, became a king—the King of Ragtime. This celebration of Scott Joplin, whose ragtime compositions paved the way for jazz, will captivate audiences and put a beat in their step, and the kaleidoscope-like illustrations will draw young readers in again and again.

Brought to life by colourful and endearing illustrations, this nursery song and rhyme are presented in an infant-friendly cloth book format.

On May 27th, 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart met a flirtatious little starling in a Viennese shop who sang an improvised version of the theme from his Piano Concerto no. 17 in G major. Sensing a kindred spirit in the plucky young bird, Mozart bought him and took him home to be a family pet. For three years, the starling lived with Mozart, influencing his work and serving as his companion, distraction, consolation, and muse. Two centuries later, starlings are reviled by even the most compassionate conservationists. A nonnative, invasive species, they invade sensitive habitats, outcompete local birds for nest sites and food, and decimate crops. A seasoned birder and naturalist, Lyanda Lynn Haupt is well versed in the difficult and often strained relationships these birds have with other species and the environment. But after rescuing a baby starling of her own, Haupt found herself enchanted by the same intelligence and playful spirit that had so charmed her favorite composer. In Mozart's Starling, Haupt explores the unlikely and remarkable bond between one of history's most cherished composers and one of earth's most common birds. The intertwined stories of Mozart's beloved pet and Haupt's own starling provide an unexpected window into human-animal friendships, music, the secret world of starlings, and the nature of creative inspiration. A blend of natural history, biography, and memoir, Mozart's Starling is a tour de force that awakens a surprising new awareness of our place in the world.

Christoph Peter appreciates music as complete and perfect in every human being. It richly expresses our vitality, feelings and strivings. The goal of The Magic Flute is "the right union of the Papageno world of our natural origins with the world of Tamino, our striving spirit." The path of love and obedience is pictured in the Sun-realm of Sarastro and the temple of wisdom. The opposite pole is the realm of night, exemplified by the Queen of the Night and her vassals. Peter finds life's polarities pictured in the fairy-tale text and in Mozart's music - achieved wisdom and natural instinct, spirit and nature, life and form, urgency and rest, light and dark, love and hate... Like the human being, music always stands between polar forces. We experience ourselves, losing or finding ourselves again in a living, musical process of breathing, in the rise and fall of melody, in long and short notes, in major and minor, in the dynamics, indeed even with instruments, with the intervals or in the phrasing (Chr. Peter). The universal law of polarity necessitates a third factor: the transition or threshold between two antagonistic forces. This is directly portrayed, both on the stage and in Mozart's music. Linking up with other scholars (notably Abert), the author presents his vision in concrete musical terms: Mozart's music portrays inner time, inner space and inner centring. The perennial path of transformation, the "middle way" - named "T A O" in Far-Eastern tradition - becomes music. "The background of the mysteries in The Magic Flute - which people mostly seek in the text), can be found in the musical realm" (Chr. Peter). A largely unknown Mozart, who places his elements very simply and sensitively, emerges with his inclusive vision of human concerns. This definitive study of Mozart's most sublime work is also a comprehensive study of music's creative language; a companion for the musical artist and music lover of the twenty-first century. Musical studies have been enriched by a book of most unusual, probably unique significance. It should be read by everyone who loves The Magic Flute. In truly masterly thoroughness and sympathetic understanding, the author helps the musician and music lover to rediscover this work. Mozart's opera, sadly misunderstood especially today, according to Wilhelm Furtwangler, is "the most profound and unfathomable musical work in the whole world. Hermann Pfrogner in Die Kommenden

From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart’s singular imagination was at work in every direction. He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always hilarious. He went at every piece of his life, and perhaps most notably his social life, with tremendous gusto. His circle of friends and patrons was wide, encompassing anyone who appealed to his boundless appetites for music and all things pleasurable and fun. Mozart was known to be an inexplicable force of nature who could rise from a luminous improvisation at the keyboard to a leap over the furniture. He was forever drumming on things, tapping his feet, jabbering away, but who could grasp your hand and look at you with a profound, searching, and melancholy look in his blue eyes. Even in company there was often an air about Mozart of being not quite there. It was as if he lived onstage and off simultaneously, a character in life’s tragicomedy but also outside of it watching, studying, gathering material for the fabric of his art. Like Jan Swafford’s biographies Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Mozart is the complete exhumation of a genius in his life and ours: a man who would enrich the world with his talent for centuries to come and who would immeasurably shape classical music. As Swafford reveals, it’s nearly impossible to understand classical music’s origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself.