The Lives Of Haydn And Mozart

A collection of piano solos, composed by Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Historians have long tried to place the music of Haydn and Mozart in the lineage of German Lutheran music. In this book, Daniel Heartz shows that the first Viennese school grew from a Catholic inheritance in Italian music and from local tradition, with an admixture of French currents. The generation of composers led by Haydn no longer trained in Italy. By the time young Mozart joined the ranks of the Viennese school, its accomplishments towered above all others of the time. The author's approach can be compared to viewing a majestic mountain range in its totality: the highest peaks take on even greater majesty when seen in their natural context of foothills and lesser peaks. This is how Haydn and Mozart were viewed by their contemporaries, whose world of perception Heartz recreates, using, among other things, the visual art of the period. His focus is on music as a part of cultural history at a particular time and place. Stylistic terms and a priori periods matter less to him than the common denominators of geography, culture, and political history. Book jacket.

The life of Haydn is, in the main, a plagiarism of G. Carpani's Le Haydine (Milan, 1812). The biographical part of the Mozart, credited by Stendhal to Schlichtegroll, is practically a reproduction of Winckler's Notice biographique sur Jean-Chrysostome-Wolfgang-Théophile Mozart (Paris, 1801) with one anecdote added from another source. The last letter of the Mozart and the letter on Metastasio are by Stendhal. The notice of Mozart, attributed by Muller to C. Winckler, is by T. F. Winckler

An 1817 English translation of Stendhal's pseudonymous early works on musicians and music, fascinating for the author's many digressions.