STARRED REVIEW
February 2006

Wunderkind

By Stanley Sadie
Review by
Share this Article:

The late Stanley Sadie, the most distinguished musicologist of his generation, completed the first of a projected two-volume biography of Mozart not long before he died. With his comprehensive even startling command of every detail from Mozart’s life and every phrase from his music, Professor Sadie provides a blessed antidote to the accumulation of rank myth and imprudent speculation generally surrounding the early years of Mozart. Such irresponsible biography is not hard to account for, in light of the mystique of the boy prodigy. In Mozart: The Early Years, Sadie deftly shows how needless that sort of tale-spinning is, by uncovering instead the limitless interest of the facts themselves. It is a sad loss that he could not finish his second volume, on Mozart’s final decade in Vienna.

Michael Alec Rose is a composer and professor at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches a course on Mozart.

Trending Reviews

Get the Book

Mozart: The Early Years

Mozart: The Early Years

By Stanley Sadie
Norton
ISBN 9780393061123

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.