MOZART: THE EARLY YEARS 1756-1781

New York City, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 645 pages. The author's final book. Published posthumously, it is one of the finest biographical and critical accounts on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his art ever written. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Stanley Sadie's "Mozart: The Early Years". Summing-up of a lifetime of ardent listening and writing. Defiantly anti-Modernist in his approach, Sadie makes a compelling case for the absurdities of modern scholarship on Mozart in its futile attempts to find clues in his music to his elusive life. Relatively little that is factual and verifiable is known about the short and unhappy life of the greatest composer and musical performer who ever lived. The temptation, therefore, to search for and - voila! - find answers in the music, which does exist in all its greatness and glory, is difficult to resist. "Elegant, precise, and highly readable. Each chapter first reports the events of Mozart's life, then analytically reviews his compositions during the period covered" (Booklist). Mozart (and his much-lesser contemporaries) did not subscribe to the notion of Progress that we do today as descendants of the Romantic/Modernist revolutions, and as our Romantic/Modernist predecessors did. There is an undeniable "vulgarity" (Sadie's word) about the Romantic and Modernist quests for "self-expression" that ultimately leads to "self-transcendence", through quasi-scientific "experimentation" and progressive "stages" that roughly correspond to a human life. The most cursory and even indifferent listening to Mozart's music shows that subsequent works do not build and elaborate on earlier ones, surely not in the way we conceive of such progressions. Mozart belies all of our myths about genius not because he was one-of-a-kind (he was) but because he was, at the same time, a product of his place and time. "There is no real reason to imagine that Mozart used his music as a vehicle for the expression of his own personal feelings" (Stanley Sadie). The music itself lives on, imperishable and unsurpassable, and "gives us permission to live" (John Updike). An absolute "must-have" title for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart listeners. This title is a great book. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. The greatest musical genius of all time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0393061124.