If you want to get beyond Amadeus, this is the ideal book
Review of Mozart: The Reign of Love by Jan Swafford
The film Amadeus has long fascinated me. To fill out the picture and check it for accuracy, I read Swafford’s book. It is a brilliant and detailed exploration of Mozart’s life and work, sometimes too detailed in its critical dissection of his major works (as I had feared in a 750-page scholarly treatment). But at its best, it is a fascinating look at his life and times. A first-rate reading experience.
Mozart started out more or less as he is portrayed in myth: a prodigy who astounded his father and then all of Europe with his performances. It seems he had watched his sister’s lessons with their father and spontaneously played flawlessly the first time he touched a keyboard at 4. He was lucky in that his father was a highly trained musician as well as an impresario who could arrange and administer things. Though they fell out later in life as Mozart strove for artistic and personal independence, Leopold was crucial to his early development, guiding him through priceless musical influences in the best courts of Europe.
At this time, composers were a form of local popular entertainment, captivating audiences with nuances on well known themes. Their work was essentially perishable, neither meant for posterity nor valued beyond a few performances; orchestras were often ill rehearsed and amateurish, though there were exceptions, such as Mannheim. While all this was changing – JS Bach and Handel were the first major composers whose work was written down and widely disseminated through Europe to be mastered by professional musicians – Mozart’s early compositions reflected the perishable tradition. It sounds a lot like jazz at its most vibrant, only for aristocratic enthusiasts.
In addition, as Swafford stresses, 18th century music was much more closely bound to conventions, structured in forms that were judged essential and, indeed, “eternal” not in a religious sense but a scientific one. This reflected the influence of the Enlightenment, which saw the search for truth and beauty as the discovery of universal and never-changing patterns and laws (a Platonic ideal). What composers did was operate strictly within these conventions, seeking not to bring out what was “in their souls” but first using the medium’s accepted norms to express what was expected by the situation and audience and only secondarily, their emotions.
With characteristic elegance and scope, Swafford writes: “Artists of the future would write from inside out. Mozart wrote…from outside in….As science proposed to understand the eternal logic and harmony of the universe…one’s mastery of artistic conventions was the foundation of one’s art in the same way as experiment was the foundation of science”(p. 298). While subtle, this is a crucial distinction, one that Mozart was to bend and manipulate but never to the point at which the Romantics broke the mold in the next generation. This is a fundamental insight that makes the entire book worth the price of admission.
Once Mozart was too old to play the child prodigy, he made the transition to an adult professional. Unlike his portrayal in Amadeus as a kind of idiot savant, an amiable buffoon who was clueless about court intrigue, Swafford argues that he proved himself highly competent as a courtier and was able to hold his own in the face of vicious competition. He even earned a lot of money and had many rich students; while he did not know how to handle money and understood the musical industry less well than his rival Salieri, his family was never on the verge of total ruin. Interestingly, Mozart was a pioneer freelance composer and never occupied the plum position of Kapellmeister at court. In his maturity, Mozart innovated in many musical forms. For example, he was the first to synchronize musical expression and emotion with opera librettos, replacing the then-prominence of words forever.
Another aspect that the film exaggerated was Mozart’s mode of working, where he is portrayed as a kind of magical well spring, effortlessly producing perfect pieces like Athena springing fully armed from the head of Zeus. According to Swafford, if he had phenomenal energy, Mozart often had to struggle with composition as everyone did. The film, in my view, confuses Mozart’s mastery of form with pure creative inspiration.
Mozart lived in interesting times, which Swafford covers with vivid accuracy. The Ancien Régime was on its way out, most explicitly embodied in the French Revolution but also in variations throughout Europe. An aspect of this was the growing availability of popular music for the masses, which Mozart experimented with in The Magic Flute. Another was the sensitivity of Joseph II to the political messages of The Marriage of Figaro, which the film milks with the usual dramatic exaggeration. These developments are evoked quickly and succinctly in the book, never in an overbearing manner. In particular, the reformist authoritarian, Joseph II, is covered extremely well.
One of the most captivating aspects of the film is the blood rivalry with Salieri. Swafford argues that tensions and competition certainly existed, but there is no evidence that it was some species of existential or insane hatred. Indeed, he writes, they were on good terms at the time of Mozart’s death. This was only one example of how the need for a compelling narrative in crucial scenes trumped historical accuracy. Another is the manner of Mozart’s burial in a collective pit: rather than a sign of his poverty, as the film implies, it was standard practice due to the unpopular strictures that Joseph II forced on the aristocracy in the name of efficiency. Finally, it was not some psychological war that killed Mozart; while the cause is unknown, Swafford believes it was a recurrence of rheumatic fever.
Though at times a bit heavy, this is a phenomenal bio. The long passages of musical criticism were singularly illuminating in the few pieces of Mozart that I knew well. (Of course, for those I didn’t, the blow-by-blow is way too detailed.) I trusted Swafford’s interpretation completely. Fortunately, the book informed my love of Amadeus without diminishment: I can see how Milos Forman came up with his interpretation for dramatic purposes – many of the scenarios preposterous but not impossible – as well as the many things he got right.
A related review:
Just watched Amadeus for the first time in many years, thanks for the excellent reality check!
Good review, Rob!