Mozart in Vienna The Final Decade

Mozart's greatest works were written in Vienna in the decade before his death (1781?1791). This biography focuses on Mozart's dual roles as a performer and composer and reveals how his compositional processes are affected by performance-related concerns. It traces consistencies and changes in Mozart's professional persona and his modus operandi and sheds light on other prominent musicians, audience expectations, publishing, and concert and dramatic practices and traditions. Giving particular prominence to primary sources, Simon P. Keefe offers new biographical and critical perspectives on the man and his music, highlighting his extraordinary ability to engage with the competing demands of singers and instrumentalists, publishing and public performance, and concerts and dramatic productions in the course of a hectic, diverse and financially uncertain freelance career. This comprehensive and accessible volume is essential for Mozart lovers and scholars alike, exploring his Viennese masterpieces and the people and environments that shaped them.

Part I. Beginnings, 1781–1782: 1. Settling in Vienna: exploiting opportunities for instrumental performance and composition; 2. Singers and effects: seeking operatic success in Die Entführung aus dem Serail; Part II. Instrumental and Vocal Music, 1782–1786: 3. Consolidating experiences and expanding horizons: the instrumental music, 1782–83; 4. 'You can easily imagine that I must inevitably play some new things': Mozart's piano concertos and other instrumental works for concerts, 1784–1786; 5. Composing, performing and publishing: the 'Haydn' string quartets and other chamber music for publication, 1784–86; 6. Operas, arias, ensembles, songs and a mass: vocal and dramatic music, 1782–86; Part III. The Da Ponte Operas, 1786–1790: 7. Le nozze di Figaro; 8. In Prague and Vienna: Don Giovanni, 1787–88; 9. The Figaro revival and Così fan tutte; Part IV. Instrumental Music, 1786–90: 10. For publication and performance: solo and chamber music; 11. Orchestral music and concert activities; Part V. Mozart in 1791: 12. New beginnings, continuations and endings: Mozart's last year.

Simon P. Keefe is James Rossiter Hoyle Chair of Music at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of three books on Mozart, including Mozart's Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion (Cambridge, 2012), which won the 2013 Marjorie Weston Emerson Award. He is also the editor of six volumes for Cambridge University Press, including Mozart Studies (2006) and Mozart Studies 2 (2015), and is general editor of the Royal Musical Association monographs series. In 2005 he was elected a life member of the Academy for Mozart Research at the International Mozart Foundation in Salzburg.