Mozart's enduring popularity, among music lovers as a composer and among music historians as a subject for continued study, lies at the heart of The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. This reference book functions both as a starting point for information on specific works, people, places and concepts as well as a summation of current thinking about Mozart. The extended articles on genres reflect the latest in scholarship and new ways of thinking about the works while the articles on people and places provide historical framework, as well as interpretation.
Contents
List of contributors; Preface; Headword list; A-Z general entries; Appendix 1. Worklist; Appendix 2. Mozart movies (theatrical releases); Appendix 3. Mozart institutions; Appendix 4. Mozart organizations; Appendix 5. Mozart websites.
Reviews
"Like all good single volume encyclopedias, this one is also a delight for the casual browser who is not looking for anything in particular. Opening the book to read in an idle moment invariably provides both pleasure and instruction."
-Opera News
"...contains some of the finest writing on Mozart I have read."
-New York Review of Books
"Entries are beautifully and entertainingly written by some of the best Mozart scholars in the world. [...] If all such gifts come as beautifully packaged as this one, it will indeed give Mozart lovers something to sing about."
- American Reference Books Annual
"...the ultimate contribution to Mozart this year. The paper exudes quality and the entries are deft and well-organised."
The Independent
"...a handsome, lavishly produced volume, offers easy access to all the information most music lovers will need about a favourite composer."
Sunday Times
"...for those who must know absolutely every fact about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...the Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia leaves no Kochel number unturned."
- The Times
"With this lovingly fashioned book, volume can sometimes come in the form of minutiae, the details which, ironically enough, give what's essentially a learned tome a narrative thrust. Mozart is lifted from these pages, especially so for those who've long thrilled to his music; no matter how well-versed one is in the biographical chronology: the opera plots, the innuendoes of rivals, the scholarly points of contention, the paper trails of commissions--I'd argue that with this work Mozart the man--at least in the print record--reads as real as we're going to get him, outside of his own letters."
-Fanfare
"This encyclopedia is the definitive source for Mozart information and should be a required purchase for music and large public and academic libraries."
- Booklist
"Cambridge University Press has issued a lavish new Mozart Encyclopedia."
-Tara Pepper, Newsweek International
Thematic studies, such as Sources for Mozart's Life and Works and the biographical article on Mozart, are quite long and packed with useful information. The appendixes offer hard-to-find information about videos of operas and Mozart films, as well as addresses for organizations and Web sites devoted to Mozart and his work. The pool of contributors is a distinguished one of recognized Mozart authorities.
-Choice
"Aims to serve as a starting point for research as well as a summary of the latest in Mozart scholarship."
-Library Journal
"...this first resource to cover both Mozart's life and oeuvre is a browser's delight. The nearly four dozen contributors are international musicologists noted for their Mozart scholarship, and the editors have done a good job maintaining a consistent style and tone to their entries...An indispensable addition to all collections."
- Library Journal, Larry Lipkis, Moravian College
"An essential referencework that provides comprehensive coverage of Mozart's life and works."
- Nineteenth Century Music
"Extensively cross-checked and indexed, this tome takes advantage of all the latest academic research to provide detailed and comprehensive entries on every person, place or thing involved with the composer's life."
-Gavriel Fiske
"This was a book waitingto happen, a handy reference for all things Mozartean: biography, repertoire, cultural milieux."
- James M. Keller High Fidelity
"...the encyclopedia does an admirable job of covering Mozart's life, his music, and the world in which he lived through concise articles written by leading European and American scholars....[It] should prove to be a valuable reference book for Mozart-lovers of all stripes. By intentionally casting a wide net, the editors and the volume's fifty contributors have created a rich resource that encompasses Mozart's
music and it's historical and biographical frameworks."
Laurel E. Zeiss, Baylor University
Printer friendly version
Email a colleague