Mozart (Hildesheimer)

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Mozart is an essay by Wolfgang Hildesheimer , published in book form in 1977 , which deals with the life and work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and is therefore often referred to as a biography . The book has been translated into more than ten languages ​​and has been published in numerous editions worldwide.

Work history

Hildesheimer had wanted to write a “Mozart Book” since 1954 and initially assumed that it would be able to complete the work in time for Mozart's 200th birthday in early 1956. It didn't come to that; Instead, Hildesheimer first gave a speech in 1956 on Süddeutscher Rundfunk , which was then published in print under the title Recordings about Mozart in Merkur . Two further versions, each with an extended version, appeared in 1963 as Reflections on Mozart and in 1966 as Who was Mozart? The book Mozart from 1977 is the fourth version that has been expanded several times.

content

The book deals with the life of Mozart from a perspective that is recognizable from the author’s point of view and consciously includes aspects of psychoanalysis . As in many other biographies, Mozart is not idealized as a human being, but rather his personality is portrayed as difficult and complex. In particular, Mozart's fascination for fecal language is discussed under the aspect of anal fixation . His musical genius, however, is not called into question. The book tells episodically, but clearly recognizable along the timeline. Wolfgang Hildesheimer evaluates original documents and letters as well as the musical work of Mozart. And he does not shy away from addressing an unusual topic documented in front of him by Ludwig Finscher : the effect of the contractions of Mozart's wife Constanze at the birth of her first child on one of his compositions. Hildesheimer leaves it at that that the “scientist does not need” to “deal with it”.

reception

In the year of publication, among others, Joachim Kaiser , Joachim Fest and Adolf Muschg dealt with Mozart , whose contributions were reprinted in 1989 in a material volume on Hildesheimer. Joachim Kaiser states that Hildesheimer's “skeptical ease in unsettling other people's statements” is admirable, but also makes the reader hardly believe Hildesheimer's own conclusions, “and that his allegations (maybe Mozart let himself go to waste, maybe he had dirty fingernails) not at all". The book, which is enchanting in its most beautiful places and frightening in some, teaches "modesty and shyness towards a genius who is not only called cheap sweets in Salzburg". Joachim Fest and Adolf Muschg also emphasize the distance to Mozart that Hildesheimer made after Kaiser. In the end, according to Fest, “no more plausible or even more sharply contoured figure emerges, but an extremely strange appearance from an immense, almost cold distance”. Muschg states that Hildesheimer's sentence “We don't get close to Mozart”, which is otherwise a “commonplace of adoring biographers”, should not cover the opposite of what it says here; Hildesheimer means what he says, and he acts accordingly. Muschg comes to the conclusion that Hildesheimer's Mozart is “a tremendous etude on the subject of reception, critical at all levels”.

The work is now counted among the “classics of Mozart literature”. In 2006, Suhrkamp Verlag reported that the German edition had sold more than 200,000 copies. On the occasion of a new edition in 2005, the literary scholar Jan Süselbeck compared Hildesheimer's “opposition to the convulsive repression of aspects of such a“ genius ”life perceived as 'fallible'” with Arno Schmidt's polemical funk essays from the 1950s. Schmidt and Hildesheimer are related in their "permanent argument against the 'purity mania'". Hildesheimer demonstrates the most precise knowledge of the work and has scoured the Köchel directory "from front to back".

Expenses (selection)

German

Translations

  • 1980 Mozart . Japanese. Orion Press, Tokyo
  • 1983 Mozart . English. Translated by Marion Faber. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York. ISBN 0-374-21483-2
  • 1984 Mozart . Slovenian. Translated by Marijan Lipovšek. Založba Obzorja, Maribor.
  • 1985 Mozart . Hungarian. Translated by Györffy Miklós. Gondolat, Budapest. ISBN 963-281-489-4
  • 1985 Mozart . English. Translated by Marion Faber. Dent, London. ISBN 0-460-02401-9
  • 1989 Mozart . Slovak. Translated by Jozef Bžoch. Opus, Bratislava.
  • 1991 Mozart . Finnish. Translated by Seppo ja Päivi Heikinheimo. Otava, Helsinki. ISBN 951-1-11882-X
  • 1991 Mozart . Dutch. Translated by Hans Hom. Uitg. De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam. ISBN 90-295-1972-X
  • 1991 Mozart . Portuguese. Translated by Eduardo Francisco Alves. Zahar, Rio de Janeiro. ISBN 85-7110-168-X
  • 1991 Mozart . Danish. Translated by Hanne-Lisbeth Rasmussen. Bogan, Lynge. ISBN 87-7466-183-3
  • 1991 Mozart . Spanish. Translated by Ariel Bignami. Vergara Edition, Buenos Aires, Madrid, México, Santiago de Chile. ISBN 950-15-0109-4
  • 1980 Mozart . Swedish. Translated by Margaretha Holmqvist. Norstedt, Stockholm. ISBN 91-1-803192-7
  • 1991 Mozart . Dutch. Translated by Hans Hom. Uitg. De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam. ISBN 90-295-1972-X
  • 1994 Mozart . Italian. Translated by Donata Schwendimann Berra. Rizzoli, Milano. ISBN 88-17-11616-5
  • 2005 Mozart . Spanish. Translated by Ariel Bignami. Edition Destino, Barcelona. ISBN 84-233-3767-7
  • 2006 Mocart . Serbian. Dereta, Beograd. ISBN 86-7346-517-6
  • 2006 Mozart . Czech. Translated by Hanuš Karlach. Arbor Vitae, Prague. ISBN 80-86300-73-0
  • 2007 Mozart . French. Translated by Caroline Caillé. Batillart, Paris. ISBN 978-2-84100-420-1
  • 2011 Mo zha te lun . Chinese. Hua dong shi fan da xue chu ban she, Shanghai. ISBN 978-7-5617-8251-4

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volker Jehle: Wolfgang Hildesheimer, work history . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-38609-3 , pp. 134-135 .
  2. ^ A b Volker Jehle: Wolfgang Hildesheimer, work history . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-38609-3 , pp. 135 .
  3. ↑ Hildesheimer: Mozart 1st edition 1977, p. 173, footnote 45 → Ludwig Finscher: Foreword to the pocket edition of the quartet (corresponding to the ›New Mozart Edition‹) 1962 SV
  4. ↑ Hildesheimer: Mozart 1st edition 1977, p. 173.
  5. ↑ Volker Jehle (Ed.): Wolfgang Hildesheimer (=  Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch. Materials . Volume 2103 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-38603-4 , pp. 406-407 .
  6. ↑ Joachim Kaiser: Mozart, the monster . In: Volker Jehle (Ed.): Wolfgang Hildesheimer (=  Suhrkamp Pocket Book. Materials . Volume 2103 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-38603-4 , pp. 284–288 , here p. 287 .
  7. ↑ Joachim Kaiser: Mozart, the monster . In: Volker Jehle (Ed.): Wolfgang Hildesheimer (=  Suhrkamp Pocket Book. Materials . Volume 2103 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-38603-4 , pp. 284–288 , here p. 285 .
  8. ↑ Joachim Fest: Mozart - the discreet genius . In: Volker Jehle (Ed.): Wolfgang Hildesheimer (=  Suhrkamp Pocket Book. Materials . Volume 2103 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-38603-4 , pp. 289-294 , here p. 289 .
  9. ^ Adolf Muschg: No Mozart to touch . In: Volker Jehle (Ed.): Wolfgang Hildesheimer (=  Suhrkamp Pocket Book. Materials . Volume 2103 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-38603-4 , pp. 295–300 , here p. 295 .
  10. ^ Adolf Muschg: No Mozart to touch . In: Volker Jehle (Ed.): Wolfgang Hildesheimer (=  Suhrkamp Pocket Book. Materials . Volume 2103 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-38603-4 , pp. 295–300 , here p. 300 .
  11. ↑ a b The most radical Mozart biography . In: oe1.orf.at . Austrian radio . January 13, 2006. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
  12. ↑ a b Jan Süselbeck: The Infantile . In: literaturkritik.de . January 27, 2006. Retrieved December 10, 2018.