À mon chevet: Adriatic

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Great art should affect you physically, it should "tune us like instruments," because painting is an intensification rather than a distortion of the material world. "We must look and look and look till we live the painting and for a fleeting moment become identified with it," writes Bernard Berenson. "A good rough test is whether we feel that it is reconciling us with life." Berenson, in yet another battered, age-old paperback I own, called this "the aesthetic moment," which is "that flitting instant, so brief as to be almost timeless, when the spectator is at one with the work of art," so that he "ceases to be his ordinary self."

I feel this with Byzantine art: an art that Berenson called, in order to be exact, "medieval Hellenistic art," that is, a remnant of ancient Greece. To him, this art is "precious refulgent, monotonous," and ends around 1200 "as a gorgeous mummy case." I don't mind the monotony, and yes, there is the touch of beauty-in-death about it. But Byzantine art to me, exactly as Berenson suggests, has always been classical, in the sense that it evokes its forebears in ancient Greece. Thus, it is a fusion of East and West, and what the Adriatic is all about -- a guidepost in my journey. I keep Berenson's thoughts in mind as I enter San Vitale.

-- Robert D. Kaplan, Adriatic, p. 46

This new book came to my attention because of a review written by Prof. Thomas F. Madden for the New York Times this spring. Kaplan is a journalist who synthesizes enormous amounts of poetry, literature, history, and academic writing in a gripping narrative, as he travels from place to place around the Adriatic Sea. In search of what he calls, in his subtitle, "A concert of civilizations at the end of the Modern Age," he begins his examination of the relationship of East and West on the Italian side of that body of water, in Rimini and Ravenna, moving to the Balkans and down to Greece. According to Prof. Madden, who not coincidentally has written a new history of Venice, Kaplan errs only in glossing over La Serenissima as a focal point.

Kaplan actually makes a sort of circular journey, noting that his interest in Rimini, where the book begins, goes back to a much earlier visit to Mistra, a ruined medieval city in southern Greece, a connection to his final destination, the Greek island of Corfu. In Mistra he became interested in Georgios Gemistos Plethon, the neoplatonist scholar who visited Florence in 1439, sparking an interest in Plato and the Greek language in Cosimo de' Medici, and thus helping to light the fire of the Renaissance.

During a visit to the home of a fellow writer, Kaplan learns that Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the rather infamous condottiere and patron of the arts, stole the remains of this great humanist figure during his occupation of Mistra. Malatesta took the scholar's body back to Rimini to be buried near the Tempio Malatestiano built with his money by Leon Battista Alberti. This Malatesta is descended from the family of Paolo Malatesta, condemned with his lover, Francesca da Rimini, to the second circle of Dante's Inferno, and thus within the first few pages the book captured my attention.

À mon chevet: My Struggle, Book 6

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

For my own part, the transgressional was associated with an enormous sense of freedom on the one hand, and enormous shame on the other, played out in a rather unsophisticated fashion in a few too many beers followed by a couple of hours of undesirable yet delightfully unfettered behavior as a result. It was low and vile and wretched, even if it didn't necessarily feel like it, whereas the crimes that took place in the Third Reich were transgressional in a radically different and fundamentally incomprehensible yet not less compelling sense altogether. It was as if they exceeded the very limits of what was human. How was that possible? The allure of death, the allure of destruction, the allure of total annihilation, of what did it consist? The world burned, and they were joyful.

I read about it, I wondered about it, and never without feeling some small measure of that same allure myself as I sat there far from war and death, destruction and genocide, on a chair in Bergen, surrounded by all my books, usually with a cigarette in my hand and a cup of coffee next to me on the desk, the dwindling hum of the evening's traffic outside the window, sometimes with a warm cat asleep on my lap. I read about the final days of Hitler, the utterly demented atmosphere far beneath the ground where he lived with his attendants and those closest to him, the city above them, bombed to rubble by the Russians, a blazing inferno. At one point he ascended to inspire some boys of the Hitler Youth, I had seen the footage that was shot, he is ill, tries to stop his hand from shaking as he goes from one boy to the next, it must have been Parkinson's disease. but in his eyes there is a gleam, something unexpectedly warm.

Surely it couldn't be possible?

When Dad died, Yngve and I found a Nazi pin among his belongings, a pin with a German eagle to put in the lapel of a jacket. Where did he get it from? He was not the type to have bought something of that nature and therefore he must have been given it or come across it in some way. When Grandma died, a year and a half after Dad, and we went through the house to divide things up, we found a Norwegian edition of Mein Kampf in the chest in the living room. What was it doing there? It must have been there since the war. It was a fairly common book at the time, with thousands of copies sold, someone might have given it to them as a present, without it having any signficance for them, but nevertheless it was still strange that they hadn't got rid of it after the war, for they would hardly have been unaware that it was incriminating. After the initial sensation the discovery of something so illicit gave rise to, I thought little more of it. I knew the people they were, Grandad and Grandma, and I knew that they were from another age, in which other rules applied.

-- Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp Sjette bok, pp. 490-92

It was a long three years since I read Book 5 of Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle. In some ways I put off reading the last volume because I was a little sad that the book would come to an end. The first five volumes are in a disturbingly direct style, as Knausgård painfully examines his own life in a style that is half-memoir, half-novel. The sixth book begins in the same manner, but quickly veers into uncharted territory.

He is writing about the period when he was finishing the book. His publisher asked him to contact all the people who appear in the novel, to make sure they will not raise a fuss about the use of their names and private lives. Novelists make use of this kind of material all the time, of course, but usually they at least change the names to disguise identities. Most of his friends and family do not object, but one uncle, his father's brother, adamantly refuses and threatens to sue. The basis of his complaint is that Karl Ove's recollections are entirely false, an absurd invention that will bring harm to the family name.

Knausgård uses the fear this instills in his own heart as a way to lead the reader to question everything in the first five volumes. Is it possible that a book that gained Knausgård fame for its brutal honesty is in fact not to be trusted? Language itself becomes suspect, as does memory. The middle part of the book is an exhaustive analysis of the topic, beginning with a near-indigestible coprolith of literary analysis devoted to the author's favorite poem by Paul Celan. This leads to a long consideration of the book's namesake, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, which Karl Ove and his brother found among his grandmother's belongings after her death (the section quoted here).

Knausgård combs through Hitler's book, obsessively comparing it with other primary texts about Hitler's life, all of this by way of pointing out that Hitler's account of his own life is not all that accurate. Literary critics have not been kind to this wordy section weighing down the middle of Book 6, but the author's brother, Yngve, had perhaps the best reaction to this idea. After reading an early draft of the novel to see how it depicted him, Yngve wrote Karl Ove an e-mail. "Your fucking struggle, said the subject line," he recalls.

À mon chevet: Becoming

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Over the course of the summer, the firm organized a series of events and outings for its associates, sending around sign-up sheets for anyone who wanted to go. One was a weeknight performance of Les Misérables at a theater not far from the office. I put us on the list for two tickets [...].

We sat side by side in the theater, both of us worn out after a long day of work. The curtain went up and the singing began, giving us a gray, gloomy version of Paris. I don't know if it was my mood or whether it was just Les Misérables itself, but I spent the next hour feeling helplessly pounded by French misery. Grunts and chains. Poverty and rape. Injustice and oppression. Millions of people around the world had fallen in love with this musical, but I squirmed in my seat, trying to rise above the inexplicable torment I felt every time the melody repeated.

When the lights went up for intermission, I stole at glance at Barack. He was slumped down, with his right elbow on the armrest and index finger resting on his forehead, his expression unreadable.

"What'd you think?" I said.

He gave me a sideways look. "Horrible, right?" I laughed, relieved that he felt the same way. Barack sat up in his seat. "What if we got out of here?" he said. "We could just leave."

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't bolt. I wasn't that sort of person. I cared too much what the other lawyers thought of me -- what they'd think if they spotted our empty seats. I cared too much, in general, about finishing what I'd started, about seeing every last little thing through to the absolute heart-stopping end, even if it was an overwrought Broadway musical on an otherwise beautiful Wednesday night. This, unfortunately, was the box checker in me. I endured misery for the sake of appearances. But now, it seemed, I'd joined up with someone who did not.

Avoiding everyone we knew from work -- the other advisers and their summer associates bubbling effusively in the lobby -- we slipped out of the theater and into a balmy evening. The last light was draining from a purple sky. I exhaled, my relief so palpable that it caused Barack to laugh.

"Where are we going now?" I asked.

"How 'bout we grab a drink?"

-- Michelle Obama, Becoming, pp. 103-105

Many friends have recommended this memoir to me, and it is a delightful read. Music was an important part of the future First Lady's background, from piano lessons with her mother's aunt, the daunting Robbie, to the love of jazz she inherited from her maternal grandfather, whom they called Southside. Mrs. Obama remembers fondly how her grandfather gave her her first record and designated a shelf where she could keep her favorite records to play when she went to his house. "If I was hungry," she writes, "he'd make me a milk shake or fry us a whole chicken while we listened to Aretha or Miles or Billie. To me, Southside was as big as heaven. And heaven, as I envisioned it, had to be a place full of jazz."

Of all the musical episodes in the book, though, my favorite is the one quoted above, where Michelle, at the start of a budding romance with an oddly named junior colleague at her law firm, walks out of a performance of the musical Les Misérables. Now that is good taste.

À mon chevet: 'The Honourable Schoolboy'

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Otherwise the Club was pretty much empty. For reasons of prestige, the top correspondents steered clear of the place anyway. A few businessmen, who came for the flavour pressmen give; a few girls, who came for the men. A couple of war tourists in fake battle-drill. And in his customary corner, the awesome Rocker, Superintendent of Police, ex-Palestine, ex-Kenya, ex-Malaya, ex-Fiji, an implacable war-horse, with a beer, one set of slightly reddened knuckles, and a weekend copy of the South China Morning Post. The Rocker, people said, came for the class.

At the big table at the centre, which on weekdays was the preserve of United Press International, lounged the Shanghai Junior Baptist Conservative Bowling Club, presided over by mottled old Craw, the Australian, enjoying its usual Saturday tournament. The aim of the contest was to pitch a screwed-up napkin across the room and lodge it in the wine rack. Every time you succeeded, your competitors bought you the bottle and helped you drink it. Old Craw growled the orders to fire, and an elderly Shanghainese waiter, Craw's favourite, wearily manned the butts and served the prizes. The game was not a zestful one that day, and some members were not bothering to throw. Nevertheless this was the group Luke selected for his audience. [...]

Striding to the table, Luke leapt straight onto it with a crash, breaking several glasses and cracking his head on the ceiling in the process. Framed up there against the south window in a half-crouch, he was out of scale to everyone: the dark mist, the dark shadow of the Peak behind it, and this giant filling the whole foreground. But they went on pitching and drinking as if they hadn't seen him. Only the Rocker glanced in Luke's direction, once, before licking a huge thumb and turning to the cartoon page.

"Round three," Craw ordered, in his rich Australian accent. "Brother Canada, prepare to fire. Wait, you slob. Fire."

A screwed-up napkin floated toward the rack, taking a high trajectory. Finding a cranny, it hung a moment, then flopped to the ground. Egged on by the dwarf, Luke began stamping on the table and more glasses fell. Finally he wore his audience down.

"Your Graces," said old Craw, with a sigh. "Pray silence for my son. I fear he would have parley with us. Brother Luke, you have committed several acts of war today and one more will meet with our severe disfavour. Speak clearly and concisely omitting no detail, however slight, and thereafter hold your water, sir."

In their tireless pursuit of legends about one another, old Craw was their Ancient Mariner. Craw had shaken more sand out of his shorts, they told each other, than most of them would ever walk over, and they were right. In Shanghai, where his career had started, he had been teaboy and city editor to the only English-speaking journal in the port. Since then, he had covered the Communists against Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang against the Japanese and the Americans against practically everyone. Craw gave them a sense of history in this rootless place. His style of speech, which at typhoon times even the hardiest might pardonably find irksome, was a genuine hangover from the thirties, when Australia provided the bulk of journalists in the Orient, and the Vatican, for some reason, the jargon of their companionship.

-- John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Chapter 1

After thoroughly enjoying the latest novel by John le Carré, pitched during an excellent interview the author gave to 60 Minutes, I have been reading or re-reading several of his older novels, including A Small Town in Germany, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, and The Little Drummer Girl, all perfect summertime page-turners. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was as good as I remembered it, but I am surprised I did not go on to read the second part of the George Smiley trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy.

It opens with this hilarious evocation of the English-language press corps in Hong Kong, gathered for important conferences in a favorite watering hole during a typhoon, as British colonial rule fades away in the 1970s. As le Carré notes in a preface he added after the fall of the Berlin Wall, much of this novel is drawn directly from the author's life. Many of the episodes, including the one quoted above, have the ring of authenticity. A delightful read.

À mon chevet: 'Go, Went, Gone'

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

A doctor can certainly aim to serve humanity in general, but there's also nothing stopping him if he prefers to reserve his services for a particular sector of humanity. One Dr. Thaler, for example, two hundred years ago in Vienna, removed the skin of Soliman -- a native-born Nigerian -- after his demise with the most illustrious permission of Kaiser Franz himself. He flayed this man who'd saved the life of Prince von Lobkovitz in battle, stripped the skin of this Negro named Soliman, flayed the tutor to the royal house of Lichtenstein, a black man named Soliman; he removed the skin of this Freemason of the lodge True Concord, a moor who bore the name Soliman, he flayed the skin of the brother, as it were, of Freemasons Mozart and Schikaneder, the sponsor of scientist Ignaz von Born when he applied for incorporation in the lodge; he removed the skin of an African named Soliman, skinned a married Viennese gentleman who mastered six languages, whose daughter later married Baron von Feuchtersleben and whose grandson Eduard rose to prominence as a poet in the early nineteenth century, in other words removed the skin of a respected member of Viennese society who, to be sure, had once, a long time before, been African, a child named Soliman, he skinned this person who early on in his life had been traded for a horse at the slave market and was later sold to someone in Messina -- Soliman by name -- he flayed this former slave of lowly race. He then tanned the skin, stretched it upon a body made of wood, and, disregarding the request by the daughter of the deceased that the skin of her father be relinquished to her, that it might be interred -- this daughterly request was disregarded, and her stuffed father was placed in a display case on the fourth floor of the Imperial Cabinet of Natural Curiosities for the edification of the Viennese. Admittedly, the skirt of feathers with which the moor was adorned had been crafted by South American Indians, and so was not entirely accurate from an academic perspective, but it did nicely accentuate the exotic nature of the specimen.

For a moment Richard tries to imagine a display case in the National Museum of Cairo containing, for instance, the stuffed skin of archaelogist Heinrich Schliemann dressed in a Spanish matador's costume or a traditional Mongolian garment made of sheepskin and silk. What barbarians one might justifiably exclaim in regard to such Egyptian museum directors. In Vienna, the "Noble Savage" was removed from display at some point, but not to be buried, instead he was placed in storage and left there -- dusty and all but forgotten -- until finally during the Vienna uprising in 1848 a fire took mercy on his mortal remains.

There are black birds in the world, so why shouldn't there be black people? To Richard, this sentence from the opera The Magic Flute always used to adequately explain everything there was to say about differences in skin color. At the same time, it doesn't surprise him that a conversation about a patient from Niger should reveal to him whom he can still count as a friend in today's Germany and whom he cannot.

-- Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone, Chapter 48

The latest book from the Best of the Year list compiled by my favorite literary critic, James Wood, is a recent German novel by Jenny Erpenbeck. It follows a retired professor, formerly from East Germany, as he becomes entangled with a group of refugees fleeing violence in Africa. He is not initially for or against Germany taking in refugees, but he wants to understand what would drive these men across the Mediterranean, as well as the animus of public sentiment against them. All of this transpires against the backdrop of Berlin, which as the protagonist remembers was once as divided as Europe and Africa seem now.

He launches into the series of thoughts quoted above after a friend of his, a doctor he has called for some medical advice for one of the refugees, makes a baldly racist joke and bursts into laughter. Angelo Soliman, at the center of this sort of rant, was an actual person. The line quoted from The Magic Flute, spoken by Pagageno in reference to the moor character, Monostatos, is often cut, at least in productions I have seen, presumably because it is perceived as racist. In fact, as Richard sees it, it is a sign of Papageno's acceptance of someone of whom he was scared at first. Through their Masonic connections, both Mozart and Schikaneder likely knew of Angelo Soliman.

À mon chevet: Reservoir 13

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

At the butcher's for May Day weekend there was a queue but nothing like there once would have been. Nothing like the queue Martin and Ruth needed to keep the shop going. Martin had been keeping this to himself, although it was becoming obvious and nobody asked. Irene was at the front of the queue telling everyone what she knew about the situation at the Hunters'. She did the cleaning there, and knew a thing or two. You can imagine what it's like for the girl's parents, she said. Having to watch us all down here just getting on with things. Ruth saying, But surely the village couldn't be expected to put life on hold. Austin Cooper came in with copies of the Valley Echo newsletter and laid them on the counter. Ruth wished him congratulations, and he looked confused for a moment before smiling and backing away towards the door. Irene watched him go, and asked if Su Cooper were expecting. Ruth said, Yes, at last, and from the back of the queue Gordon Jackson asked, Would there be any chance of getting served before the baby was born. A breakdown truck came slowly down the narrow street, with a red LDV Pilot van hoisted on the back and a police car following. The van was wrapped in clear plastic. Martin wiped his hands on his apron and stepped outside to watch it pass. Gordon came out with him and lit a cigarette. Martin nodded. That changes things, he said. Fucking breakthrough is that, Gordon said. The swallows returned in number, and could be seen flying in and out through the open doors of the lambing shed at the Jacksons' and the cowsheds over at the Thompsons', and the outbuildings up on the Hunters' land. The well-dressing committee had a difference of opinion about whether to dress the boards at all this year. Under the circumstances. There'd never been a year without a well-dressing that anyone could remember. But there'd never been a year like this. In the end it was agreed to make the dressing but to keep the event low-key. There were sightings of the girl. She was seen by Irene, first, on the footbridge by the tearooms, walking across to the other side. Quite alone she was, Irene said. Her young face turned half away and she wouldn't look me in the eye. Gone before I got to her and I couldn't see which way she went. I knew it was her. The police were told, and they went searching but they found nothing. There were lots of young families in the area that day, a police spokesperson said. But I know it was her, Irene said again. There was rain and the river was high and the hawthorn by the lower meadows came out foaming white. The cow parsley was thick along the footpaths and the shade deepened under the trees. Stock was moved higher up the hills and the tearooms by the millpond opened for the year. In the shed Thompson's men were working on the baler, making sure they'd be ready when the time came for the cut. The grass was high but the weather had been low for days. The rain on the roof was loud and steady. The reservoirs filled.

-- Jon McGregor, Reservoir 13, Chapter 1

Every year I stock up on books that made the Best of the Year cut for my favorite literary critic, James Wood. He has never given me a bum steer, and this author is a most welcome new find for me. After devouring his latest book, Reservoir 13, I am planning to read everything else he has written. This novel opens like a crime thriller: a young girl has gone missing while on a vacation in a picturesque English village. The narrative style is bracing, a sort of stream of consciousness that reads like one of the nosiest, best-informed villagers recording every detail and turn of life in the place. McGregor's eye is minutely trained, streamlined to a laser focus on the lives of young and old in the village, as well as the spiraling rhythms of natural life. At the end of the book, I was genuinely sad not to keep receiving updates on the movements of the foxes and badgers, which plants were coming up and which were fading, how the gardeners were succeeding or failing in their allotments. The old traditions, like the harvest festival and the well-dressing, linger and are renewed. The latter makes a trip to Derbyshire a must at some point in the future.

À mon chevet: We Were Eight Years in Power

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

In January of 2008, six months before I took the trip to Aspen, I logged into BlogSpot and set up an account. I had so many ideas back then and nowhere to put them. At that time, outlets were still limited, and pitching was often laborious. I would post four or five times to the blog each day. They were loose threads that would sometimes come to nothing and other times become the basis for grander artistic pursuits. In the header I scrawled a couplet from the rapper MF Doom:

He wears the mask just to cover the raw flesh.
A rather ugly brother with flows that's gorgeous.

At first, only two people read this blog, and those two people were my dad and me. We'd come up with the idea together. He paid me a stipend -- small in amount, huge in impact. It was steady money, which is to say a lifesaver for a family that turned "in over one's head" into a creed. More, it was an investment -- the time spent on the blog was time to practice my craft in public while also garnering enough money for groceries. The blog offered limitless space to write, and then publish at whim. And slowly, with some links from other bloggers thrown my way, more and more people cem to read it, until, by that summer I had attracted a backing chorus -- a steady group of commenters who read and offered their thoughts. The blog also drew the attention of The Atlantic, which offered to take it on and pay me a regular, less small salary.

-- Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, pp. 41-42

After enjoying the first book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, I was glad to receive his new book of essays for Christmas. These are long reads published over the course of the last decade, most of which I had already read, but with some context from the author about his circumstances as he wrote them. One of the stories he tells in the book, which was news to me, is in this excerpt, that his father "paid" him to write the blog that eventually brought him to The Atlantic. That original blog, sadly, appears to have been deleted when it was transferred to The Atlantic. The memoir component of the book is by far its most compelling material.

À mon chevet: Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

This is what was taking place at the Palais while Lucien's protectresses were obeying the orders issued by Jacques Collin. The gendarmes placed the moribund prisoner on a chair facing the window in Monsieur Camusot's room; he was sitting in his place in front of his table. Coquart, pen in hand, had a little table to himself a few yards off.

The aspect of a magistrate's chambers is not a matter of indifference; and if this room had not been chosen intentionally, it must be owned that chance had favored justice. An examining judge, like a painter, requires the clear equable light of a north window, for the criminal's face is a picture which he must constantly study. Hence most magistrates place their table, as this of Camusot's was arranged, so as to sit with their back to the window and leave the face of the examinee in broad daylight. Not one of them all but, by the end of six months, has assumed an absent-minded and indifferent expression, if he does not wear spectacles, and maintains it throughout the examination.

It was a sudden change of expression in the prisoner's face, detected by these means, and caused by a sudden point-blank question, that led to the discovery of the crime committed by Castaing at the very moment when, after a long consultation with the public prosecutor, the magistrate was about to let the criminal loose on society for lack of evidence. This detail will show the least intelligent person how living, interesting, curious, and dramatically terrible is the conflict of an examination--a conflict without witnesses, but always recorded. God knows what remains on the paper of the scenes at white heat in which a look, a tone, a quiver of the features, the faintest touch of color lent by some emotion, has been fraught with danger, as though the adversaries were savages watching each other to plant a fatal stroke. A report is no more than the ashes of the fire.

"What is your real name?" Camusot asked Jacques Collin.

"Don Carlos Herrera, canon of the Royal Chapter of Toledo, and secret envoy of His Majesty Ferdinand VII."

It must here be observed that Jacques Collin spoke French like a Spanish trollop, blundering over it in such a way as to make his answers almost unintelligible, and to require them to be repeated. But Monsieur de Nucingen's German barbarisms have already weighted this Scene too much to allow of the introduction of other sentences no less difficult to read, and hindering the rapid progress of the tale.

"Then you have papers to prove your right to the dignities of which you speak?" asked Camusot.

"Yes, monsieur--my passport, a letter from his Catholic Majesty authorizing my mission.--In short, if you will but send at once to the Spanish Embassy two lines, which I will write in your presence, I shall be identified. Then, if you wish for further evidence, I will write to His Eminence the High Almoner of France, and he will immediately send his private secretary."

"And do you still pretend that you are dying?" asked the magistrate. "If you have really gone through all the sufferings you have complained of since your arrest, you ought to be dead by this time," said Camusot ironically.

"You are simply trying the courage of an innocent man and the strength of his constitution," said the prisoner mildly.

"Coquart, ring. Send for the prison doctor and an infirmary attendant.--We shall be obliged to remove your coat and proceed to verify the marks on your shoulder," Camusot went on.

"I am in your hands, monsieur."

The prisoner then inquired whether the magistrate would be kind enough to explain to him what he meant by "the marks," and why they should be sought on his shoulder. The judge was prepared for this question.

"You are suspected of being Jacques Collin, an escaped convict, whose daring shrinks at nothing, not even at sacrilege!" said Camusot promptly, his eyes fixed on those of the prisoner.

Jacques Collin gave no sign, and did not color; he remained quite calm, and assumed an air of guileless curiosity as he gazed at Camusot.

"I, monsieur? A convict? May the Order I belong to and God above forgive you for such an error. Tell me what I can do to prevent your continuing to offer such an insult to the rights of free men, to the Church, and to the King my master."

-- Honoré de Balzac, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life (trans. by James Waring)

This long book, originally published in four sections, is first in the Scènes de la vie Parisienne section of La Comédie Humaine. It follows the end of the tragic life of Lucien de Rubempré, and it has been one of the high points of my Balzac reading project so far. Lucien, at the brink of suicide, comes across one of Balzac's celebrated characters, the villainous Vautrin, who convinces him not to commit suicide. He becomes the creature of this criminal, whose identity is hidden under many names.

At the opening of the book Vautrin has assumed the name of the Abbé Carlos Herrera, serving an important embassy to Paris on behalf of the King of Spain. In this scene, an examining judge is engaged in a chess match to get him to reveal his true identity, Jacques Collin. This book has also been translated under the English title A Harlot High and Low, apt because Balzac pairs the lowest and highest elements of Parisian society as alternate sides of the same coin. Lies, deceit, sexual depravity, crimes of all kinds are committed at both ends of the social spectrum, with vastly different treatment by the authorities.

À mon chevet: Illusions perdues

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

The name of [Chez] Flicoteaux [Restaurant] is engraved on many memories. Few indeed were the students who lived in the Latin Quarter during the last twelve years of the Restoration and did not frequent that temple sacred to hunger and impecuniosity. There a dinner of three courses, with a quarter bottle of wine or a bottle of beer, could be had for eighteen sous; or for twenty-two sous the quarter bottle becomes a bottle. Flicoteaux, that friend of youth, would beyond a doubt have amassed a colossal fortune but for a line on his bill of fare, a line which rival establishments are wont to print in capital letters, thus—BREAD AT DISCRETION, which, being interpreted, should read "indiscretion."

Flicoteaux has been nursing-father to many an illustrious name. Verily, the heart of more than one great man ought to wax warm with innumerable recollections of inexpressible enjoyment at the sight of the small, square window panes that look upon the Place de la Sorbonne, and the Rue Neuve-de-Richelieu. Flicoteaux II. and Flicoteaux III. respected the old exterior, maintaining the dingy hue and general air of a respectable, old-established house, showing thereby the depth of their contempt for the charlatanism of the shop-front, the kind of advertisement which feasts the eyes at the expense of the stomach, to which your modern restaurant almost always has recourse. Here you beheld no piles of straw-stuffed game never destined to make the acquaintance of the spit, no fantastical fish to justify the mountebank's remark, "I saw a fine carp to-day; I expect to buy it this day week." Instead of the prime vegetables more fittingly described by the word primeval, artfully displayed in the window for the delectation of the military man and his fellow country-woman the nursemaid, honest Flicoteaux exhibited full salad-bowls adorned with many a rivet, or pyramids of stewed prunes to rejoice the sight of the customer, and assure him that the word "dessert," with which other handbills made too free, was in this case no charter to hoodwink the public. Loaves of six pounds' weight, cut in four quarters, made good the promise of "bread at discretion." Such was the plenty of the establishment, that Moliere would have celebrated it if it had been in existence in his day, so comically appropriate is the name.

Flicoteaux still subsists; so long as students are minded to live, Flicoteaux will make a living. You feed there, neither more nor less; and you feed as you work, with morose or cheerful industry, according to the circumstances and the temperament.

At that time his well-known establishment consisted of two dining-halls, at right angles to each other; long, narrow, low-ceiled rooms, looking respectively on the Rue Neuve-de-Richelieu and the Place de la Sorbonne. The furniture must have come originally from the refectory of some abbey, for there was a monastic look about the lengthy tables, where the serviettes of regular customers, each thrust through a numbered ring of crystallized tin plate, were laid by their places. Flicoteaux I. only changed the serviettes of a Sunday; but Flicoteaux II. changed them twice a week, it is said, under pressure of competition which threatened his dynasty.

Flicoteaux's restaurant is no banqueting-hall, with its refinements and luxuries; it is a workshop where suitable tools are provided, and everybody gets up and goes as soon as he has finished. The coming and going within are swift. There is no dawdling among the waiters; they are all busy; every one of them is wanted.

-- Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions: A Great Man of the Provinces in Paris (trans. by Ellen Marriage)

This central portion of Lost Illusions is one of the high points of my ongoing project to read all of Balzac's La Comédie Humaine. At the end of the Scènes de la vie de province section, it follows the impressionable young poet from Angoulême, Lucien de Rubempré, as he pursues the woman he loves to Paris. Lucien goes through most of the self-discoveries Balzac himself made, falling into desperate poverty, meeting a group of sincere writers, and then being seduced by the easy money of journalism. Balzac's descriptions of the more squalid corners of Paris, as well as the less savory aspects of the publishing business in the 19th century, are based on first-hand observation and a delight to read.

À mon chevet: 'Les deux poètes'

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

By the beginning of September, Lucien had ceased to be a printer's foreman; he was M. de Rubempré, housed sumptuously in comparison with his late quarters in the tumbledown attic with the dormer-window, where "young Chardon" had lived in L'Houmeau; he was not even a "man of L'Houmeau"; he lived in the heights of Angoulême, and dined four times a week with Mme. de Bargeton. A friendship had grown up between M. de Rubempré and the Bishop, and he went to the palace. His occupations put him upon a level with the highest rank; his name would be one day among the great names of France; and, in truth, as he went to and fro in his apartments, the pretty sitting-room, the charming bedroom, and the tastefully furnished study, he might console himself for the thought that he drew thirty francs every month out of his mother's and sister's hard earnings; for he saw the day approaching when An Archer of Charles IX, the historical romance on which he had been at work for two years, and a volume of verse entitled Marguérites, should spread his fame through the world of literature, and bring in money enough to repay them all, his mother and sister and David. So, grown great in his own eyes, and giving ear to the echoes of his name in the future, he could accept present sacrifices with noble assurance; he smiled at his poverty, he relished the sense of these last days of penury.

Ève and David had set Lucien's happiness before their own. They had put off their wedding, for it took some time to paper and paint their rooms, and to buy the furniture, and Lucien's affairs had been settled first. No one who knew Lucien could wonder at their devotion. Lucien was so engaging, he had such winning ways, his impatience and his desires were so graciously expressed, that his cause was always won before he opened his mouth to speak. This unlucky gift of fortune, if it is the salvation of some, is the ruin of many more. Lucien and his like find a world predisposed in favor of youth and good looks, and ready to protect those who give it pleasure with the selfish good-nature that flings alms to a beggar, if he appeals to the feelings and awakens emotion; and in this favor many a grown child is content to bask instead of putting it to a profitable use. With mistaken notions as to the significance and the motive of social relations they imagine that they shall always meet with deceptive smiles; and so at last the moment comes for them when the world leaves them bald, stripped bare, without fortune or worth, like an elderly coquette by the door of a salon, or a stray rag in the gutter.

-- Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions: The Two Poets (trans. by Ellen Marriage)

I am returning to an ongoing project to read all of Balzac's La Comédie Humaine, picking up where I had left off, near the end of the Scènes de la vie de province section. This excerpt is from the first part of a long novel that concludes that section, Lost Illusions. This features especially the advent of one of Balzac's most important characters, Lucien de Rubempré, who rises from the penury of a fallen quasi-aristocratic family through the sacrifices of his sister, Ève, and his best friend, David Sechard, a printer in Angoulême who hires Lucien to work for him. Although born as Lucien Chardon, the character takes on the aristocratic name of his mother's family, de Rubempré. The story mirrors the life of Balzac, who was also born into a modest family of artisans. He also worked as a printer early in his life, and he also changed his name (he was born Honoré Balssa) and added the noble particle "de" to it.

Lucien rises out of his low position because of his good looks, as a lonely woman at the top of the social ladder embraces his talent as a poet. It will ruin his life. The television show 30 Rock explored a comic version of the phenomenon Balzac is describing here. Liz Lemon's boyfriend, played by Jon Hamm, is so handsome that he lives in what she calls "the bubble" (related clip below). Everyone he meets bends over backwards to gratify and help him, and he has no idea that he is actually stupid and helpless.

À mon chevet: '1Q84'

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

The taxi's radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janáček's Sinfonietta -- probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn't seem to be listening very closely, either. With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents. Aomame settled into the broad back seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the music.

How many people could recognize Janáček's Sinfonietta after hearing just the first few bars? Probably somewhere between "very few" and "almost none." But for some reason, Aomame was one of the few who could.

Janáček composed his little symphony in 1926. He originally wrote the opening as a fanfare for a gymnastics festival. Aomame imagined 1926 Czechoslovakia: The First World War had ended, and the country was freed from the long rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. As they enjoyed the peaceful respite visiting central Europe, people drank Pilsner beer in cafés and manufactured handsome light machine guns. Two years earlier, in utter obscurity, Franz Kafka had left the world behind. Soon Hitler would come out of nowhere and gobble up this beautiful little country in the blink of an eye, but at the time no one knew what hardships lay in store for them. This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: "At the time, no one knew what was coming." Listening to Janáček's music, Aomame imagined the carefree winds sweeping across the plains of Bohemia and thought about the vicissitudes of history.

In 1926 Japan's Taisho Emperor died, and the era name was changed to Showa. It was the beginning of a terrible, dark time in this country, too. The short interlude of modernism and democracy was ending, giving way to fascism. [...]

Eyes closed, Aomame listened to the music, allowing the lovely unison of the brasses to sink into her brain. Just then it occurred to her that the sound quality was too good for a radio in a taxicab. Despite the rather low volume at which it was playing, the sound had true depth, and the overtones were clearly inaudible. She opened her eyes and leaned forward to study the dashboard stereo. The jet-black device shone with a proud gloss. She couldn't make out its brand name, but it was obviously high end, with lots of knobs and switches, the green numerals of the station readout clear against the black panel. This was not the kind of stereo you expected to see in an ordinary fleet cab. [...]

Why, though, Aomame wondered, had she instantly recognized the piece to be Janáček's Sinfonietta? And how did she know it had been composed in 1926? She was not a classical music fan, and she had no personal recollections involving Janáček, yet the moment she heard the opening bars, all her knowledge of the piece came to her by reflex, like a flock of birds swooping through an open window. The music gave her an odd, wrenching kind of feeling. There was no pain or unpleasantness involved, just a sensation that all the elements of her body were being physically wrung out. Aomame had no idea what was going on. Could Sinfonietta actually be giving me this weird feeling?

-- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (trans. by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel), pp. 3-6

My traversal of Haruki Murakami's books -- Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, What I Talk about When I Talk about Running -- has come up against the big kahuna, the sprawling, 1000-page 1Q84. Some reviews and other readers had put me off the book for a while, but it turns out to be a fascinating read that flows by easily. The title, it seems to me, should be read as "Q-teen Eighty-Four," which is the closest way to realize the concept from the book: the title of George Orwell's famous book, newly popular again in the Trump era, with the second digit replaced by the Japanese character kyu.

If you are not one of the "very few" who can imagine the sound of the opening fanfare section of Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta as you read this book, listen to the embedded video several times and it will become indelible. The piece runs throughout this fascinating book, a dual narrative that follows two main characters in alternating chapters. All of the hallmarks of Murakami's other books are here, too: the suspension of the laws or reality (the reference to Kafka in this passage is not coincidental), the explosive violence, the sexual tension. I'll reserve judgment until I reach the end of the book, but I am surprised that some critics could have missed the boat on this one.

À mon chevet: No et moi

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Lucas writes me little notes in class. He folds them over and slides them in front of me. 'Awful!' when the English teacher wears a strange skirt with fringes and pearls around the hem. 'He can sod off' when Mr Marin has given him his umpteenth zero. 'Where's the gnome?' because Gauthier de Richemont is absent (he's not particularly good-looking and Lucas has hated him since he grassed Lucas up to the principal one day when he was smoking in the toilets). In French class he stays quiet, even when we're doing grammar. It's the class where I'm most attentive. I hate being disturbed, I concentrate so as not to miss the tiniest thing. Mrs Rivery gives me special homework. French class is like a logic puzzle or a deduction, an exercise in dissection without a scalpel or a body.

People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Grammar is a wonderful way of organising the world how you'd like it to be.

-- Delphine de Vigan, No and Me (trans. by George Miller), Ch. 30

Like so many excellent books, this novel by Delphine de Vigan was a recommendation from James Wood. Based on the experience I think I will be reading all of her books. She wrote this one and three books before it while holding down a day job in a business. The narrator, Lou Bertignac, has the same nickname as de Vigan, under which pseudonym (Lou Delvig) she published her first novel. What gripped me instantly was the individuality of that narrative voice: troubled, quirky, boundlessly intelligent, yet touchingly naive. There is nothing flowery about de Vigan's style, which is terse and rapid-fire, but there are marvelously diverting tangents, observations that are slowly unraveled in small lengths. The book's British translation is presented as a book for teenage girls, but don't let that put you off.

À mon chevet: Go Tell It on the Mountain

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

The Sunday morning service began when Brother Elisha sat down at the piano and raised a song. This moment and this music had been with John, so it seemed, since he first drawn breath. It seemed that there had never been a time when he had not known this moment of waiting while the packed church paused -- the sisters in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, heads back; the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the charged air like crowns, the kinky, gleaming heads of the men seeming to be lifted up -- and the rustling and the whispering ceased and the children were quiet; perhaps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or a curse from the streets came in; then Elisha hit the keys, beginning at once to sing, and everybody joined him, clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the tambourines.

The song might be: Down at the cross where my Savior died!

Or: Jesus, I'll never forget how you set me free!

Or: Lord, hold my hand while I run this race!

They sang with all the strength that was in them, and clapped their hands for joy. There had never been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, the joy he felt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for them, the very bread of life -- could not doubt it, that is, until it was too late to doubt. Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm of their bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became the upper room, and the Holy Ghost were riding on the air. His father's face, always awful, became more awful now; his father's daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her eyes raised to heaven, hands arched before her, moving, made real for John that patience, that endurance, that long suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and found so hard to imagine.

On Sunday mornings the women all seemed patient, all the men seemed mighty. While John watched, the Power struck someone, a man or woman; they cried out, a long wordless crying, and, arms outstretched like wings, they began the Shout. Someone moved a chair a little to give them room, the rhythm paused, the singing stopped, only the pounding feet and the clapping hands were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the tambourines began again, and the voices rose again, and the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment. Then the church seemed to swell with the Power it held, and, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked with the Power of God. John watched, watched the faces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to the timeless cries. One day, so everyone said, this Power would possess him; he would sing and cry as they did now, and dance before his King.

-- James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain, pp. 13-14

The summer reading season is upon us, and more Balzac is on my nightstand again as I slowly work my way through La Comédie Humaine. This week, though, has been devoted to some of the works of James Baldwin, beginning with the marvelous, ground-breaking Giovanni's Room, his 1956 novel about an American in Paris struggling to accept his homosexuality.

While that novel was drawn from Baldwin's personal experiences, in a disguised way, Go Tell It on the Mountain is more transparently about his youth as the son of an abusive stepfather who was a preacher in Harlem. Although Baldwin was not a believer himself, all of his work is suffused with a knowledge of the Bible and Gospel music that could only have come from first-hand experience, such as the scene described in this passage. Baldwin's writing is fluid and packed with vivid descriptions, a style that draws you in after a couple of pages and holds you. Next up is Notes of a Native Son, a 1955 collection of Baldwin's essays.

The Worst Mozart Biography Ever. Paul Johnson: «Mozart -- A Life»

My apologies, first of all, for the hyperbolic headline, another eyesore in an age of click-bait headlines. I hope to escape total damnation[1]* by having resisted to add that intelligence-insulting trope of a sub-header: “You won’t believe the mistake on page 8!” As every hyperbole, it’s nonsensical, on top of aesthetically displeasing: I have not read every Mozart biography there is, nor can I look into the future. It is perfectly possible that there has been or will be a worse Mozart biography; my faith in the limitlessness of human ingenuity (or whatever the antonym of ingenuity is) is considerable. In my defense, however, it is not very probable that there is a worse Mozart biography, past or future, that will take the cake from (Forbes contributor) Paul Johnson. In any case, can I make up for it by offering a more reasoned, tempered headline now? Perhaps:

“Paul Johnson’s ‘Mozart – A Life’: A Review”?

Incidentally you actually won’t believe the howler on page 8, but if I mentioned it now, you might be tempted to assume that I gleefully found one major error in Johnson’s biography and then hung a whole damnation on it. I would loathe for that impression to take hold. So let me proceed more methodically. Firstly by acknowledging my indebtedness too – indeed co-authorship of – George A. Pieler[2], who wrote this book review with me when we initially hoped to publish it in our co-written column, when the biography came out.

To accompany this review, there is a discography with comment on ionarts and a corresponding playlist on Spotify: Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

In my graduate school, Paul Johnson – the author of “Modern Times” – was revered and much quoted. (Tells you something about the school, but that’s not the point.) I was by and large on board with the admiration, but even then the ad hominem attacks against Bertrand Russell, which struck me beneath Johnson to make, raised some warning flags. Now the distinguished commentator, historian, and critic has written “Mozart – A Life”, a slender and personal primer on Mozart if not a biography per se. Johnson, who has lately specialized in short primers on famous figures, styles this is as a new look, giving Mozart’s religion, marriage and career successes their due place.

After two-and-a-half centuries’ worth of biographies, commentaries, and conjecture, it would be bold to claim to present a new view of the composer. Johnson doesn’t, but he has interesting thoughts on Mozart the musician and shares a wealth of personal reactions to his music and life. He wields a seasoned pen and knows how to tell a tale. Unfortunately there are so many problems, factual and analytic, with this work that it is of questionable use for the Mozart neophyte and an exasperating affair for experienced Mozarteans.

Exasperating, because the light entertainment is interwoven with unwarranted hyperbole, tiring laundry lists of works, strange and unsubstantiated biases, wild speculations, and uncritical adoration of the subject. Several statements are plain wrong, others dubious or misleading. Comprehensive fact-checking is made more difficult by the lack of any notes, or specific references. The index is limited to some (not all) names and topics referred to in the text, omitting compositions.

Paul Johnson: «Mozart – A Life» A Review

That which is sold as novel in “Mozart – A Life” is chiefly the author’s informed opinion after reading some of the best-known literature on the subject, as identified in “Suggestions for further reading” at the end of the book. One of these, H.C. Robbins-Landon’s Mozart Compendium, provides a particularly similar account of Mozart’s finances, and marriage to what Paul Johnson presents.[3]

In brief, Johnson says that Mozart’s work was inspired by his Roman Catholic faith (true up to a point, but Johnson goes well beyond what the evidence supports); that Mozart’s marriage was strong and important to his life and career (fair enough), that his wife Constanze had been wrongly maligned as a bad housekeeper (thereby overstating the importance of the anti-Constanze view only to take it down), and that Mozart shouldn’t be thought of as a writer of begging-letters. The latter because the composer was merely a typical 18^th century free-lancer, bridging monetary gaps that would invariably incur: Mozart was rich, he spent money, and after all, a composer of his repute had to live up to a certain standard.

This view of Mozart’s finances is plausible, but we certainly have ample evidence of his pleading for loans (and eventually paying them back).[4] We also know that Mozart liked to live well whether his income supported it or not, that his father Leopold always told him to be more financially frugal. We also know that his contemporary colleague Joseph Haydn knew how to work on a barter arrangement (goods for services) when cash was tight.

It’s not clear why Johnson is quite so concerned that the letters requesting money might leave a stain on the composer’s reputation and character. But he certainly is, and after hinting at how finance and financing worked in those times (insufficient supplies of money and credit required everyone borrow some time) he abandons this tangential but truly intriguing track for categorical statements: “On a careful analysis [to which the readers are sadly not privy], I reject the idea that Mozart can be accurately termed a begging-letter writer.” Indeed: “There is no point of connection between creative work and money problems, which indicates to me that Mozart felt no guilt about borrowing money because he knew that his work was earning it fully and that sooner or later his debts would be paid down to the last penny, as they were. That, I think, is the last word that needs to be said of Mozart as a writer of begging letters.” Well, there you have it.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Paul Johnson: Mozart – «A Life» A Review

A Funny Bone to Pick

Paul Johnson starts frustrating the reader of his Mozart-narrative early on when, six pages (of just 138 net pages, excluding the Appendix written by his son Daniel) in, he hits upon the topic of humor in music. Mozart would indeed make a splendid case study for this, given his wildly diverse sense of musical humor, from blush-worthy crude to utmost sophistication. Johnson whets our appetite, hinting at Mozart’s special ability in this department and how he learned it from his father Leopold. Then he claims bewilderingly that this is a specifically Bavarian specialty. In doing so, he links Mozart – who always lived in (then) independent Salzburg or Austria – and his father, who left Bavaria at age 18 – to “Mozart’s alter ego, the Bavarian joker Richard Strauss”. Perhaps more damning and telling of things to come, Johnson backs this up by suggesting that jokes “like Papageno’s in The Magic Flute” are as easy to get as those in “Strauss’s last ten bars of Die Fledermaus”. If you haven’t cringed already: Die Fledermaus was written by (Viennese) Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899), not Richard Strauss (1864-1949).

Having made the assertion, the author never explains or elaborates the point beyond the ill-conceived Papageno-Fledermaus link. That’s dissatisfying for the curious reader and it looks a little as if Johnson was merely repeating something he assumed true but didn’t quite know himself. On the subject of humor, he never mentions the quintessential musical humorist, Hungaro-Austrian Joseph Haydn.

Much of the Mozart family humor appears in letters of Mama Mozart who hailed from the Salzburg region, but never in Bavarian-born Papa Leopold’s. Johnson notes this, but here distinguishes music-humor and word-humor. Yet a paragraph later the two are mixed together again: Writing about Mozart’s penchant for wordplay (“Mozart played with words in exactly the same way as he improvised on the clavier treating words as though they were notes”) Johnson quotes from Wolfgang’s letters, presumably in support of this interesting thesis: “Thus (November 5, 1777) ‘Dearest Coz Fuzz!... Today the letter setter from My Papa Ha! Ha! dropped safely into my claws paws. I hope that you too have got shot the note dote which I wrote,’ and so on.”

Quoting this clunky and out-of-context translation from Mozart’s sui-generis “Bäsle letters” to his “did-they-or-didn’t-they?” cousin Marianne (admittedly it’s not much more clever in German) without discussing its deliberate silliness is unhelpful. Not telling us how this supposedly relates to Mozart’s clavier improvisations, is downright cruel.

On the other hand, Johnson purports to join his readers in mock- (or earnest?) surprise and shock at the scatological nature of some of the Mozart family’s communiqués. Yet he never puts the scat-talk into proper historic and cultural perspective (how earthy crudeness was common then; how digestion played a hugely important and much discussed role in health etc.) nor does he point out the same rude approach to language and humor found in many Mozart songs and rounds. As little as a reference to Mozart’s Canon for 4 Voices in F major, K.560 would have been helpful.[5]

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Making it Personal

When Paul Johnson needs to fill a chapter with some historical context, he often diverts onto ground he has covered elsewhere and territory with which he feels familiar. One such far-fetched digression suggests a pattern in the rise of personalities in the world of the 18^th century as exemplified by Washington and Napoleon:

“When George Washington distinguished himself in colonial service during the Seven Year’s War, when Mozart was an infant, he aspired to rise in the British regular Army or its Indian offshoot. But he had no interest at the Horse Guards or the East India Company in London. So he went on to become a revolutionary leader, and the first president of the United States. When Napoléon was a young teenager in Corsica, he greatly admired the Royal Navy ships… but he had no influence in the London Admirality, and so […he] went on to become emperor of France and conquer half of Europe. Thus history is made”

This suggests that achievement often comes from frustration with the usual course of career progress, a commonplace not limited to Mozart’s time. And what does it prove? If people did not transcend their social and cultural limitations, they would hardly end up as the extraordinary figures that Johnson likes writing books about. In any case, this digression yields less cultural insight than convenient self-promotion. The only thing missing is a helpful footnote reading: Customers who like this factoid will love Paul Johnson’s “George Washington: The Founding Father” and “Napoleon: A Penguin Life”.

Strewn in here and there, are also some remarks that set the breezy conversational fireside-chat tone of “Mozart: A Life”. Somewhere between charming and out of place, Johnson relates that “the Mozarts put up in Cecil Court, near Leicester Square, in a house that, though altered, is still there, opposite a shop selling musical books.” This store opposite the house where Mozart lived no longer stands and happens to be the shop where Johnson bought his three-volume copy of the Mozart family correspondence.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Taking it Personal

Paul Johnson tends to take it personally when he encounters evidence Mozart was not universally loved. And he is at his angriest writing about Salzburg’s Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo. Colloredo did not, Johnson insists, appreciate and treat Mozart in accordance to how the young genius deserved to be treated. This unleashes Johnson’s wrath.[6] We’re invited to share in that feeling when Johnson tells us that“[Mozart] found the man ungracious. For [Colloredo’s] installation he wrote a special Trinity Mass of 863 bars. This is, to be sure, rather on the long side – Mozart did not then know of his predilection for brevity – but the hostility with which His Grace received it was uncalled for… Mozart never had any false pride about writing to order (within reason) or even rewriting to order if asked nicely. But Colloredo was peremptory and ill mannered.”

Apart from this rather simplistic appeal to our emotions, and the ridiculous suggestion that a ruler might get a job more suitably done by his employee if only he “asked nicely”, we are never told exactly how Hieronymus von Colloredo displayed hostility toward Mozart’s Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis, K.167 (a Missa brevis et solemnis). But it wouldn’t have been the length, presumably, that incensed Colloredo. Eight hundred and sixty-three bars or not, it conformed to Colloredo’s “under 45 minutes” directive Mozart reported (in correspondence to Padre Martini) as regarded Masses. This raises a few questions. Notes would help find out how Johnson knows this was specifically written for Colloredo’s installation, which took place in March of 1772… whereas K.167 reportedly received its first performance on June 6^th, 1773 – and in the Trinity Church (right across from where the Mozarts would move to three months later), rather than being intended for use in the Salzburg Cathedral.[7]

Elsewhere Johnson refers to Mozart’s K. 126, the drama/opera Il sogno di Scipione as written for Colloredo’s “enthronement” and calls it (in quotes from an unnamed source) “the dullest thing he ever wrote”. There he suggests an emotional link in Mozart writing his only bad work (it’s not the only one and probably not even the dullest) for the man he allegedly so despised. Scholarly consensus is in any case that the piece was written for Colloredo’s predecessor and re-dedicated to Colloredo in (most likely) vain hope of a performance. Later Johnson calls K. 126 an “installation piece”, the same term he uses for the Trinity Mass.[8]

Johnson gives Colloredo no quarter: “Colloredo was… domineering and surrounded himself with subordinates who copied him… [Mozart] may have felt that fundamentally the archbishop disliked music. He played the violin, but badly, and it seems odd that he did not turn to Leopold, the world authority on the violin and its teaching, or Mozart himself, a most accomplished performer, for help.”

Perhaps the outrage of Colloredo not going to the Mozarts’ for music lessons is ameliorated a little, when one considers that the man also busied himself with reforming the principality’s tax system, balancing the budget, introducing the vernacular into the church service*, hiring composers, painters, engineers, doctors, pedagogues, and writers and altogether turning Salzburg into a hub of science and the arts. By all accounts, he was extremely fond of music.[9]

Paul Johnson tops himself in the next chapter, proclaiming that “[my] own surmise is that he [Colloredo] viewed Mozart’s gifts with hostility, unbecoming a subordinate, tending to put Mozart beyond his control. He was a petty princeling, not a grand one, and a genius was more than he could handle.” “Mozart seems to have sensed that Archbishop Colloredo was antimusic from the start. He was extraordinarily intuitive about people who were aurally insensitive, having perfect pitch himself and being able to detect and remember tiny differences of pitch.”

One trusts that as a Roman Catholic Paul Johnson didn’t let Colloredo’s association with the Illuminati or his sympathizing with the Febronian movement and Jansenism (an anti-Jesuitical reformed Catholicism that favored localized church powers over the Pope’s Rome) influence his picture of the man. Summing up, Johnson quotes the mistranslated (or misquotes the correctly translated) letter about Mozart ‘caring very little for Salzburg and not at all for the Archbishop and “that I shit on both of them…”. In this instance Mozart, although liberal with all variants of “shit” in his letters, writes that “he doesn’t give a crap about either”… a decidedly more casual statement, then as now.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Paul Johnson: «Mozart – A Life» A Review

Fawning before the Genius

Paul Johnson admires, worships Mozart. He is very easily impressed with even comparatively simple achievements of Mozart. He won’t tolerate a bad word about him, and anyone who stood in Mozart’s way gets thwacked by Johnson. Mozart, Johnson tells us: “seems to have had a strong propensity to learn subjects with complex and difficult rules. Hence his early and marked capacity to learn how to read music. It is likely he learned how to read notes before he learned word reading.” This might sound impressive to the layperson who doesn’t read music, but reading notes is literally child’s play, assuming one gets started early. Mozart was surely a genius, but this feat isn’t the proof. Nor does the knack for “sight reading [a] piece he had never seen before” make him stand out among talented musicians. And there is this giddy hyperbole: “No composer of note, in the whole of musical history, I think, was sufficiently versatile and self-confident to play three different instruments to concert standard.”

Johnson is amazed, too, that for his Sinfonia Concertante Mozart “used the key of E-flat… The key gives the viola greater volume and much more brilliant tone… Only an expert player, like Mozart, would have known this. Thanks to Mozart’s cunning, based on sheer knowledge… the two instruments become true equals for the first time in musical history.” Actually, anyone who had studied the instrument would have known this. Joseph Martin Kraus, the “Swedish Mozart” did. So did Joseph Schubert, or Alessandro Rolla – to name only two exact Mozart contemporaries who composed concertos for the viola in E-flat. They still would not have written the Sinfonia Concertante, which is unique to Mozart’s genius… but they would have written it in E-flat alright. For all the reasons to be impressed by Mozart, Johnson has a tendency to choose the most mundane and trivial.

On the topic of the Mozart Requiem he is quick to wave aside any criticism of Mozart-student Franz Xaver Süssmayr who had a very considerable hand in finishing it after Mozart’s death: “As Mozart had discussed the Requiem with Süssmayr throughout its period of gestation, and as he was in any case thoroughly familiar with Mozart’s method of work, we may be confident that the Requiem as we have it is to all intents Mozart’s work.” But we may not be confident. There’s a whole school of Requiemology, which is a symptom, albeit not proof, that there are plenty and good reasons to doubt that Süssmayr particularly excelled at what he was doing. And that doubt has a very long and reputable tradition… including the Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein (also one of his better biographers). Mozart himself, in his letters, rather poked fun at Süssmayer in a way that left doubt as to his skills. “The supposed clumsiness, awkwardness and technically imperfect qualities of [Süssmayr’s] orchestration have assumed near-axiomatic status in the secondary literature…” writes Simon P. Keefe in Mozart's Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion. The point is not that there is no case for Süssmayr, which remains for better or worse the standard performance version, but that Johnson denies there is legitimate controversy to begin with and that Johnson is in no musicological way, shape or form qualified to actually discern or decide such matters.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

On Moral Character and Normal Women

Mozart’s character appears as good as flawless to Johnson: Mozart “was through his life physically attractive to both men and women. He had charm… He was certainly little. But he exuded a fierce whiff of masculinity, at times of sexuality. He was flirtatious, which does not mean he was promiscuous.” “Mozart was in debt for most of the last two decades of his life, but that does not mean that his total liabilities exceeded his assets. I do not believe that they ever did.” “He probably gambled a bit on the game [of Billiards] too. But not much. The life patterns of habitual gamblers are easily identified, and Mozart never exhibited them.” Euphemisms and and the most baseless conjecture abound.

Johnson speculates and counter-speculates about what a good father Leopold was, and concludes that since Leopold “sacrificed his own promising career as a performer and composer entirely in order to promote his son’s and who behaved in many ways with heroic unselfishness”, he was therefore an “admirable father”. Certainly Leopold believed his son had a divine spark of genius; equally clearly he was a classic stage father who knew the commercial and patronage value, not just the spiritual value, of his son’s genius. Johnson notwithstanding, it remains questionable whether living vicariously through one’s children is particularly significant in judging the quality of parenting.[10]

Likewise Constanze and Mozart’s marriage is defended against all possible criticism: “I believe her marriage was fundamentally happy, and it is hard to conceive how any normal woman could have been unhappy with Mozart.” If this statement doesn’t baffle, nothing will. Surely Mozart – whom we never knew personally – being a revered genius today, is a poor determinant as to whether women in general “could have been unhappy” with him. And what exactly is a “normal woman”, either then or now?

Johnson proceeds to excoriate the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians for outrageously slandering Constanze and Wolfgang alike by suggesting that he, Mozart, might have been the problem and that Constanze wasn’t a prudent and neat woman until after his demise. Not so, Johnson says: “The truth, as far as I can judge, is that Constanze was always a good wife and mother, ran the household well, but was out of action a large part of the time, either pregnant or nursing or in Baden in desperate attempts to regain her health and strength. Nor was Mozart a bad husband… If he had had a major affair, we would certainly know about it”, Johnson reasons. Two pages later, however, Johnson attributes to Mozart a love of secrecy and reticence, “which formed an important part of his psychology.”

There is indeed no hard evidence against Constanze, and plenty that she was a savvy wife and mother after Mozart’s death, which doesn’t prove she was or wasn’t before. At least in this instance Johnson gives us his reasoning, rather than just expecting the reader to trust his conclusions after plainly stating that those are his beliefs. It would be ever so much nicer to be privy to how he came to form all his other convictions.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Paul Johnson: Mozart – «A Life» A Review

Errors and Hyperbole

When the book isn’t presenting selective evidence, “Mozart: A Life” is plagued with countless little errors or oversights which may betray someone fairly well acquainted, but not intimately familiar with the subject matter. The mix of trivia, conventional wisdom, mistakes, and exaggeration sadly pops up repeatedly throughout the entire book and betrays sloppy research and worse editing. Here are some of our favorites:

“The bassoon, like the oboe, uses a double reed made of bamboo.” Reeds have been and continue to be made out of giant cane, which – much unlike bamboo – is native to Continental Europe.

The bassoon in German it is not “fagot” but “Fagott”, and one is hard pressed to think that anyone but modern (post-1914) English speakers would find humor in the instrument based on that spelling of the name and the insinuated pejorative allusion.

The early piano concertos of Mozart’s, K.107, were not based “on sonatas by J.S.Bach” but sonatas by Johann Christian Bach.

The “so-called Kegelstaff trio of works” – Johnson lobs into this ‘trio’ the Clarinet Trio that bears that moniker, the Clarinet Concerto, and the Clarinet Quintet – I have never seen referred to as such, but even if they were thus known, or if the connection were logical (it isn’t; even the nickname for the Trio was misapplied to begin with), it would still be Kegelstatt.

“Valve trombones were not available in Mozart’s day”. That’s true, but it’s irrelevant: They’re rare even today; the standard sliding Trombone hasn’t changed fundamentally between then and today. Presumably he means valve trumpets?

Timpani “are the only percussion instrument that can produce notes of definite pitch and so can become part of the orchestral harmonies.” That’s horribly wrong; the vast majority of percussion instruments, short of rainsticks and tamtams, produce a definite pitch. And even most drums, which might be what Johnson is thinking of, have a definite pitch, except for snare and bass drums. There is more on timpanists, though: “The belief that they ‘whisper to their drumskins’ is superstition. They are in fact testing harmonics by humming various tones.” After blushing at the convoluted muddle this is, a timpanist acquaintance who plays in one of the best, certainly greatest-sounding European orchestras, helped me in setting this straight:

“On the whispering thing he’s actually not entirely wrong, apart from his usage of “superstition” and the fact that we are not “testing harmonics” pe se, but using them to ensure the right pitch. Sympathetic resonance works wonderfully with timpani: if you hum a perfect fifth above into it, it hums back at you very resonantly. So if you want a G, hum the D above into it, keep moving the pedal and it’ll hit you when you’re on the G. The problem, though, is that most of us find that in the middle of a performance, really can’t hear ourselves hum, and even if we feel we’re humming perfectly in tune, we’re actually not – at least not perfectly enough. And so it’s very rarely done. Most players, therefore, use their fingers most of the time. Tapping the skin is also rarely done, however, since one generally can’t do it loud enough to really get the instrument going: what one hears is extremely thin and tinny – difficult to hear the pitch precisely. What most players do is flick the skin. There’s less impact noise and you get pretty much the whole skin moving properly, producing a much more fundamental tone. And that’s what is to that.”

But on with more obvious mistakes: Handel did not die “five years before Mozart was born”, but three years after. Handel died in 1759, Mozart was born in 1756.

Mozart’s various illnesses throughout life were not necessarily all associated with the kidneys; they include smallpox and mostly are recorded as fevers, throat infections, ‘rheumatic fever’ and so on.

According to family letters, the Miserere by Gregorio Allegri was heard and then written down entirely from memory by the fourteen-year old Mozart. But this, if true, took place at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, not Milan as Johnson claims.[11]

Mozart’s first child, Raimund Leopold, was not born on June 17, 1782 – which would be two months before Mozart and Constanze married. While that’s possible, of course, the year was 1783.

Mozart did not specifically compose a Mass – the “Great Mass in C minor, K.427 – to celebrate his wedding with Constanze (which was really the Viennese equivalent of a shotgun wedding as Johnson omits to mention). Perhaps he intended it as a votive offering. Pace Paul Johnson, we don’t know. He did, admittedly, write that he had promised himself that if he introduced Constanze as his bride in Salzburg, he would get a newly composed Mass performed there. If he did, it was presumably not on October 25^th but on October 26^th; moreover there is no documentation to prove that it actually happened. If these are relatively minor mistakes or points of contention, Johnson also claims that “Mozart finally finished [the Mass] in May 1783.” The Great Mass, alas, remains unfinished (part of the Credo and the whole Agnus Dei were never composed). Not as famously so as the Requiem, but still very much unfinished. The 10-line paragraph is exemplary, though, in containing a string of sloppy statements, assumptions dressed as fact, all graced with a point-blank error.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Opinionisms and Curiosities

Aside from multiple factual errors, “Mozart: A Life” is laden with subjective judgments masquerading as (someone else’s) expert opinion. Some of these are just sweeping exaggerations, other are so vaguely put that no one could prove (or argue) the proposition. Some are both, usually modified with the maddening meaningless-makers “probably” or “perhaps”.

“Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest organist in the world…” “Arthur Schnabel, who probably played Mozart better than anyone…”, “Beethoven’s [violin concerto] is perhaps his most perfect work”, “Sibelius, whose own Violin Concerto is… perhaps the most delightful of his major works…”, “Mozart… exhibits perhaps his most persistent gift [in writing for violin and piano]. They show Mozart at his best.” (If we had to argue for ‘Mozart’s best’ for any genre, outside of opera, we’d suggest the Viola Quintets, for whatever that’s worth. Johnson, who puts special emphasis on Mozart’s viola writing, oddly mentions these sublime works only in passing.) Haydn’s “spectacular Trumpet Concerto [is] perhaps the liveliest thing he ever wrote.”

Apart from elevating Schnabel to the probably greatest Mozartean ever, he proceeds to misquote the man:

“Schnabel… said of [Mozart’s] sonatas that ‘they are too easy for children and too difficult for artists.’ He put it another way: ‘Children are given Mozart because of the small quantity of the notes. Grown-ups avoid Mozart because of the great quantity of the notes.’ Again: ‘It is not the notes, it is the pauses that raise the problem.’”

If this sounds confusing, it does sound less confusing in the actual original quote: “Children are given Mozart because of the small quantity of the notes. Grown-ups avoid [certain] Mozart because of the great quality of the notes.”

The nonsense reaches ludicrous heights when Johnson claims that “by the time Beethoven came to write his Sixth Symphony, his oboes… were fully chromatic without recourse to fork fingering. This is one reason why his later symphonies are so much better.” Surely no writer on music has more pithily dismissed Beethoven’s Third (“Eroica”) and Fifth Symphonies. And has anyone seriously claimed that Symphonies Six through Nine are “so much better” than the preceding ones?

Later in the book, Johnson writes “Tovey compares [the Haffner, Linz, and Prague Symphonies] to Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in the development of his style, and I can see what he means, for some people think Beethoven’s Fourth his best…” Obviously not the same “some people” who think the later symphonies “are so much better”.

“[Mozart] loved, all his life… to improvise. This is why we can never experience the true and full Mozart completely. When he was alive, his cadenzas were always wholly or in part improvised. Those he wrote down were never his best work.” This is another perplexing statement. If they were improvised – i.e. never written down – how can we possibly know they were better than those he jotted down? Did Mozart, blessed with such a remarkable musical memory, forget his own best cadenzas and resign himself to notating ‘good-enough’ bits and pieces? There are ear-witness accounts, which can’t be verified, but that the written out cadenzas were “never his best work” is a ridiculous assertion.

“But many would vote his Clarinet Concerto his finest work”... “[and it is] the best thing he ever did, in my opinion”. Now we have declared, either by hypothetical vote or probability or opinion, at least four works as Mozart’s best: the Sinfonia Concertante, the Clarinet Concerto, The Marriage of Figaro, and Eine kleine Nachtmusik. They are all great, obviously, but this perceived need to constantly declare something ‘the greatest’ and ‘the best’ might do in a hyperbole-laced article, but in a book it soon becomes noxious.

Johnson muses idly about K.239 Serenata notturna – the only work he can think of in Mozart’s oeuvre that has a double-bass solo – and how he should like to know what it might sound like. “But how often is it played?” There are forty, maybe fifty different recordings of this work available that could provide the answer. We are happy to recommend one or three that pack a punch: Jordi Savall (on Alia Vox) for example, the Ensemble 415 (on Zig-Zag), or Sándor Vegh (on Capriccio) with Mozart’s hometown Salzburg Camerata.

“There is no other work [than Piano Concerto K.488] that shows the difference between a recording (however good) and a live performance (even with a small orchestra) more sharply.” Apart from the size of the orchestra probably not being a particularly relevant factor for the quality of a live performance, this claim is absurdly random. If anything, Mozart – anything by Mozart – is very well suited to communicate through recordings (for all their inherent limitations). For composers and works where the gap between live and recorded is truly gaping, try Charles Ives or Karl Amadeus Hartmann! Unfortunately Johnson has plenty more enervating blanket statements that help no one’s appreciation of Mozart.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Instrumental Semi-Facts

The errors and overstatements are a special problem in the chapter Johnson devotes to the particulars of instruments and Mozart’s relation with them. Many claims are simply a little odd to make. Left unsubstantiated they become absurd. The clarinet, a very lovely instrument for sure, becomes the “most versatile, protean, and useful of wind instruments”… which raises only a mild eye-brow, except from oboists. A more daring claim, about Mozart’s famous colleague, is that “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony would have been a much more subtle work if he had taken more trouble over his timps.” (Still “so much better” than symphonies One through Five, though.)

Mozart’s Oboe Concerto K.271 is not deemed by modern scholars as ‘lost’. As per the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe it is presumed identical with the Oboe Concerto K.314 which Johnson calls a concerto “for flute and oboe”. He is confused and/or means that there are two versions (which is true because there exists of it a version Mozart retooled for Flute), but his phrase makes it sound like a double-concerto companion to the flute and harp concerto and the Sinfonia Concertante, which it is not. Nor did K.314 “survive… in the oboe version.” It survived in both versions, of which the oboe version was considered lost until 1948. “K.271” meanwhile is firmly associated with the “Jeunehomme” Piano Concerto No.9. When “271” is used at all for the Oboe Concerto, as the sixth Koechel-edition does, it’s “K.271k” to avoid confusion.

Speaking of flute concertos:  “The two flute concertos, K.313 and 315 in G and C, survive, and give the lie to the tradition that Mozart disliked the flute. This probably arose because flautists are notoriously disobedient and introduce their own ideas and scoring without consulting the composer, a form of cheek intolerable to a musician as meticulous in his scoring as Mozart.”

Flutist (to observe the profession’s authentic etymology and preferred reference) Marina Piccinini is clever enough to dodge the latter accusation, “on the grounds that it might incriminate me...” though adding with a form of self-effacing cheek: “the irresponsible ones are fun and flashy, the serious ones are a bore and have a lousy sound. Both are annoying”. To debunk the flute-myth she suggests to “look at the correspondence between Mozart and his father”, not at the alleged reputation of disobedient flutists. “It's all right there. In Mannheim, Mozart was commissioned to write six quartets and four concerti – but at the same time, he was for the first time away from his father and that domineering influence, plus he was in love with Aloysia Weber… When he only got paid 96 Gulden instead of 200 because he only completed half the amount of pieces (four Quartets and two Concerti, one of which is by the way K.314 in D, not the 315 in C[12]) his father was nevertheless furious, and the ensuing correspondence shows Mozart attempting to weasel his way out of the difficulty. Among other excuses his cites his dislike of the instrument as one reason for not being able to complete this task. But we [flutists] know better!” (As would have Aloysia.)

On the subject of the Mozart piano concerti, Paul Johnson makes the interesting claim that “Mozart’s [piano] sonatas have suffered because his piano concertos are obviously more accomplished.” First, it might be argued that Mozart’s Piano Sonatas have not actually suffered in any meaningful sense. The number of recordings is copious and performances abound. What then could this possibly mean? Pianist Andreas Haefliger, who performs the concertos regularly and has recorded several of the sonatas for Sony and Avie, is as puzzled by this statement as we are: “The Mozart piano sonatas stand out in the piano repertoire for making the pianist be a tactile magician, conductor, orchestra and dramaturg all at once. An adventure intricately more complex than performing one of the piano concertos. True: this can lead, in the hands of a mediocre performer, to an unsuccessful performance. But blaming this on the pieces would be mediocre itself.” His colleague Tzimon Barto, suspecting a drunken joke when confronted with the quote, context-free, dismissed the line as not worth a response, only to relent: “But, as you want a response, I'll just have the great Rumi give you one:

Knowledge has two wings, opinion only one wing;
Opinion is weak and lopsided in flight.
The bird having but one wing quickly drops down,
And again flies on two steps or more.
This bird of opinion goes on rising and falling
On one wing, in hope to reach his nest.”

In any case, if Johnson means ‘better‘, the case would have to be made. But he makes no attempt at it. The concertos are among Mozart’s supreme achievements and the sonatas don’t have the status of, say, those of Beethoven (just about the worst you can say about them). But why treat Mozart’s works like batches of hausfrau-baked goods that must compete against each other for the blue ribbon?

And then we get this gem: “The violin is one of the finest inventions in the whole range of art because the beauty of its tone and its sheer attractive power makes it the only instrument to rival the human voice, and its unique agility and brilliance gives it a range of emotions and infinite nuances of expression that no other instrument can match, while its sustained tone never becomes tiresome.”

Violinist David Frühwirt, being read the statement, listened to the first bits with bemused mock-agreement then incredulity from “the only instrument to rival the human voice” onward. Although performing on a fine violin himself, the Ex-Brüstlein 1707 Stradivari, he can’t let the lopsidedness stand: Not the violin, but foremost the clarinet and then the cello are the instruments that most closely approximate the human voice, he objects. The rest is hyperbole that a violinist – though not Frühwirt – might be suckered into agreeing with but it is hardly universally accepted fact. The list here could go on considerably, but it would run the risk of becoming more tedious than the book itself.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Johnson on Opera
If you have kept reading, you reach the fourth chapter on Mozart and Opera. In “Mozart’s Operatic Magic” Paul Johnson at last does more than just re-arrange facts assembled from other biographies while adding his passionate consumer’s expertise. It’s a chapter written with genuine feeling and, if not great new insights, at least knowledge and the fewest mistakes per page. When Johnson states that “one of the most endearing things about Mozart is that he saw music and laughter as inseparable… [That] nobody took music more seriously. Nobody got more jokes out of it”, one is delighted. It rings true, and even though it is just a claim, it seems to explain itself.

Paul Johnson gets much right on the ‘big’ operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte, though he has grave doubts about the skill and character of Lorenzo da Ponte, librettist for the first three of these. The “Ten Characteristics of a Mature Mozart Opera” may sound more like a Forbes.com headline than a sound musicological thesis, but Johnson makes substantial points about what made Mozart’s operas so special, and what special things opera brought out of Mozart. It seems Johnson does not approve of the Abduction from the Seraglio, though. He mentions it once by name and then insists on calling it derisively and repeatedly to the point of comedy: “the harem opera”. (Incidentally I can’t chide him much for that; I, too, find it the weakest of the mature Mozart operas by some measure.)

Nor is Johnson infallible even in this chapter: “[La clemenza di] Tito had a lukewarm reception in Prague, then a tumultuous one on the final night of the run. Why? We don’t know.” Yes, actually… we do. Or at least we can take an educated guess: At the premiere on September 6, 1791 the wife of Emperor Leopold II – for whose coronation this inspired rush job was stitched together (to a libretto that every second-, third-, and fourth-rate composer had already gone through) – allegedly fell asleep and called it a “porcheria tedesca.” The crowd was invitation-only; a selection of the Must-Attend officialdom of the monarchy. The royal reception, snoring or not, won’t have gone unnoticed, and the level of interest by those in attendance for non-musical reasons can be surmised. Once the show opened to the paying public, it was a smash hit… Much the same still happens today at events to which tickets are handed out for free or to dignitaries instead of being purchased.

In his 5^th and final chapter, having made it through most of the book without technical jargon, Johnson suddenly hurls a whole paragraph of it at the unsuspecting reader. Discussing the hallmarks of the classical concerto, he paraphrases Donald Francis Tovey, a favorite of his, at length. He also decides to give a rundown of the concertos and the symphonies – better late than never – and express personal opinions about lots of them.

This is so much a matter of personal taste that you either agree or disagree. Even so, it is strange that an author who so appreciates Mozart’s operas has little to say about how the composer’s growth as composer of musical theater spilled over in his concertos and, to a lesser extent, symphonies. Further, two of Johnson’s observations on specific Mozart symphonies demand response. Symphony No. 29 (K. 201) is not one of the “jokiest, burlesque” of Mozart’s works. Indeed Alfred Einstein regarded it as exceptional, with a finale “the richest and most dramatic Mozart had written up to this time.” Einstein knew what he was talking about and it’s almost as if Johnson mistakes the most remarkable K. 201, with its instantly compelling first movement, for another work. Mozart’s “first ‘dark’ symphony” K. 183, by which Johnson means that it was written in a minor key, showed not “how deeply Mozart, by then twenty-seven, could feel”, in part because Mozart was 17 at the time of composition. Further on Johnson suggests (admitting he is alone in this view) that the last three symphonies expressly (yet covertly) embody the Rosary of Roman Catholicism. The notion becomes even stranger when elsewhere, Johnson makes clear that when Mozart wanted to send a message about his religious beliefs, he [always] did so directly. Not directly enough, it would seem, to convince anyone but – as per his own admission – Johnson.

Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Discography | Paul Johnson: “Mozart – A Life” Spotify Playlist

Johnson’s Mozart


Paul Johnson gives us a Mozart whose life was largely sunny and untroubled, bolstered by his faith and family, and disrupted only at times by money troubles and conflicts with those who failed to appreciate his genius. The tensions between Mozart’s Catholicism and his voluntary embrace of Masonic beliefs are understated and the frivolousness of Wolfgang’s lifestyle is downplayed. The Paul Shaffer “Amadeus” portrait of a silly fellow who happened to be a genius is dismissed for the umpteenth time, as is the Salieri-poisoning myth.

For some readers these kicks to a dead horse’s body might not be entirely out of place. But why ignore the grains of truth behind the myths? Mozart’s silliness comes through in the very jokes Johnson cites, and the myth about Salieri, with whom Mozart was in fierce if respectful competition for sinecures and fame, started with Mozart himself (albeit possibly in delirium).[13]

Johnson quietly constructs a Mozart in his own image, backed by the view that only a happy, contented Mozart could accomplish the psychological insights and mastery of his mature operas and instrumental music. It’s an only most superficially credible notion, and not one most biographers of Mozart accept. That sort of thing would need to be boldly stated, then vigorously defended with evidence, not assumptions, but here it gets neither. Instead it is embedded into a general tale and rehashing of Mozart’s life and associated factoids so riddled with misstatements as to leave savvy readers embarrassed and everyone else misinformed.

“…So [Mozart] walked to the then famous ice-cream parlor in the Palais Royale, where they served the best tutti-frutti in the world… The parlor [Palais Royale] was still going strong when the English invaded Paris at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but it no longer exists. Its site, however, is occupied by a famous restaurant, which has excellent ices, and if I live to finish this book satisfactorily, I shall eat one there in honor of Mozart and his wonderful combination of the highest possible artistry and childish delight in simple pleasures.”

Paul Johnson should not treat himself to a tutti-frutti ice – nor should his editors at Viking Press. But at least he (unlike Mozart) could enjoy the concoction, which appears to have come about in the 19^th century. It would be quite different from the “ice” (not “ice cream” and not – as far as we can know from the letter that Johnson makes the basis of his colorful imagineering – anything “tutti-frutti”) Mozart had and wrote to his father about. It’s a last example of how this book reads like an enlarged pamphlet from someone who is used to writing, writes reasonably well and with routine, and who does so, because he is paid well for it. Nothing wrong with that, except that “Mozart” contains zero inspiration and precious little that suggests that Paul Johnson was in any meaningful way compelled by his subject to write the book. Instead, it’s a sad little, enervating pamphlet.

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Paul Johnson: «Mozart – A Life» A Review

[1] On second thought, just in case writers’ purgatory might include being forcefully subjected to Norman Lebrecht ‘articles’, I might opt for straight-to-hell, after all.

[2] His ability to ferret out factual errors in a text is so fearfully impressive, I’d only ever want for him to read my scribblings before, never after publication. Because Forbes.com no longer accommodates co-authorship, I am now going solo with this article, though, grabbing all the massive glory or blame for myself. Thanks George!

[3] H.C. Robbins Landon, ed., “The Mozart Compendium”, Schirmer Books (1990). See particularly the discussions by Andrew Steptoe in Section 6, ‘Marriage with Constanze” and “Mozart’s income and finances”.

[4] Just one small example (of many possible) is a letter from Mozart to Viennese Judge Franz Hofdemel from c. April 1789, saying “If you could send me 100 florins till the end of next month I should be very much obliged to you. On the 20^th I receive my quarter’s salary, and I shall then be able to return the loan with thanks.” Mozart goes on to say he ‘relied too much’ on 100 ducats due him from a source ‘abroad’ leaving him short of cash. Most of Mozart’s letters—so far in German only—can be found online on the excellent website of the Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg.

[5] The score with its bawdy lyrics can viewed online at the Petrucci Music Library “IMSLP”.

[6] It is also, if we follow Harke de Roos’ argument in his brilliant and painstakingly researched (if controversially ending) Mozart biography “Das Wunder Mozart”, quite wrong: Colloredo seemed, given the insubordination he was faced with from Mozart, quite tolerant and well-meaning to this young man whose genius was obvious to all… and certainly the Habsburg rulers and their kin.

[7] Alfred Einstein, in Mozart – His Character, His Work suggests that a Fugue on “Et vitam venture saeculi” was a bit elaborate and may have been received impatiently by Colloredo. Robert Gutman (Mozart: A Cultural Biography) on the other hand writes, after pointing out how the Mass conformed to the Archbishop’s taste, that Colloredo “appears to have been placated by the industry of his Konzertmeister…” (Einstein also points out that Mozart only ever wrote two masses to order: The Missa Solemnis in C minor for the consecration of the new Orphanage Church in Vienna and the Requiem… both after he left Colloredo’s employ and quite different from works written as part of his duties.

[8] According to The Mozart Compendium K.126 “was probably written between April and August 1771…for the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary on 10 January 1772 of the ordination of Archbishop von Schrattenbach” who died December 16, 1771. “The Mozarts hoped to see the work performed to celebrate the arrival of the, later notorious” Colloredo, “but there is no record of the work’s performance.”

* Something, if Johnson knew about it, would probably endear the bishop still less to him.

[9] The 18^th century music historian Charles Burney received a letter from the English diplomat Louis de Visme that suggested that Colloredo “plays well on the fiddle” and “takes pains to reform his band”.

[10] Andrew Steptoe notes in the Compendium, “Leopold Mozart was a worldly man, well aware of the subtleties of court life. He meticulously planned every development in his children’s triumphant progress round Europe, weighing up the cost and likely profit of each engagement…” and “Leopold paid an immense emotional price for living through his son”.

[11] Johnson’s much cited Compendium itself refers to the “famous visit to the Sistine Chapel to hear the Allegri Miserere on April 11, 1770.”

[12] K.315 in C is the Andante in C, probably composed to replace the Adagio of K.313

[13] One aspect missing altogether—this one, granted, missing from other biographies, also—is Mozart’s legal status in moving to Vienna. Harke de Roos, in  “Das Wunder Mozart”, is among those who point out that Mozart had never rightfully been relieved of his service in Salzburg and could rightly have been arrested and brought back to Salzburg, if only the authorities had wanted to do so. His fame, several high-ranking supporters, and the embarrassment such a move would have brought on the Habsburg house kept him from that fate. But his public disobedience to law and order was frowned upon. That Mozart didn’t succeed with jobs in Munich or Paris or anywhere else on the continent (but more readily so in England), is not, as Johnson suggests, down to bad luck or ignorance on those surrounding Mozart, but very plausibly because of the influence and reach of the Habsburg rulers, whose relatives ruled in all these constituencies, and who wanted to assure that the genius Mozart didn’t make more a mockery of the royalty than he already did in word (his letters speak volumes about his irreverence for authority) and deed.