Culture Fusion Reviews

Recently, I went to the beautiful “The Dawn Treader Book Shop” in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with my girlfriend Vanessa. The shop itself is an institution: opened in 1976 by Bill Gillmore (though recently sold to Africa Schaumann in 2022), the shop focuses on used books, in particular first-edition and rare titles. It might not be the biggest used bookstore in Michigan (that’s John K. King, one of the largest in the nation with over five stories) but is one of the best.

While here, Vanessa picked up about five or six books on various topics within her interests: Buddhism, yoga, gardening. I bought two (probably the fewest I’ve ever walked away from when leaving this shop) by the same author: Jan Swafford. Swafford is an American composer and writer who is best known for four biographies on important classical personalities: Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and (fascinatingly enough) Charles Ives. I purchased “Mozart: The Reign of Love” and “Brahms: A Biography” and am so far glad of it.

Though the Brahms bio came first in Swafford’s bibliography, I decided to take a more chronological approach and started reading the Mozart book. What I appreciate so far about Swafford’s writing style is its accessibility. Yes, he knows music and writes about it quite well. But he consistently makes it interesting by not overindulging in music theory (a failure I fell into with my own book on Frank Zappa) but by highlighting the feel of a piece and, most importantly, how it plays into Mozart’s life and development as a person.

Beating the Myths of Amadeus

I hate the movie and play “Amadeus” and similar “biographies” that distort lives and create unsupported myths. Due to that idiotic movie and play, Mozart will go down in history as a ridiculous moron, someone with the IQ of a newly born baby who was blessed with talent at birth, while Antonio Salieri will go down in history as a deeply mediocre, jealous, murderer.

Of course, none of those things are true, and I didn’t need “Mozart: The Reign of Love” to tell me that. But “creative art” like “Amadeus” presents itself as biography, as the truth. Of course, I’m not a complete buffoon: I realize both the play and movie are well-written and structured and that the presentation from Salieri’s perspective is designed to counter the ridiculous presentation of Mozart. No, Mozart wasn’t really like this but that’s how he was perceived by his rival.

Ah but there lies the rub. Most people don’t have that kind of insight and don’t even want to have it. Mozart is the Good Guy, Salieri is the bad guy. End of the story. Of course, it takes no genius to know that Mozart was obviously the superior composer: Salieri himself knew that. There was jealousy there, sure. Who wouldn’t be jealous of someone so intensely and innately talented? Music flowed from Mozart in a way that has no equal.

But what I particularly like about Swafford is his willingness to also put Mozart, in a sense, his place. Mozart, he argues, was no great revolutionary. His music, with very few exceptions, stays within the established classical rules (which were held to be close to sacred by serious composers and musicians of the time) and structures. What Mozart did was produce music within those idioms that were of such obviously superior quality that even friend/rival Joseph Haydn admitted defeat…and Haydn is no slouch in his department!

Accepting Fiction as Biography

Like everyone else who sees “Amadeus,” I was enthralled by its excellence and entertained not only by Mozart’s antics but sympathetic and then appalled by Salieri’s actions. It’s a classic tale told well: jealousy, murder, and personal destruction. It’s brilliant written, well acted, and beautifully shot. I watched it in band class in sixth grade and everyone got the point very quickly.

But there’s an operatic scope to it, as well, that touches on fate and our surrender to it: no matter how hard Salieri worked and no matter how much he accomplished (he was far more popular than Mozart in his time), he could not touch the God-given talent of Wolfgang. It’s one that we all can feel for what are my blog writings against the genius of Shakespeare, Woolf, etc?

In reading “The Reign of Love,” though, I wish more people were drawn to the truth rather than distortions. Reality rather than fiction. How many people have read this book? A few thousand? How many have seen the movie? Millions, undoubtedly. Mozart will then forever be the cackling idiot fart joke (we all know about his love of scatological humor, a trait he shared with his mother, and frankly, much of Vienna at the time) for whom music was as easy as breathing but who died a penniless, forgotten, tossed in a pauper’s grave.

Also not true! Mozart was on the cusp of his greatest successes when he died. New operas, amazing work, the beautiful (mysterious) requiem…the year of his death, he earned more than he ever had before and was looking to surpass the considerable wealth of Salieri and Haydn…but alas, it was not to come his way.

So for anyone who’s loved a so-called biography of an artist like Mozart, it’s worth stepping back and understanding what’s truth and what’s fiction. You don’t have to read the nearly 800-page “Mozart: The Reign of Love.” Who has the time for that?! Instead, maybe sit down with a Wikipedia article, a cup of tea, and a CD of “Mozart’s Greatest Hits” with or without “A Little Light Music.”

To do anything less would be a disservice to Mozart himself and artists in general.