Mozart

I picked up a nice hardback biography of Mozart by Paul Johnson the other day and have read it with enjoyment. I like short biographies and Paul Johnson, although he is a bit schoolteacherish, is a good writer. He does well with Mozart who was clearly a genius. As a Catholic himself Johnson is good at bringing out the religious dimension. He is also keen to debunk some of the Mozart myths as seen in Amadeus, etc. The chapter on opera was the hardest to read as I know nothing about opera and have no wish to change that particularly. It is clear though that if writing operas was the only thing Mozart had done he would be rightly famous. Yet it is far from being all that he did.

Reading the biography prompted me to gather my Mozart CDs (there must be nine or ten of them) and start listening to them again. Yes, he is amazing.