ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
Latest editorial
Mozart’s intriguing if incomplete visage
Bravura surfing of the wave of history omits profound truths, writes JOHN GREEN
Mozart portrait at 26, painted by his brother-in-law Joseph Lange in 1782 and regarded by historians as the most accurate surviving likeness
[Creative Commons]
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Mozart in Motion: His Work and His World in Pieces
By Patrick Mackie
Granta Books £14.41
THERE have been many books published about Mozart, so is there anything new to say? Patrick Mackie certainly thinks there is and writes in a prose style that attempts to emulate Mozart’s music in words. His sentences sizzle and explode from the page like an elaborate firework display. The danger with this, of course, is that the glorious pyrotechnics of words can obscure rather than illuminate the music and the man Mozart.
Writing about music, rather than hearing it, will always remain a thankless task, but Mackie certainly manages to transpose a sense of Mozart’s music through is luminous prose.
His book is difficult to categorise, however. It is part biography with interesting anecdotal colour, musings by the author about specific Mozart compositions and part historical narrative.
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