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.