Mozart in Person : His Character and Health (Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance)

The real key to this distinctive book lies in its subtitle. The book's core is an astonishingly detailed medical history of Mozart, spanning his entire life, compiled with great ingenuity and skill from varied and sometimes surprising sources. Davies, a British physician specializing in internal medicine, has already established his credentials with a series of substantial journal articles concerning Mozart's final illness and death. Here he expands and consolidates his research, offering a presumably definitive account of the intricate cluster of ailments and disabilities, some stretching back over many years, that eventually contributed to Mozart's early death. After reading Davies, one wonders not at Mozart's early end but, rather, how he survived for so long. . . . Davies advances unexpected medical causes for some Mozartean peculiarities of behavior, and surely these ideas will provoke much interest among Mozart scholars. For college or university libraries that already have the `basic' Mozart items, here is a unique and most rewarding addition. Choice There have been many studies of Mozart, but few offer as rich an understanding of the composer's character as this book. Mozart in Person appraises the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of Mozart's health and its effect on his creativity. As Erna Schwerin says in the introduction, Mozart emerges as a human being, realistically perceived with twentieth-century sensibility, yet retrospectively in the light of eighteenth-century mores. This is the first volume to describe all of Mozart's known illnesses and to present a detailed discussion of the controversial cause of his premature death, with a convincing refutation of the alleged poisoning theories. Davies defines Mozart's enigmatic, complex personality, and presents fascinating insights into Mozart's relationships with his pastimes and stresses. The health of Mozart's family, especially the personality, illnesses, and death of his father are discussed. The