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Life of Mozart

Chapter 2: TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
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About This Book

The biography traces the composer's life from early prodigious childhood and European tours through his Salzburg and Paris years, detailing formative relationships with family and peers, struggles with patrons, and the development of his operatic style. It discusses major works including Idomeneo, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, La clemenza di Tito, and the unfinished Requiem, situating compositions amid financial hardship, public acclaim, and personal attachments. Arranged chronologically, chapters link biographical episodes to musical output and consider how temperament, rivalry, and changing theatrical tastes influenced his creative choices.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

Mr. Louis Nohl, the author of the present little volume, has merited for himself in Germany a high reputation as a writer of the biographies of musicians, and some of his larger works have appeared in English on the other side of the Atlantic. The present is the first translation into our language of his shorter Life of Mozart. It will, we trust, prove acceptable to those who desire to learn the chief events in the life of the great composer, to see how his life influenced his compositions, and how his great works are, in many instances at least, the expression of his own joys and sorrows, the picture of his own soul in tones.

The translator’s grateful acknowledgments are due to Mr. A. W. Dohn, of Chicago, who was kind enough to compare the entire translation with the original. His thorough knowledge of music and German, no less than his rare familiarity with the English language, have largely contributed to the fidelity of this translation.

J. J. L.