The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia

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The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia
by Cliff Eisen

With the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006, there are a number of new books on the ever-popular composer, including this comprehensive encyclopedia. The editors are well-known British musicologists. Eisen has written many articles on the composer, and Keefe also edited the Cambridge Companion to Mozart (2003), a collection of essays on Mozart's music.

The encyclopedia has about 500 alphabetically arranged entries on everything from five pages on Travel to a paragraph on ^ Traeg, Johann, a publisher of Mozart's music, and from four pages on Genius to one paragraph on Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. There are about 50 contributors, the majority from English or U.S. universities. The entries have a consistent style, scholarly but readable. Most entries end with a short bibliography. See references often direct readers from individual works such as 'Coronation' Concerto to entries such as Concertos, but actual mention of the work can be hard to find within the six-page Concertos, which is loosely arranged chronologically by Kochel Number. An index entry with a page reference would have helped, and such problems could be eliminated altogether by an online version.

Although much of the volume discusses the historical aspects of Mozart, there are current references. For example, the entry Mozart in literature mentions current novels based on the composer. There are no musical notations or photographs, but a number of tables are provided; an interesting one lists the date, duration, place, and symptoms of Mozart's illnesses. The appendixes include a complete list of works, a list of Mozart films, a list of operas on DVD and video, and Mozart organizations and Web sites. This encyclopedia is the definitive source for Mozart information and should be a required purchase for music and large public and academic libraries. Christine Bulson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
"Like all good single volume encyclopedias, this one is also a delight for the casual browser who is not looking for anything in particular. Opening the book to read in an idle moment invariably provides both pleasure and instruction." --Opera News

"...contains some of the finest writing on Mozart I have read." New York Review of Books

"Entries are beautifully and entertainingly written by some of the best Mozart scholars in the world. [...] If all such gifts come as beautifully packaged as this one, it will indeed give Mozart lovers something to sing about." -- American Reference Books Annual

"...the ultimate contribution to Mozart this year. The paper exudes quality and the entries are deft and well-organised."
The Independent

"...a handsome, lavishly produced volume, offers easy access to all the information most music lovers will need about a favourite composer."
Sunday Times

"...for those who must know absolutely every fact about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...the Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia leaves no Kochel number unturned." -- The Times

"With this lovingly fashioned book, volume can sometimes come in the form of minutiae, the details which, ironically enough, give what's essentially a learned tome a narrative thrust. Mozart is lifted from these pages, especially so for those who've long thrilled to his music; no matter how well-versed one is in the biographical chronology: the opera plots, the innuendoes of rivals, the scholarly points of contention, the paper trails of commissions--I'd argue that with this work Mozart the man--at least in the print record--reads as real as we're going to get him, outside of his own letters." --Fanfare

"This encyclopedia is the definitive source for Mozart information and should be a required purchase for music and large public and academic libraries." -- Booklist

"Cambridge University Press has issued a lavish new Mozart Encyclopedia." Tara Pepper, Newsweek International

“Thematic studies, such as “Sources for Mozart's Life and Works” and the biographical article on Mozart, are quite long and packed with useful information. The appendixes offer hard-to-find information about videos of operas and Mozart films, as well as addresses for organizations and Web sites devoted to Mozart and his work. The pool of contributors is a distinguished one of recognized Mozart authorities.”
Choice

"Aims to serve as a starting point for research as well as a summary of the latest in Mozart scholarship." Library Journal

"...this first resource to cover both Mozart's life and oeuvre is a browser's delight. The nearly four dozen contributors are international musicologists noted for their Mozart scholarship, and the editors have done a good job maintaining a consistent style and tone to their entries...An indispensable addition to all collections." - Library Journal, Larry Lipkis, Moravian College

"An essential referencework that provides comprehensive coverage of Mozart's life and works." -- Nineteenth Century Music

"Extensively cross-checked and indexed, this tome takes advantage of all the latest academic research to provide detailed and comprehensive entries on every person, place or thing involved with the composer's life." Gavriel Fiske

"This was a book waitingto happen, a handy reference for all things Mozartean: biography, repertoire, cultural milieux." - James M. Keller High Fidelity