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No compromise

by
September 2008, no. 304

W. A. Mozart by Hermann Abert, translated by Stewart Spencer and edited by Cliff Eisen

Yale University Press, $114.95 hb, 1515 pp

No compromise

by
September 2008, no. 304

It seems astonishing that one of the most important studies ever undertaken on Mozart should have taken almost eighty-five years to reach the English language. Hermann Abert’s monumental, and indeed famous, work was first published in 1924 and was originally intended as an updated edition to that other monumental work of Mozart scholarship undertaken by Otto Jahn, published in four volumes between 1855 and 1859. History appears to have repeated itself for the benefit of English speakers, with a fully revised and updated version of Abert’s text prepared by the Mozart scholar Cliff Eisen. A vast amount of historical and bibliographical material has been updated through informative and relatively unobtrusive footnotes, and one of the most comprehensive bibliographies on Mozart and his contemporaries ever assembled has been added. Stewart Spencer’s translation deftly preserves Abert’s original tone and grammatical idiom without a tortuous excess of Teutonic syntax.

W. A. Mozart

W. A. Mozart

by Hermann Abert, translated by Stewart Spencer and edited by Cliff Eisen

Yale University Press, $114.95 hb, 1515 pp

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