Constanze, Mozart's Beloved
ISBN:9780908031719 read summary

i thought this book finally gave Contanze the credit she so deserved. Without her diligance and Nissen(her second husband), Most of Mozart's glorius music might have been lost. Everybody should read this book and forget the bad story in Amadeus, although the music was great.

What more can I say after reading previous superb reviews? Most of my thoughts echo these eloquent reviewers, but in sincere appreciation to Agnes Selby's remarkable achievement in producing this book, I am compelled to signify my added thoughts.

This book is an evocative portrayal of Constanze, beloved of Mozart in the real sense, her world after her husband's death still much revolving about his genius and his music. Constanze is much historically degraded as the composer's wife. It might be said by other authors that Constanze, in order to survive after Mozart's death, made shrewd use of his manuscripts. Couldn't she have done it out of her profound love for her husband, and not merely to support their two sons and herself? It is indeed unfortunate that there are gaps in the life of Constanze where nobody knows much more.

Constanze, Mozart's Beloved is a historical account which beautifully captures the worth of Constanze Weber and the challenges of her commitment to her departed endeared husband, the genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Agnes Selby captures a bewildering enigma with a fluency and ease of tone that is all her own. It is through her expert research and her meticulous execution of the facts that we get to taste at close range the historical exploration of this novel. Agnes Selby, thank you.

I was up hours past my bedtime reading this book, unable to put it down.

Constanze Mozart is one of the great unsung heroines of history. To this small, modest musical woman from a musical 18th century household belongs the credit of preserving a great deal of Mozart's work when he died so tragically young. For the 50 years she survived him she never ceased to work on behalf of his music; she lived it and, even in her very old age when her hands were almost too crippled to hold a pen, wrote letters promoting it, arranged for its publication, and could sing its themes. Not only did she win Mozart's love but the love of her second husband, her sons and most everyone whom she met.

Her world comes alive in this excellent biography: Vienna during its height and after war had devastated it; Salzburg when no longer an ecclesiastical court but a run down small city with grass growing between the cobbles; her brief but highly affectionate and utterly trusting marriage to Mozart; her telling of stories to him all night so he could stay awake to write the Don Giovanni overture; her kindness and financial support of his sister who was never anything but critical to her; and her return to their rooms after his death, unable to be aired and smelling of emptiness. She was a widow of not yet thirty years old with two young sons and a pile of debt.

The first part of the book ends with his death; the second part follows Constanze's determination to claim the Requiem as Mozart's own and to have it completed from his gathered scraps of paper, her concerts to keep his name alive, the publication of many of his unpublished works, and the gathering of information for his biography, written by Constanze's second husband and published after his death.

This biography should be on the shelves of all Mozart lovers. Mozart was a high strung, impulsive genius. Constanze, his beloved wife, gave him the stability he needed. Agnes Selby had written a much needed and beautifully composed biography.

Having been a lover of Mozart's music, I have always felt the need to explore his private life. I never found enough information about Mozart's wife although his letters reveal his great love for her. The biographies I have read have mostly treated her as an unimportant or even a hindrance to his artistic talent. This well written and easy to read book has given me the information I have been looking for. As I suspected, Constanze was not the stupid, helpless woman depicted in the film, "Amadeus" but a surprisingly enterprising and forceful character. This is the first book to give her full credit for repaying Mozart's many debts as well as supporting herself and her two children in an age when women were not supposed to leave their "kitchen". Even more amazing is that she took on a member of the aristocracy and won her fight to keep the Requiem in Mozart's name. The book also supplied me with information regarding Mozart's sons which is not easy to come by in the English literature. It is a satisfying book to read for anyone interested in Mozaert's family life as well as the prolonged fight Constanze had to keep Mozart's music before a public which was constantly seeking new compositions for entertainment in an age devoid of radio and recordings.

Saint Cecilia be praised, someone has had the courage and energy to tackle one of the most misunderstod and ill-researched part of Mozartian history... that is, the *wife* of the great little man...

It was about time !!

No composer's wife or girlfriend has been as historically debased than that most intelligent and courageous woman. Maybe because posterity wanted her to be a sort of Alma Mahler of Fanny Mendelsohnn, when she was "only" a refined 18th century woman. A "product" of her century. As was Mozart... Not a romantic heroine coming from a novel from ETA Hoffman!

Some scholars try to deny the right to Mozart to have been madly in love with his wife. Why deny him his lifelong love ? Is the wish to become closer to Mozart's music such an incentive to deny him a wife he choosed by his own free will and loved till he died ? Romanticism has come between us and Mozart' era and blinds us about this.

This well-researched book has gone back to the roots : public and private archives, letters, scores, ... and doesn't hide the difficulties of making always incomplete archives "talk' to us. True, "all" the truth isn't uncovered, as is the case in everyone's life, but we get a very close look of the woman and the two surviving sons she gave Mozart... But it enables us to fully understand the "reasons" of his choice.

Any serious historian knows that the past is somtimes hided to us. But Agnes Selby , with an 'investigation historian' tenacity and thouroughness, has given us the most that could be given from the pieces left to us. The author has the deep honesty of giving some possible clues of less known (and understandable) motives of Constanze Mozart's choices (according to the sociology of the 18th century) and never impose those as truths when it is still obscure.

Constanze Mozart appears slowly before us as a refined, courageous, intelligent and ressourcefull woman, who took great care of her family and of the legacy her husbang left her. She found the will to outlive Wolfgang Amadé and most of her children, fighting for the recognition of her late husband's works (no 18th century musical corpus this diverse has escaped time destruction this well) and trying to nurture her children abilities, the best she could, as much as her time period allowed her. This book is a testimony of the slanders wrote about her by generations of mozartian scholars, who blindly believed -without checking- ALL that Mozart himself has written to his father (when he was only trying to gain his paternal blessing, in the stupidest way that was possible)

If not for Constanze, most of Wolfgang-the-man and Mozart-the-composer would be definitively lost to us. Constanze fought with all her love and might the entropy that engulf us all...

She must have been a truly remarquable woman. And she deserves the praise and love of all those who listen to Mozart music today...

(Please forgive my mistakes, english isn't my 'mother tongue')

Last word of advice : just buy it !!!