Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in popular culture

The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) led a life that was dramatic in many respects, including his career as a child prodigy, his struggles to achieve personal independence and establish a career, his brushes with financial disaster, and his death in the course of attempting to complete his Requiem. Authors of fictional works have found his life a compelling source of raw material. Such works have included novels, plays, operas, and films.

Fiction

• The first major works of literature inspired by Mozart were by the German writers E. T. A. Hoffmann and Eduard Mörike. Hoffmann published his Don Juan in 1812,[1] Mörike his Mozart's Journey to Prague in 1856.[2]
• Mozart appears in Hermann Hesse's novels Der Steppenwolf [3] and Die Morgenlandfahrt.
• In 1968, David Weiss published Sacred and profane: a novel of the life and times of Mozart,[4] a narrative account on the composer's life drawing heavily on the documented historical record, but with invented conversations and other details.
• In modern fiction, the mystery surrounding the composer's death is explored within a popular thriller context in the 2008 novel The Mozart Conspiracy by British writer Scott Mariani,[5] who departs from the established Salieri-poisoning theory to suggest a deeper political motive behind his death.
• Mozart has also featured as a sleuth in detective fiction, in Dead, Mister Mozart[6] and Too many notes, Mr. Mozart,[7] both by Bernard Bastable (who also writes as Robert Barnard). Bastable's stories involve the conceit of an alternate history scenario in which the young Mozart remained on in London at the time of his childhood visit to England, where he has lived a long – though not very prosperous – life as a hack musician, rather than returning to his native Salzburg or Vienna to die young and celebrated. The stories are set in the 1820s and have Mozart interacting with King George IV and his immediate family including the young Victoria.
• Charles Neider's Mozart and the Archbooby[8] is an epistolary novel in which the young Mozart writes to his father about his new life in Vienna and his new problem, the Archbishop of Salzburg. Stephanie Cowell's Marrying Mozart: A Novel[9] provides a fictionalised account of Mozart's relationship with Aloysia Weber before his marriage to her sister, Constanze.
• Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) is a defining cyberpunk short story collection, edited by Bruce Sterling. It contains a story, the "Mozart in Mirrorshades" by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner,[10] in which Mozart appears as a DJ wannabe instead of being the real Mozart after he met the people and culture of his future.
• In The Amadeus Net,[11] by Mark A. Rayner, Mozart is an immortal living in the world's first sentient city, Ipolis, where he supports himself by selling "lost" compositions and playing jazz piano in bars.
• The alternate history novel Time for Patriots has a trio of time travelers cure Mozart's wife of an abscess on her ankle (historically documented), which allows them to treat him when he falls ill. In consequence he does an opera based on Benjamin Franklin and composes other works until his death in 1805.
• "Naththai kuudennum Galaxy" – A Tamil short story of Konangi fictionalizes Mozart's funeral in the Tamil landscape.

Drama

• Alexander Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri[12] is based on the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, particularly the idea that it was poison received from the latter that caused Mozart's death. This idea is not supported by modern scholarship.[13]
• Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus[14] focuses on the difference between true and sublime genius (Mozart) and mere high-quality craftsmanship (Salieri). Shaffer seems to have been especially taken by the contrast between Mozart's enjoyment of vulgarity (for which historical evidence exists, in the form of his letters to his cousin) and the sublime character of his music.
• In 2007, he was portrayed by John Sessions in the Doctor Who audio adventure 100 in a story that explored the ramifications of Mozart being granted immortality.[15]

Film

• Stephen Haggard portrays Mozart in the 1936 film Whom the Gods Love.
• Oskar Werner portrays Mozart in 1958's Mozart.
• Shaffer's play was subsequently made into a 1984 film, Amadeus.
• In 2010 Mozart's Sister, a biopic of his older sister Nannerl, a young Mozart is played by French child actor David Moreau.
• Aneurin Barnard portrays Mozart in the 2017 film Interlude in Prague.
• Mentioned during the "I've got a dream" song in the 2010 film Tangled.

Mozart's music has been used extensively in films since the silent era. In 1930, Buñuel used his Ave Verum Corpus in L'Age d'Or,[16] Papageno's "Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen" from The Magic Flute features in The Blue Angel (1930),[17] the "Rondo alla Turca" in the 1939 film Wuthering Heights,[18] "Là ci darem la mano" in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945),[19] "Il mio tesoro" in Kind Hearts and Coronets,[20] the Symphony No. 34 in Vertigo (1958),[21] Eine kleine Nachtmusik in The Ipcress File (1965) and in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975),[22] the Piano Concerto No. 21 in Elvira Madigan,[23] and in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), the march from Idomeneo in Barry Lyndon (1975),[24] the Jupiter Symphony in Annie Hall (1977),[25] and many others.

Opera

• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart and Salieri, based on Pushkin's play, treats the Salieri poisoning legend.
• In Reynaldo Hahn's "comédie musicale" Mozart with words by Guitry, Mozart has amorous adventures in Paris in 1778.
• Michael Kunze's and Sylvester Levay's musical, Mozart!, premiered in 1999 to portray an older, more sensually inclined Mozart as he struggles with the spectre of his chaste and productive "porcelain" boyhood. The musical was composed in German but is currently performed in Hungarian.
• The 2009 French musical Mozart, l'opéra rock premiered 2009 in Paris.

Popular music

• "Rock Me Amadeus" is a 1985 song by Austrian musician Falco from his album Falco 3; it was inspired by the movie Amadeus.
• The song "Travel" by The Gathering (on their album How to Measure a Planet?) was written for and about Mozart.[26]
• The Wombles' second album Remember You're a Womble features Minuetto Allegretto, based on the 3rd movement of the Jupiter Symphony.[27]

Children's literature

• Children's author Daniel Pinkwater has Mozart appear as a character in several of his books, including The Muffin Fiend,[28] in which Mozart helps solve a crime involving an extraterrestrial creature who steals muffins from Vienna's bakeries.
• Mozart (as well as his sister Nannerl) are a major component in the second "39 Clues" book, One False Note.[29]

Comic strip

• Mozart, his wife, associates, etc., appear in a story arc in the comic strip Pibgorn.

Television

• Mozart appears in the episode "Calliope Dreams" of the Disney TV series The Little Mermaid (1992–1994).
• The Mozart Band is a 1995 animated television series produced by the BRB Internacional.
• Wunderkind Little Amadeus, a television show produced in Germany in 2006, focuses on Mozart's life as a child in Salzburg. It has aired in English in Australia (ABC) and North America (KQED Kids).
• Mozart appears in the Genie in the House, episode "Rock Me Amadeus" (2006).
• Mozart appears regularly in the TV series Mozart in the Jungle (2014–2018).
• Mozart is one of the main characters in the 2016 comedy anime ClassicaLoid.

Video games

• The early pitch-based hybrid music game, Amadeus Revenge (1988, Commodore 64) has the player play as Mozart to defend the integrity of his Piano Concerto No. 25 from the corrupting influence of rival musicians. The NES game The Adventures of Captain Comic features Sonata in A major, (K. 331) in the coast stage.
• Mozart appears in Scribblenauts and its sequels as something the player is able to summon.
• Mozart appears in the mobile game Fate/Grand Order as a Caster-class servant and an ally in the medieval France chapter.
• In the videogame Luigi's Mansion 3, a Boss Ghost bears the name Amadeus Wolfgeist, a pianist ghost who is located in an auditorium of The Last Resort.

Footnotes

Citations

1. Hoffmann 1814.
2. Mörike 1856.
3. Hesse 1974.
4. Weiss 1970.
5. Mariani 2008.
6. Bastable 1995.
7. Bastable 1996.
8. Neider 1991.
9. Cowell 2004.
10. Sterling & Shiner 1986.
11. Rayner 2005.
12. Pushkin 1830.
13. Solomon 1996, p. 587.
14. Shaffer 1981.
15. Shearman 2007.
16. White, Rob (2001). "British Film Institute Film Classics". Taylor & Francis. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
17. "The Magic Flute and the Siren Song: the seduction of Professor Rath through Mozart's opera and Dietrich's 'Falling in love again', in Sternberg's classic 1930 film The Blue Angel". Retrieved 8 April 2018.
18. "Wuthering Heights | film by Wyler [1939]". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
19. Duncan, Dean W. (2003). "Charms that Soothe: Classical Music and the Narrative Film". Fordham Univ Press. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
20. Lee, M. Owen (2001). "The Operagoer's Guide: One Hundred Stories and Commentaries". Hal Leonard Corporation. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
21. "Vertigo". Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
22. Neumeyer, David Paul (17 August 2015). "Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema". Indiana University Press. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
23. "Elvira Madigan | work by Mozart". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
24. Gengaro, Christine Lee (2 November 2012). "Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films". Scarecrow Press. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
25. Harvey, Adam (6 March 2007). "The Soundtracks of Woody Allen: A Complete Guide to the Songs and Music in Every Film, 1969–2005". McFarland. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
26. Rutten, Hans. "Info about the song "Travel"". Cycling Colors. Retrieved 18 January 2017.
27. "The Wombles – Minuetto Allegretto (Live at Glastonbury 2011)". 29 June 2013. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
28. Pinkwater 1986.
29. Korman 2008.

Works cited

Biographic

• Solomon, Maynard (1996). Mozart: A Life (1st ed.). New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-092692-9. OCLC 34162413.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Mozart in fiction

• Bastable, Bernard (1995). Dead, Mr. Mozart. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 978-0-316-91168-9. OCLC 34876132.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• —— (1996). Too Many Notes, Mr. Mozart (1st ed.). New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7867-0315-9. OCLC 34583885.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Cowell, Stephanie (2004). Marrying Mozart. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-303457-5. OCLC 655746875.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Rayner, Mark A. (2005). The Amadeus Net. Hoboken, New Jersey: ENC Press. ISBN 978-0-9752540-1-1. OCLC 317339608.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hesse, Hermann (1974). Der Steppenwolf: Erzählung. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 175 (in German). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. ISBN 978-3-518-36675-2. OCLC 29769128.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1814). "Don Juan". Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier (in German). Bamberg: Kunz. Retrieved 2010-09-27.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Korman, Gordon (2008). One False Note. 39 Clues. 2. London, UK: Scholastic. ISBN 978-0-545-09060-5. OCLC 245561056.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Mariani, Scott (2008). The Mozart Conspiracy. London, UK: Harper Collins Avon. ISBN 978-1-84756-080-3. OCLC 225446674.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Mörike, Eduard (1856). Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (in German) (2nd ed.). J.G. Cotte.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Neider, Charles (1991). Mozart and the Archbooby. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-015402-3. OCLC 22983811.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Pinkwater, Daniel (1986). The Muffin Fiend (1st ed.). New York: Lothrop Lee & Shepard Books. ISBN 978-0-688-04274-5. OCLC 12051996.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Pushkin, Alexander (1830). "Motsart i Salyeri". Malenkie tragedii (in Russian).CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Shaffer, Peter (1981). Amadeus (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-014032-8. OCLC 6791087.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Shearman, Robert (writer), John Sessions (actor), Nicholas Briggs (director) (2007). My Own Private Wolfgang. Doctor Who: 100. Maidenhead, England: Big Finish Productions. ISBN 978-1-84435-286-9. OCLC 181037109. Archived from the original on 2010-11-21. Retrieved 2010-09-27.
• Sterling, Bruce; Shiner, Lewis (1986). "Mozart in Mirroshades". Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. New York: Arbor House. pp. 223–239. ISBN 978-0-87795-868-0. OCLC 13945407.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Weiss, David (1970). Sacred and Profane: A Novel of the Life and Times of Mozart. London: Hodder Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0-340-12803-9. OCLC 26290980.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)