Martin Geck Mozart: Eine Biographie Mozart: His Life, Work and Image Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, September 2005 480 pp. ISBN 3-498-02492-2 Another life of Mozart? Be reassured. This one is refreshingly novel in its approach, elegant in its style, and strikingly original in its use and choice of illustrations. A few of these last are cartoons, less detailed than Gerard Hoffnung’s but similarly affectionate. Most function, however, as full-page introductions to the sections they head, thoughtfully composed and suggestive in their detail (Maria Theresia’s gestures as the infant Mozart leaps onto her lap, the sinister figures at the billiard table, or the pathos of Mozart dead, with his oversized nose pointing at the moon). The structuring of the book is masterly: dates, chapter headings and so on make clear throughout how any given unit fits into the whole. Geck has a long and distinguished career behind him, but he also takes shrewd note of present-day developments. He thus comments not only on academic studies of Mozart but on Shaffer’s play and Forman’s film, and various performance treatments of Mozart’s work. He marks the changing conceptions of parenthood, childhood and education which took place in the eighteenth century and contrasts them, for example, with modern attitudes and with today’s treatment of child prodigies. He also notes the watershed between Bach/Mozart and later composers. In Mozart’s case, despite the scope and variety of passion to be found, there is yet something impersonal about his technical brilliance, something elusive about his character, which presents difficulties for post-Romantic listeners. The central sections, on issues of aesthetics, contrive to say a great deal in a small space. Nor are the more lurid and erratic aspects of Mozart’s life, though treated gently, glossed over. The author deploys his evidence well, and many clichés are quietly undermined. The result is not only to release Mozart from his modern pigeon-hole as a ‘pre-Romantic’; it also makes much clearer the political influences within a non-political life and drives home the composer’s remarkable genius for using ‘modern’ elements within traditional forms. In short, we are shown how to deploy our superlatives more accurately in thinking of Mozart. Next year is the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, and this urbane, subtle and gracefully written book will stand as a fine tribute.