Table of Contents

Introduction: Setting the Stage, and Then Exiting It
On Critique; or, Two Paths through the Art-Critical World
On Transcendence; or, Mozart among the Neoplatonists, Present and Past
On Intention
On Being
On Chance and Necessity
On Ambiguity
On Mimesis
On Pleasure
On Concepts and Culture
The Flaws in the Finale
Conclusion: An Other Modernism?
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

WINNER of the 2019 Marjorie Weston Emerson Award from the Mozart Society of America
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Exhaustively researched and documented . . . [this book] considers such concepts as intention, ambiguity, mimesis, chance, and necessity -- each with its own chapter -- in the light of modernist concepts, and with a critique as to whether that is adequate to understand Mozart's works, divorced from the magic and genius that many music lovers have long associated with him. A detailed and impressive set of arguments, concluding that the limits of modernist aesthetics are inadequate to understanding 'a Mozartean beauty -- where the familiar, the superabundant, and the uncanny meet.' AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
*AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE*