Mozart in Novels

For Mozart lovers: Novels we reas along the way with a mention of Mozart.

Contributed by Liz Ringrose 

Mozart in "Snow Falling on Cedars


Snow Falling on Cedars is a novel written by David Guterson published by Vintage Books. It's supposed to be inspired by one of my all-time favourite novels, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Thanks Liz.)

"Isn't it great when Mozart pops up in literature and other media? I read Snow Falling on Cedars recently and loved the part where Ishmail Chambers sees a recording of the Jupiter on the record player beside his mother's bed, and he imagines her lying there listening to Mozart."



Mozart in These Foolish things


These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach is published by Random House. Moggach makes us face the realities of aging - sincere, funny and at times terrifying. Still an honest view of old age, what it offers and where it might or leads us.


I also read a humorous book called These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach. In this novel a seriously overworked Indian doctor has to have his ghastly English father in law (Norman) living with him. The old man is uncouth and vulgar. I love this passage:

"Mozart's Requiem. Only then could he become a husband again - a human being, even. The house was so small, with her father in it. Ravi's body was in a permanent state of tension. Every room he went into, Norman was there. Just at the Lacrimosa he would blunder in, the transistor [radio] on a string around his neck burbling the cricket commentary from Sri Lanka."

(Thanks Liz. The use of Mozart's Requiem to me is relevant. Symbolic. Significant.)

Salzburg Festival DVD

9 September 2009


To those interested...

There is a new DVD out on the history of the Salzburg Festival. It's quite well done and very informative. I watched nearly the whole thing today and thought I would let people know about it.

The Salzburg Festival has hosted every great star of the opera and concert hall, from Toscanini to Anne-Sophie Mutter, from Fischer-Dieskau to Barenboim, from Pollini to Mitsuko Uchida. In this film, the first to tell the story of this remarkable Festival, set in the birthplace of Mozart, director Tony Palmer has been granted unprecedented access to Austria's film archives. Highlights include performances of Jedermann from 1920 to the present day featuring actors such as Maximilian Schell
and Klaus Maria Brandauer; Don Giovanni (with Furtwängler in '54 and a controversial performance directed by Peter Sellars in the 1990s); a wealth of footage of Herbert von Karajan, including performances never-before-seen home movies; and footage of the Nazi hierarchy at the
Festival during the Second World War.