Emily Anderson (1) (1891–1962)

"...These are Mozart’s complete letters, with selected replies from his father and sister, and occasionally his friends, or his wife. Mozart was an infant prodigy, of course, who spent most of his early life on the road with his ambitious father Leopold, performing, so the earliest letters are mostly to his mother or sister. The first part of the book is letters from his father which are all entirely practical: about contracts and fees, and the success, how little Wolfi has done so well, show more and they went to see the Duke of this and that, and how Marie Antoinette gave him a snuffbox or whatever.



You see the first letter from Mozart at the age of 14, and it’s quite extraordinary really. It’s partly in Latin – he just loved language, and was very good at languages, and he wrote multilingual letters all his life. And some of the letters are in code: the Mozart family all wrote in code when they had something insulting to say about their employers, because all post was opened. Mozart wrote very long letters and, within the family, they’re increasingly playful and scatological – an awful lot about eating shit and sending people farts, and all that sort of thing...." (reviewed by Giles Swayne in FiveBooks).



The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/giles-swayne-on-composers%E2%80%99-lives show less