This review of the last year of Mozart's life wasn't quite the revelation that Maynard Solomon's biography of Mozart was, but on my current Mozart bender I'm glad to have read it. The author is passionately devoted to Mozart and no detail is too small as he examines Mozart's health, finances, movements, relationships in 1791. Some of the details were too small for me, but I enjoyed the author's devotion to Mozart and to Constanze.

At one point he reports that Beethoven refused to play before a certain lady because he thought she had been Mozart's mistress. Landon says: "(what a prude Beethoven was!)." One of the appendices is an article entitled "An Illustrated Student of Mozart's Apartment and Wardrobe," with photographs of typical clothing and furniture as well as floor plans of the Mozarts' apartment in Vienna.

Recommended if you want to time-travel to the late 18th Century in the company of Mozart. ( )

Excellent. ( )

In this factual account of the composer's last year, musicologist Landon gathers authentic contemporary documents to bring us nearer to Mozart and his wife, Constanze, than does fiction, even at its most inspired.

This was the year in which Mozart wrote The Magic Flute, La Clemenza di Tito, and the Clarinet Concerto, as well as most of the Requiem; it was also a year of mounting disappointment in his career as part of the Viennese musical establishment, and a year of growing debt.