Mozart in Motion

His Work and His World in Pieces

By: Patrick Mackie

Narrated by: Julian Elfer

Mozart is one of the most familiar and beloved icons of our culture, but how much do we really understand of his music, and what can it reveal to us about the great composer?

Following Mozart from his youth in Salzburg to his early death; from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments; from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard, Patrick Mackie leads the listener through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer's life and brings alive the teeming, swiveling modernity of eighteenth-century Europe. In this era of rococo painting, surrealist aesthetics, and political turbulence, Mozart reckoned with a searing talent that threatened to overwhelm him, all the while pushing himself to extraordinary feats of musicianship.

In Mozart in Motion, we are returned to the volatility of the eighteenth century and hear Mozart's music in all its audacious vividness, gaining fresh perspectives on why his works still move us so intensely today, as we continue to search for a modernity he imagined into being.

©2021 Patrick Mackie (P)2023 Tantor

Rich in content and artistic complexity

I loved this book, but only got the most out of it the second time through, by playing it a .85 speed. The reader has a great voice, but the content is so intricate and rich that I just couldn't keep up with all the ideas until a second listening. I rated the performance at 4 of 5 just due to the need to slow down the intensity of the content. The author paints Mozart in multiple dimensions, biographically and musically. The second time through I played the pieces discussed alongside the narrative. This is about my tenth Mozart book and perhaps the most interesting and varied. The author is clearly a historian and a musician of excellance.