Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was buried in an unknown grave. Yet in his lifetime he had known the adulation which only a musical genius of his stature could attract. The supreme prodigy of musical history, he actually started to play the clavier when he was three, and was composing by the time he was five. Until his untimely and lonely death in 1791 -- he was then thirty-five -- he was inspired to write some of the loveliest music ever written: symphonies, concertos, quartets, operas, masses -- all came easily from his pen. Many books have sung his praise.

This series of biographies presents the great composers against the background of their times. Each draws on personal letters and recollections, engravings, paintings and, when they exist, photographs, to present a complete picture of the composer's life.