With the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006, there are a number of new books on the ever-popular composer, including this comprehensive encyclopedia. The editors are well-known British musicologists. Eisen has written many articles on the composer, and Keefe also edited the
Companion to Mozart (2003), a collection of essays on Mozart's music.
The encyclopedia has about 500 alphabetically arranged entries on everything from five pages on Travel to a paragraph on ^ Traeg, Johann, a publisher of Mozart's music, and from four pages on Genius to one paragraph on Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. There are about 50 contributors, the majority from English or U.S. universities. The entries have a consistent style, scholarly but readable. Most entries end with a short bibliography. See references often direct readers from individual works such as 'Coronation' Concerto to entries such as Concertos, but actual mention of the work can be hard to find within the six-page Concertos, which is loosely arranged chronologically by Kochel Number. An index entry with a page reference would have helped, and such problems could be eliminated altogether by an online version.
Although much of the volume discusses the historical aspects of Mozart, there are current references. For example, the entry
Mozart in literature mentions current novels based on the composer. There are no musical notations or photographs, but a number of tables are provided; an interesting one lists the date, duration, place, and symptoms of Mozart's illnesses. The appendixes include a complete list of works, a list of Mozart films, a list of operas on DVD and video, and Mozart organizations and Web sites. This encyclopedia is the definitive source for Mozart information and should be a required purchase for music and large public and academic libraries.
