Description
Demonstrates that the concept of genius is as vitally needed as ever and can illuminate the workings of Mozart's creative imagination.Much recent, distinguished Mozart criticism has set out a critique of the concept of genius. Whether following the scientist seeking greater objectivity, the postmodernist proclaiming the death of the author, the historian concerned about anachronism, or the critic who warns about making despotic claims, this demystifying literature has taken the weakening of genius's accumulated cultural authority as an indispensable step in arriving at a clarified Mozart.Mozart, Genius, and the Possibilities of Art advances a contrary claim. It proposes that anti-Romantic accounts of Mozart's genius themselves get lost in both the infinitely big—in utopianism and millenarianism—and the infinitesimally small—in materialism and process. Throughout, the book buttresses this argument with probing readings from contemporary documents ranging from ephemeral
