Product Description

Amadeus meets Little Women in this irresistibly delightful historical novel by award- winning author Stephanie Cowell. The year is 1777 and the four Weber sisters, daughters of a musical family, share a crowded, artistic life in a ramshackle house. While their father scrapes by as a music copyist and their mother secretly draws up a list of prospective suitors in the kitchen, the sisters struggle with their futures, both marital and musical—until twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang Mozart walks into their lives. Bringing eighteenth-century Europe to life with unforgiving winters, yawning princes, scheming parents, and the enduring passions of young talent, Stephanie Cowell’s richly textured tale captures a remarkable historical figure—and the four young women who engage his passion, his music, and his heart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196195 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780143034575
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Former opera singer Cowell, whose previous novel (1997's The Players) explored the apprenticeship years of a callow Shakespeare, turns her eye to the women in the life of a young Mozart in her fourth graceful and entertaining historical. Music copyist Fridolin Weber and his socially ambitious wife, Marie Caecilia, have four daughters—bookish and devout Sophie; quiet Constanze; beautiful, silver-voiced Aloysia; and headstrong Josefa—whom they struggle to keep in hats and hose. Though the freethinking girls may wonder about the benefits of marrying well vs. marrying for love, Caecilia, whose family once had money, is terrified of growing old a pauper. Pinning her hopes on her prettiest daughter, 16-year-old Aloysia, Caecilia aims for a Swedish baron as suitor (though she keeps a list of backups in a notebook). Aloysia falls in love with the young Mozart, however, who happily returns her affections, though he, too, wonders about marrying better to support his father and beloved mother. But when the Webers move to Munich from Mannheim, Caecilia's hopes for good matches begin to dim, as Josefa takes a married lover and a pregnant Aloysia runs away with a painter who, along with Mozart, had been boarding with the family. As Mozart progresses in his career, he has relationships with the other Weber sisters, too, and falls alternately in and out of favor with their bitter old mother. Told through the recollections of an aging Sophie, the tale is as rich and unhurried as 18th-century court life.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Cowell's novel portrays Mozart as a passionate, determined young man and focuses on his relationships with the four Weber sisters. Mozart first meets Fridolin Weber, a music copyist, and his four daughters when he and his mother arrive in Mannheim. The second eldest girl, Aloysia, captivates Mozart, who finds her singing talent is matched by her beauty. Against the wishes of his mother, Mozart proposes to Aloysia, but he can't marry her until he makes his fortune. His dream is to be able to compose operas for a living, but when Idomeneo closes after just a few performances, Mozart is forced to beg the arrogant archbishop of Salzburg for a position. Aloysia, who dreams of fame and fortune as an opera singer, elopes with a portraitist. Mozart is heartbroken, but little does he know that true love lies with another Weber sister. As much about the four Weber sisters as it is about Mozart, Cowell's novel is an engaging look at Mozart's colorful world and his struggles during his early twenties. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"A historical novelist of the first rank." -- Publishers Weekly

Customer Reviews

Superb historical novel
Stephanie Cowell's superbly evocative, wonderful novel takes the reader from Salzburg in 1842, where an English biographer is interviewing the last surviving Weber sister, back to the Weber home in Mannheim in the 18th century and the era of Mozart, when their relationships with him all began. It tells the riveting, moving stories of all three sisters and the era itself is evoked in a fascinating wealth of detail, so that we are truly back in it. Ms. Cowell's writing is so exquisite, so romantic and so realistic at the same time that we can even feel the weather and the cold winter snow, so perfectly does Ms. Cowell bring it to life with telling detail. Her characters are living, breathing human beings, and we have a highly credible, complicated, real, completely believable Mozart. Here at last is the little man who wrote the great music, and we can feel his genius and his sensitivity in all its complexity. The Weber family, all of them, including the extended family of in-laws, is a powerful, sensitive evocation of the life of the century with all its differences in customs, and the life of Vienna and the court and the world of music are all engrossingly, lovingly, and magnificently depicted. There are startlingly beautiful scenes and a story that is compelling from beginning to end. You must buy and read and reread this magnificent recreation of a long-gone time and of the brilliant people who inhabit it!

"Our beloved Mozart was not quite suited to this world."
Through the four daughters of Fridolin Weber, a poor, but talented, musician who knew just about everyone in the music world of Mannheim, author Stephanie Cowell reveals the rich, musical life of the inhabitants. Every Thursday evening, Weber opens his house to performers, composers, and singers, who entertain an always-enthusiastic audience and an occasional music patron. It is at one of these soirees in 1777, that the 21-year-old Mozart and his mother, visitors from Salzburg, Austria, first meet the Webers. This meeting is the first of many over the next three years, as Mozart falls desperately in love with one sister, lives with the family for a time in Vienna, and eventually marries another sister. So close is he to the family that he writes compositions for the voices of two of the sisters and even creates parts in his operas for them.

Author Cowell portrays the domestic life of late eighteenth century Germany in careful detail, revealing the customs, the lifestyle, and the intellectual life of Mannheim, then Munich, and eventually Vienna. Every homely detail, from the type of stockings the girls wore, to the rags they used to curl their hair contributes to the realism, while on-going, personal insights into the tenuous and highly competitive life of a budding composer, like Mozart, and the role of the prince-bishop as a patron make the music world come alive. The Mozart we see here is very different from the Mozart in Amadeus. Young and in many ways naïve, he is not the petulant and sissified dandy we see in the film. He is, however, somewhat clumsy in his personal relationships and unsure how to obtain the kind of support he needs for his prodigious talent to flourish, and he often has few choices open to him.

Lovers of romance will find plenty to admire here, as the Weber girls individually explore their own world, their potential futures, and their sexuality, while Mozart tries to find an outlet for the music in his soul. This is a love story--showing the passionate love between men and women, and the quiet devotion of parent and child, in a long ago time and in an exotic, often rarified atmosphere. Filled with sensuous descriptions, it is more a study of the four sisters than it is of Mozart, providing their woman's-eye views of music, the place of music in their lives, and the sacrifices they and their spouses must make for art. Mary Whipple

Liberties aside, it wasn't long enough for me!
I'd like to begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this book & was sorry to come to the end. If I could have, I would have given it 4-1/2*s. So why didn't I give it 5? In the end of the book the author mentions that she took certain liberties with the order of events for the sake of the story. I have studied Mozart for 23 years & wrote 40 pp on the inaccuracies of the movie, Amadeus, & there are liberties that I didn't think were necessary. Mozart & Constanze were married on August 4, 1782, not October. I see no reason to change this. She has Leopold Mozart visiting Vienna & meeting Constanze before her marriage to his son. Leopold did no such thing. He visited only once in 1785 after Wolfgang & Constanze had been married nearly three years. Aloysia shunned Mozart personally when he stopped to see her on his return trip from Paris. I don't recall her having run away to marry Joseph Lange. There were many other little "time shifts", yet this book brought me into the lives of the Weber sisters & life in working class Vienna in a way I won't easily forget. At least one reviewer mentioned that the language did not fit the time. I believe the author mixed a more 18th c tone with dialogue out of a later period. But never did the dialogue strike me as contemporary with all of today's slang expressions. So to me it was never jarring. There are several subplots which add drama to the story but I don't know if they are true. I'm referring to Frau Weber's "secret" regarding her eldest daughter, Josepha; the music store owner & Constanze. Once again, they didn't really bother me or detract from the story for me.

I would say that Mozart was almost portrayed a little too mild in places. He tended to be overly sensitive because of his personal insecurity. In places, such as his interaction with Frau Weber, he almost seemed fully in control of his temper. I can't quite see that. This didn't really bother me-not as much as the butchering of his character in the movie.

I particularly delighted in Fridolin Weber's Thursday night music evenings which Cowell brought to life so well. In the absence of TV or radio these types of evenings were common in 18th c musical homes, & Mozart wrote for, played in as well as hosted them, often. After the death of Fridolin the mother's down-hill slide is very believable. It was mentioned that she "drank more than a woman should." (I guess it was okay for a man.) I liked the way the author began & ended with Novello's visit to Sophia, the last remaining Weber daughter. I have read the book of Mary & Vincent Novello's journey to Salzburg, & it is believable also that she would have told the story of the family to him-although I doubt very much that she would have included the spicier parts.

Any negative comments aside, I would have loved it if this book went on further into Mozart's life as there is so much more to be brought to life there. I would recommend the book to Mozart lovers of course or anyone interested in 18th c Vienna. Those who know the details of Mozart's life may be bothered by the liberties taken & those who aren't will enjoy the story as historical fiction.