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The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia.

Article Excerpt
The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. Edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [xi, 674 p. ISBN 0-521-85659-0. $175.00.] Appendices, bibliographical references, indexes.

The 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth has been celebrated with performances, symposia, recordings, and publications. One of the most comprehensive of the latter is The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. This reference book aims to "function both as a starting point for information on specific works, people, places and concepts as well as a summation of current thinking about Mozart" (p. xi). Edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe, the encyclopedia does an admirable job of covering Mozart's life, his music, and the world in which he lived through concise articles written by leading European and American scholars.

As promised in the book's preface, the volume covers a wide range of subjects. It includes articles on broad topics such as the Enlightenment, travel, aesthetics, and the German language. One of the best of these broader entries is William Stafford's discussion of the concept of genius. Stafford addresses competing definitions of the term, how it has been applied and misapplied to Mozart, and how the composer himself employed the word. The encyclopedia also contains more general essays on musical topics and their relation to the composer. Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl's essay on dance, for example, discusses the role...

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