Project

Mozart Live: Performance, Media, and Reinvention in Classical Music

Program

Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars

Department

Music

Location

For residence at the National Humanities Center during academic year 2009-2010

Abstract

“Mozart Live” examines the reinvention of Mozart’s music by players, singers, conductors, and film and stage directors, focusing on the last hundred years when media technology has preserved thousands of Mozart performances for study. Those performances cut across media and musical genres, and across the divide between classical and popular culture. Considering representative performances, associated archival materials, and contemporaneous scholarship and criticism, the project constructs a richly contextualized history, demonstrating how Mozart performance has engaged broad debates about the value of classical music in the modern era.