The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's precocity is so familiar as to be
taken for granted. In scholarship and popular culture, Mozart the
Wunderkind is often seen as belonging to a category of childhood all
by himself. But treating the young composer as an anomaly risks
minimizing his impact. In this book, Adeline Mueller examines how Mozart
shaped the social and cultural reevaluation of childhood during the
Austrian Enlightenment. Whether in a juvenile sonata printed with his
age on the title page, a concerto for a father and daughter, a lullaby,
a musical dice game, or a mass for the consecration of an orphanage
church, Mozart's music and persona transformed attitudes toward
children's agency, intellectual capacity, relationships with family and
friends, political and economic value, work, school, and leisure time.
Thousands of children across the Habsburg Monarchy were affected by the
Salzburg prodigy and the idea he embodied: that childhood itself could
be packaged, consumed, deployed, "performed"--in short,
mediated--through music. This book builds upon a new understanding of
the history of childhood as dynamic and reciprocal, rather than a mere
projection or fantasy--as something mediated not just through texts,
images, and objects but also through actions. Drawing on a range of
evidence, from children's periodicals to Habsburg court edicts and
spurious Mozart prints, Mueller shows that while we need the history of
childhood to help us understand Mozart, we also need Mozart to help us
understand the history of childhood.
