New Kroch Library exhibition highlights Mozart

Portrait of Leopold Mozart and His Children, Paris, November 1763. Engraving produced in 1764 after a watercolor by Louis Carrogis de Carmontelle. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

After achieving pan-European fame as a child prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart became perhaps the greatest keyboard player and composer of his time. A wealth of material survives to help modern musicians, scholars and music-lovers understand the instruments, playing techniques and the social circumstances that gave rise to his music and the music of his contemporaries. "Mozart and the Keyboard Culture of His Time," a new exhibition on view in the Hirshland Gallery in Cornell's Kroch Library, presents a collection of documents and objects that illuminate how Mozart's music was performed and understood in his time and in the 250 years since.

The composition of a piece of music -- from the sketch of an idea through its development into a finished work -- is only the beginning. As the piece is performed over time, musicians, music theorists, editors and writers of didactic texts interpret its meaning within their own time- and place-bound understandings about what the musical text means. The resulting notes, published reviews and analyses, and other documentation help later performers and scholars trace how musical tastes and practices change over time.

Drawn from the collections of Cornell's Sidney Cox Library of Music and Dance and the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, the exhibition includes a number of documents that show how Mozart sometimes captured his musical ideas on paper. Among these are a sketch leaf in the composer's hand, noting his resolution of one of the puzzle canons from Giovanni Batista Martini's Storia della musica, and a sketch for the beginning of the Finale of his Piano Concerto K.450.

Although a number of authentic portraits of Mozart next to a keyboard instrument exist, few show him in the act of playing. Over the years many of these have been reproduced and modified, while other artists, fascinated by the idea of the boy genius, created works inspired by common myths about Mozart -- such as the numerous depictions of the child prodigy being presented to Empress Maria Theresa. The exhibition includes reproductions of most of the authentic portraits as well as a number of misattributed, fantasy and forged art works of the musician as both a child and adult. While the image of Mozart has come to symbolize excellence, it has also been widely conscripted worldwide for commercial gain. The exhibition includes an assortment of such kitsch, including clothing, porcelain giftware, a special-edition Kentucky whiskey bottle, a Montblanc fountain pen and the ubiquitous Mozart Kugeln candy.

This exhibition is a joint production of Cornell's Department of Music, the Sidney Cox Library of Music and Dance and Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. It is organized in conjunction with the Second Biennial Conference of the Mozart Society of America, to be held at Cornell, March 27-30.

An online version of "Mozart and the Keyboard Culture of His Time" is available at http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/mozart. The exhibition will be on view in the Hirshland Gallery through May 30. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. -5 p.m. and Saturday, 1-5 p.m. For more information, call 255-3530.