Life of Mozart, Volume I begins Otto Jahn’s monumental biography, the work that established modern Mozart scholarship on a documentary foundation. Jahn brought rigorous historical method to a subject long clouded by anecdote, drawing on letters and sources to reconstruct the composer’s life and world.
This first volume covers Mozart’s prodigious childhood, his early travels across Europe, and the formation of his style under his father’s exacting guidance. Jahn combines biography with careful musical analysis, setting the works in the context of their time. Long the standard life of Mozart, the biography remains a landmark of musicology and an essential source for the study of the composer.