Rafael's diss of period-instrument Mozart is plain laughable. He couldn't be more wrong. Uncertain playing? What planet has he been on lately?

Hogwood's now ancient set of the complete symphonies is mixed, but the early symphony recordings still set the standard for that music.

Andreas Staier's Mozart Piano Concerto recordings on Teldec are simply peerless, and if Rafael hasn't heard them, he's falling down on the job, and if he's heard them and doesn't like them, he has no taste. The best Mozart playing you can get, period.

And Franz Bruggen's recordings of the last Mozart symphonies on Philips some years ago are beautiful in every way, he and his band play rings around more pedestrian efforts like Levine and Vienna, or any number of other bigger names.

Go do some serious listening George, before you just dismiss some very convincing playing. And if you can't be bothered, all I can say is, you're missing out.

In his article on “Mozart’s Muses,” George Rafael asks that we “kindly listen to Mozart's ‘Ave Maria,’ K. 554, and see if that isn't the most beautiful thing you've ever heard.” I dutifully went to the library and found this obscure unaccompanied canon, and do not think it the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. The most beautiful thing I have ever heard is Mozart’s choral “Ave Verum Corpus,” K. 618. Could Mr. Rafael possibly have gotten the two works confused with one another? Joseph Smith, Piano Today magazine.

I appreciate richardein's enthusiasm for this topic, but aren't we being a touch elitist suggesting to the rest of us that we ignore anything before K271, and the sonatas (sniff, sniff)? Very special artists continue to perform and record the sonatas and find grace and profundity in them. I can figure out myself which music is worth listening to, even when the music is not great but merely good. Mozart's piano sonatas may not be as good as Haydn's (whatever that means), but to say they are therefore hack work reminds me of the critic who concluded that Brahms is a terrible composer because he is not as good as Beethoven.

P.S. To my own taste, the sound of a fortepiano is something to be endured.

The author of this piece needed only a hundred words or so to turn me off completely. I love both Mozart and women, but this reeks of snooty academia, sniveling “inside” jokes and other smarty-pants bullsh*t. The more often classical music is written about so pompously, the less accessible it seems. Is it any wonder so many people shy away from opera and symphonic music? Writing like this is better suited to the outer fringes of peer-reviewed mucky-muck journals, far from the eyes of readers who crave good, clean copy.

Definitely makes me want to read the book. Thank you!

Another fun and intriguing book I recommend is David Weiss's "Sacred and Profane." He calls it "A Novel of the Life and Times of Mozart." It is a wonderfully inventive, as well as informative book. Long out-of-print, but available through various internet bookstores.

For a good look at Mozart as a character in fiction read Morike's "Mozart on the way to Prague". It's more intelligent and more entertaining than "Amadeus".

Shaffer's Amadeus is as accurate as Stone's JFK, ie, it is hopelessly wrong and wrongheaded as history, but so what?

The real issue is why anyone would take a film, or a play, seriously as history. But people do and that is a problem. But it is not the problem of the playwright but rather his audience. A playwright has no obligation to "tell the truth." He/she has much more important fish to fry. And you can always find out what "really happened" by cracking open a book.

For those who want to hear more Mozart, a few words of caution - Mozart is a truly great composer, but not everything he wrote is truly great. His compositions are listed with K, or Kochel, numbers that are mostly chronological. Avoid anything before K. 271 as much of what he wrote before then is juvenilia. Here are some good places to start:

The last two symphonies - G minor and the Jupiter. Nearly any recording will be do fine.

The later piano concertos - Look for recordings by Stephen Hough and John Eliot Gardiner. Hough plays a fortepiano, which was the keyboard Mozart wrote for, and is far more exciting an instrument for Mozart's piano works than the modern pianoforte. But don't obsess over this: there are many splendid recordings of the concertos and you really can't go wrong.

The late operas - Get DVD's. The titles you're looking for are The Magic Flute, Marriage of Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, and Don Giovanni. I prefer the Gardiner again. But the Bergman Magic Flute is very special (although many purists don't like it).

Avoid the sonatas - they're mostly hackwork (Haydn's are better). And the string quartets are not as immediately appealing as other genres (again, see Haydn). On the other hand, the clarinet quintet is sublime. I had an LP of member of the Berlin Philharmonic performing this, but again, I wouldn't worry too much about performers. Most people who get recorded on the major labels will be good to great and it's pretty pointless to quibble.

The play/movie has MANY historical falsehoods, especially at the end where Salieri is seen helping Mozart write the Requiem. And compare the way Constanze is portrayed in the play vs. Glover's book. But this was probably never meant to be an historical play, rather a psychological drama. After all, the main character isn't Mozart, it's Salieri, and how he (or what his character symbolizes) deals with the comparison of his own workmanlike mediocrity against Mozart's blazing, supreme genius.

Mozart had some smuttier, scatalogical aspects of his personality, and not just confined to women--look at some of the jabs he pokes at the man for whom he wrote his horn concertos--they're right there in the manuscript!

But otherwise, I agree with those who appreciate Glover's book and how it reveals in better relief the role of Mozart's women in his life. Just reading the article itself made me appreciate Constanze more. And if one listens to works such as the Marriage of Figaro, it's plain that Mozart DID have an insight of humankind that rivals Shakespeare's.