Music  90-11; CRN 5667
3 Credits
MW 13:10-14:25 
Professor Nadine Sine
 

Mozart: The Man, the Myth, the Music

Amadeus, the award-winning play and film on the life and music of Mozart, created lasting impressions about the composer for a vast audience in the 1980’s. But what actually happened to Mozart and what was he really like as an individual? How can we separate the facts from the fiction that has grown up around this musical genius.

We will attempt to answer these questions by searching out and evaluating surviving materials: letters, journals, news articles, and legal documents. We will also listen to and dissect a number of Mozart’s compositions to learn how much of his musical language is based on convention and what features make it a unique expression of this composer. Ultimately, we will try to address how his life affected his music.

No previous knowledge of music is required. The course begins with dinner at my home coupled with a video showing of Amadeus, which will serve as the starting point for our investigation into music and myth-making.


Nadine Sine primarily teaches and studies DWEM (dead, white, European male) composers from the past millennium, specializing in those composers active at the turn of the century. She has been singing in choral ensembles since junior high school and, as one in a cast of between twelve and a thousand, has performed at Lincoln Center, with Duke Ellington, and at the church where Mozart grew up in Salzburg, Austria. She is definitely not renowned for cooking or housekeeping, but she does make a mean chili and a departmentally famous chocolate cake.