1791, Mozart's Last Year

Amadeus, the play and film, popularized the many legends about Mozart's ""decline and fall.'' In this factual account of the composer's last year, musicologist Landon gathers authentic contemporary documents to ``bring us nearer to Mozart and his wife Constanze than does fiction, even at its most inspired.'' He reexamines concert life and dance music in Mozart's Vienna; the composer's journeys to Frankfurt and Prague; details of the commission for the ``Requiem''; The Magic Flute and its connections with Freemasonry; and medical aspects of Mozart's final illness and death (``the greatest tragedy in the history of music''). Landon concludes with a vindication of the ``wickedly defamed'' Constanze, whom many German music historians have unjustly described as a ``scheming, brainless sex-symbol.'' Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)