A novelist's dream

I am happy to hear there is a new novel out about Mozart. The British music writer Jessica Duchen writes about it on her Web log. It is called "Mozart's Last Aria."

Jessica Duchen calls it "a cracking read." That is a British expression I will have to pick up.

The book is by Matt Rees and it is a fictional exploration of how Mozart could have died. Admit it, his death has always been mysterious. I like how Rees apparently hinges his story on Mozart having said in a letter that he thought he had been poisoned. I always thought that was pretty important, you know? You cannot exactly dismiss that.

Jessica posts the book trailer. That is one long and leisurely book trailer. When I do my book trailer for my book on Pennario it is going to be shorter. Because I will tell you one thing, if I were not pathologically fascinated by all things Mozart I would never have sat through this thing.

The one thing I hope is that Rees' book does not blame Mozart's death on the Catholic Church. Fiction that blames things on the Catholic Church has a way of sticking and before long everyone will be quoting it as fact.

Blame it on the Masons. Blame it on anyone else, you know?

Well, I should not get all nutzed up. I have not even seen this book.

Let me see what teasers are out there.

Here is a video of Mr. Rees reading from it. I like the glass of red wine! Man after my own heart.

Here is another. I appreciate how the author refers to Mozart's son, who called himself Wolfgang II, visiting Mozart's sister, Nannerl, in her older age. That is a historic turn of events I have always found touching. Another real-life aspect of the Mozart story I love is when the biographers Mary and Vincent Novello, long after Mozart's death, went looking for the people close to him and found Nannerl, Aloysia Weber (Mozart's old flame), and Konstanze (his widow), all living in the same town. These three old ladies, all there, with all their old rivalries.

What a strange story, on all levels, surrounds Mozart's death. It is not anything anyone could ever make up.

It is a novelist's dream.