Mary Kunz Goldman was for over 10 years the classical music critic for The Buffalo News, the daily paper of Buffalo, N.Y. She is also the authorized biographer of the great American pianist Leonard Pennario.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Maurice Sendak and Mozart
I felt bad to hear of Maurice Sendak's death. I will miss him!
We were both Mozart fans.
Little has been said about this in the obituaries I have read. So it is up to me AS USUAL to point this out: Maurice Sendak loved Mozart and worked him into a few of his books. You had to look closely but he would be there.
Above is a Maurice Sendak nursery poster you can buy for $14.89 of Mozart walking in the garden. I know the portrait he modeled his Mozart off of. It is the Doris Stock portrait.
Not the most flattering picture! But more realistic than other Mozart portraits I have seen.
They put a Maurice Sendak picture of Mozart on the cover of an edition I had of the Wolfgang Hildesheimer biography.
And here is Sendak's picture of Mozart writing "The Magic Flute."
You can tell by this picture that Maurice was hard-core as far as being a Mozart fan. Those are the Three Boys approaching him. The Three Boys are out of the opera. And Sendak clearly knew that Mozart had written the opera in a little hut. They sort of confined him there so he would get it done.
There are other pictures of Mozart in Sendak's books. I cannot think which ones off the top of my head. You must seek them out. Sometimes you have to look carefully.
I hear that Mozart was Maurice Sendak's favorite composer and looking at the pictures, I believe it.
I hope that in the afterlife they get to meet!
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