Life of Mozart

By: Amanda Woods, Louis Knoll

Narrated by: Amanda Woods - pen name

Dear Listener,

As I was working my way through the many stages necessary to bring this book from the 19th century to a more contemporary look and feel while preserving its original charm and beauty, I became more and more in awe with the wonderful human being that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was. No doubt a highly evolved spirit, deeply confined by the limitations of the time he lived in. This book, written by Louis Knoll in 1880, does justice to Mozart’s noble and beautiful nature.

There were multiple facets of him: One was his pure, beautiful, highly evolved human spirit, way ahead of his time and even ours. Another was his quiet strength, determination, focus, resilience, and fierce seriousness with which he developed himself and his music. Another one showed us the unavoidable faults of human nature.

I experimented with a few types of voices for a while until satisfied to have found that one to express his complexity and delicate balance between the everyday, mundane human nature and the divine nature. In Mozart’s case, for the blessing and benefit of humanity, his divine nature expressed itself through music Given the fact that he was constantly stung by the worst of envy and hatred and lived in poverty his whole life, it’s amazing how gentle and forgiving Mozart was in depicting the weaknesses of human nature in his operas. He constantly made the choice to manifest forgiveness and patience throughout his unfairly short earthly journey. Is it a wonder, then, that his music is eternal?

There will be many ways through which we will continue to express our gratitude and enchantment with Mozart’s music, as we grow, evolve, and become more able to allow its beauty to awaken the beauty within our own souls.

Until then, or rather while we’re on that path, let me conclude my modest contribution to bringing this 19th-century brief account of Mozart’s life and music to our time, by simply saying: Thank you for the music, beautiful soul.

Thank you for listening, dear listener.

©2022 Cristina Florescu (P)2022 Cristina Florescu