ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author dwells at all on the successes of early music in interpreting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. An imagined return to an 18th-century understanding of Mozart—as in early music's project of restoration—is therefore a return to a culture that essentially misunderstood him. As E. T. A. Hoffmann put it in 1810, 'only a deep Romantic spirit will completely recognize the Romantic depth of Mozart; only one equal to his creative fantasy, inspired by the spirit of his works will, like him, be permitted to express the highest values of art.' A performance style committed to a Romantic Mozart is therefore one that—putting it somewhat too simplistically—subordinates the 18th-century idea of a 'jolly good' entertainment to the 19th-century realm of musical metaphysics. As regards Mozart, it is relatively easy to distinguish between two receptions, one that greeted him in his lifetime and another that accompanied the shift in values shortly after his death.
