ABSTRACT
Music is indeed an important 'character' in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart not only because of its extensive appearance but more importantly because of its intriguing role as a narrative and structural element. A good mutilation should consider musical grammar, such as harmony, melody, and rhythm, so that the fragmented and rearranged original may sound musically satisfactory. Mozart is composing at the beginning of the commission scene and the first excerpt, the opening of the first movement of the K.466 concerto, enters as a musical voice-over. The distortion of historical facts in Amadeus outraged many musicologists, critics, and amateur Mozartians. The way Amadeus treats historical figures evokes what Linda Hutcheon calls 'historiographic metafiction', a literary genre distinctive in the postmodern era, in which historical figures are liberally fictionalized. Hypercriticism about historical inaccuracy in Amadeus can be further illuminated from another aspect of the modern/postmodem discourses.
