Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Fiction - Fiction

Fiction

• The first major works of literature inspired by Mozart were by the German writers E. T. A. Hoffmann and Eduard Mörike. Hoffmann published his Don Juan in 1812, Mörike his Mozart's Journey to Prague in 1856. Mozart also appears in Hermann Hesse's novel Der Steppenwolf.
• In 1968, David Weiss published Sacred and profane: a novel of the life and times of Mozart, a narrative account on the composer's life drawing heavily on the documented historical record, but with invented conversations and other details. It is in the same style as Naked Came I, the same author's bestselling 1963 historical novel based on the life of sculptor Auguste Rodin.
• In modern fiction, the mystery surrounding the composer's death is explored within a popular thriller context in the 2008 novel The Mozart Conspiracy by British writer Scott Mariani, who departs from the established Salieri-poisoning theory to suggest a deeper political motive behind his death.
• Mozart has also featured as a sleuth in detective fiction, in Dead, Mister Mozart and Too many notes, Mr. Mozart, both by Bernard Bastable (who also writes as Robert Barnard). Bastable's stories involve the conceit of an alternate history scenario in which the young Mozart remained on in London at the time of his childhood visit to England, where he has lived a long - though not very prosperous - life as a hack musician, rather than returning to his native Salzburg or Vienna to die young and celebrated.
• Charles Neider's Mozart and the Archbooby is an epistolary novel wherein the young Mozart writes to his father about his new life in Vienna and his new problem, the Archbishop of Salzburg. Stephanie Cowell's Marrying Mozart: A Novel provides a fictionalised account of Mozart's relationship with Aloysia Weber before his marriage to her sister, Constanze.
• Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) is a defining cyberpunk short story collection, edited by Bruce Sterling. It contains a story, the "Mozart in Mirrorshades" by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner, in which Mozart appears as a DJ wannabe instead of being the real Mozart after he met the people and culture of his future.
• In The Amadeus Net, by Mark A. Rayner, Mozart is an immortal living in the world's first sentient city, Ipolis, where he supports himself by selling "lost" compositions and playing jazz piano in bars.