One need look no further than the toy aisles of department stores to be reminded of the links between Mozart’s music, idealized infancy and childhood, and consumer culture. “If I don’t buy these light-up balls chirping out K. 545 in synthesized cat meows,” one would be forgiven for asking, “how will my mini-Mozart ever grow to be an Einstein?” The brain of one prodigy promises to transmit the scaffolding for future astrophysical contemplation. And, as is typical of the current public thinking about music and general education, expression through sound is seen not as an end in itself but as a gateway for higher cognitive and moral activation.
These layered cultural functions of Mozart’s childhood image and early compositions have a long history, and Adeline Mueller’s new book, Mozart and the Mediation of Childhood, provides a rich context for the ways they were marshaled for baby-Einstein-like state and cultural...
University of California Press