Punctuating Mozart
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A Rare Corpus of Work
"Mozart's letters – hundreds of items, written from the age of 14 until the last months of his life – have always been the principal source of information about the events of his life and his unique personality" Dr. Perl explains.
What makes the corpus so rare are several factors:
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Mozart never considered these letters would be anything but strictly private. That means that the letters can be viewed as spontaneous utterances, rather than those of German literary contemporaries such as Goethe or Lessing whose letters were written with the view towards their eventual circulation.
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Mozart's corpus is extensive. Unlike, musical contemporaries Gluck and Haydn who left relatively meager collections, Mozart was a steady correspondent, with not a few of his letters running ten pages.
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Little consideration has been given to Mozart's style of writing. Indeed, the opposite has been the case. Most scholars, Dr. Perl says, "have cautiously skirted" Mozart's less than scholarly approach to letter writing.
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Relatively little thought has been given to how the style of the letters reflect on Mozart's music.
For the past 15 years, Dr. Perl has been researching Mozart's music and analyzing his correspondence in order to gain a better understanding of Mozart the musician.
More recently, Perl has paid close attention to Mozart's frequent use of the 'dash' – a form of punctuation that was rarely used by any of Mozart's contemporaries. In analyzing Mozart's wide use of this type of punctuation, Dr. Perl has also gained insight into Mozart's skills as a composer and musician.
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