Skip to main content.
Freshman Academic Planning Guide (BA/BS)
Freshman Academic Planning Guide Home > Freshman Academic Planning Guide (BA/BS) > Step 7) First-Year Seminar > Mozart and "Amadeus"

Mozart and “Amadeus”

Instructor: Martha Fickett

Department: Music

Course Number: FSEM 100C4

CRNs: 12024

Course Overview: Mozart was surely one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. Through a familiarity with the play by Peter Shaffer and the academy award winning film based on it, the public at large has developed a fascination with the man to match a love for his music. As with many works of this sort, there is fiction blended with fact. The class will read the play and watch the film, and then undertake a close examination of what is fact and what is fiction. There is something to be said for ‘setting the record straight,’ of course, but the greater good of a course like this is to help students hone their research skills and their ability to evaluate and to discriminate. The course will not make use of music scores, thereby avoiding the necessity of learning to read notation. We will primarily study the works included in the soundtrack for the film. The letters and documents as well as modern, secondary sources, will be available to students as they prepare their presentations.

Goals:

  • to become acquainted with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and some of his works
  • to distinguish fact from fiction surrounding the life and times of Mozart
  • to develop an appreciation for the role of the composer in late 18th century Austria
  • to acquire a passing familiarity with personages with whom Mozart dealt
  • to do research on one or more aspects of the above
  • to hone writing skills 

Course Materials:

  • Peter Gay, Mozart (New York: Penguin Group, 1999)
  • Peter Shaffer, Amadeus (New York: Harper & Row, 1981)
  • H. C. Robbins-Landon, Mozart and Vienna (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991)

Grading:

project #1                    10 percent

project #2                    15 percent

project #3                    15 percent

project #4                    20 percent

class participation         20 percent

final exam                     20 percent

Calendar:

Week of          Topics/Assignments

Aug. 25            Introduction to the course

                        Class: We will read aloud Act I of Shaffer’s Amadeus.

                        Assignment: Find answers to questions raised in the reading.

Sept. 1             Class: We will read aloud Act II of Amadeus.

                        Assignment: Find answers to questions raised in the reading.

                        Class: discussion on the answers to questions on Acts I and II

Sept. 8             Assignment: watch the film Amadeus. Note differences between play and

                        film.

                        Class: discussion on differences between play and film.

Sept. 15           Assignment: read chapters 1-3 of Peter Gay’s Mozart. Note

                        discrepancies between “Amadeus” and Gay’s biography.         

                        Choose one issue from the list below and write an essay on it. [see                                    instructions below for project #1]

                        Class: Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183

                       

Sept. 22           Class: read essays aloud to class.

                        Assignment: read chapters 4-6 of Gay’s Mozart. Note discrepancies

                        between “Amadeus” and Gay’s biography.

                        Class: Mozart’s Concerto in C major for Flute and Harp, K. 299

                       

Sept. 29           Class: discuss discrepancies noted from your reading of chapters 1-6.

                        Assignment: using the letters and other sources on reserve at Simpson,

                        do research on one of the issues on which Gay and Shaffer disagree.

Oct. 6              Class: Mozart’s Mass in C minor, K. 427.

                        Assignment: Write a one-two page essay summing up your research                          during the week of Sept. 29. [see instructions below for project #2].

Oct. 13              Fall Break

                       

Oct. 20              Class: presentations

                        Assignment: Read chapters 7-8 of Gay’s biography. Note discrepancies, as                               before, between it and Shaffer’s account.

Oct. 27              Class: Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro

                        Assignment: read excerpts from Beaumarchais’ play The Marriage of

                        Figaro and monograph on the opera (both on reserve at Simpson)

Nov. 3             Class: Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (continued)

                        Assignment: in groups, prepare presentations on issues and musical

                        features associated with Figaro [see instructions below for project #3]

Nov. 10           Class: Presentations on Figaro.

                        Assignment: Read letters and documents pertaining to Mozart’s Requiem

                        (on reserve in Simpson).

Nov. 17           Class: Mozart’s Requiem, K. 626

                        Assignment: Write an essay on one aspect of this work—its genesis, its

                        style. [See instructions below for Project #4].

                       

Nov. 24           Class: Mozart’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622

                        Assignment: continue work on essay

Dec. 1              Class: Presentations on the Requiem

                        Assignment: Revise your essays.

Final Exam.