Who was Mozart--the pure artist some have thought him, or the grotesque idiot savant, obsessed by the scatological but still capable of writing music as if channeling God? In this 1991 biography (newly translated into English by J. Bradford Robinson), author Georg Knepler demolishes both notions. In their place he presents a thinking man, a true son of the Enlightenment, a man unimpressed by inherited position--at home in all segments of society--and profoundly affected by events and ideas around him. Knepler traces Mozart"s intellectual and musical development to make a compelling case for the composer as a complex and multifaceted individual. This is one of the best, most thoughtful biographies of Mozart to appear in recent years.