Mozart was the supreme musical genius whose work may be analysed by the expert without elucidating its true nature, and whose life has been presented so often, in book and in film, that it would be foolish to retell the story yet again.
Anthony Burgess's tribute has an ironic component. He sets his scene mostly in heaven, from which Saddam Hussein's guns can be faintly heard. He splits himself up into several warring personages, initiates discussions which get nowhere except a region where understanding of the nature of music (not just Mozart's) may conceivably begin to dawn. Mozart brings solace to our tattered lives but he also brings bewilderment.
This is, in fact, a kaleidoscope of a book, which goes beyond the bounds of even Anthony Burgess's fiction: in which an attempt to understand Mozart is made through celestial dialogue, a Stendhalian effort at turning Symphony No. 40 into fiction, an opera libretto, and fragments of a film script join with the author's own internal colloquies to answer the unanswerable. In effect, a gang of wolves is on the scent of the meaning of music.
