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Biographers and other students of Mozart should be eternally grateful to Otto Erich Deutsch. He has already done most of their legwork by collecting in this 680-page volume nearly every contemporary document relating to the composer's life.

It has been suggested (though not by Deutsch) that all existing documents -- scores, diaries, letters, newspaper clippings -- related to Mozart by now have been unearthed. And although a slim supplement to Deutsch's book was published recently (Cliff Eisen, New Mozart Documents: A Supplement to O.E. Deutsch's Documentary Biography, Stanford University Press, 1991), it seems that the gist of this statement may be true. All that remains is for various writers to put their own spins on the same set of facts.

But the facts themselves are here: newspaper reports of appearances by the child prodigy during his various European journeys, Leopold Mozart's requests for promotion in the court of Salzburg, reviews of Mozart's concerts and operas, excerpts from the diaries of his contemporaries. Deutsch omits all of Mozart's letters and most of those of his family, but those, of course, are taken care of by Emily Anderson's The Letters of Mozart and His Family.

Between these two volumes you could almost write your own biography of Mozart. At the very least, they provide excellent browsing for anyone interested in the composer. For the serious student, they are indispensible.