As the title indicates, Adeline Mueller's study of Wolfgang Mozart explores how childhood was mediated during a historical period when an interest in the role of upbringing and education as well as political philosophy reshaped the understanding of children. It was also in many ways a period that bridged early modern culture and the development of social relationships and institutions that characterized the modernization of European society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is a history of how childhood was mediated, exemplified by the life of Mozart and his family as revealed in printed pamphlets and through the music written and performed by Mozart and other young musicians. The study examines Mozart's upbringing and family life while also contextualizing how his music was performed and where it was staged. It is not the outstanding quality of his music that primarily interests Mueller but rather its cultural and institutional context. Mozart traveled to the European courts as well as to the theater companies, orphanages, and schools of Vienna. His childhood and persona were made visible to the public through the marketplace and communicated through prints, concerts, and images. Mueller demonstrates how the mediation of Mozart's life was both an expression of a certain understanding of childhood as well as part of its shaping.

Mozart grew up in the public eye like no other c