Mozart’s Genius
An amateur composer once asked Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart how he thought of his lovely music and — for one performance only — the maestro told him.
1749
King George III 1760-1820
An amateur composer once asked Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart how he thought of his lovely music and — for one performance only — the maestro told him.
1749
King George III 1760-1820
In April 1789, Mozart quitted Vienna and embarked on a tour that took him to Prague, Berlin, Leipzig, Potsdam and Dresden. In the course of his travels he made the acquaintance of Baron V—, an amateur musician who subsequently sent him a song, a symphony and a bottle of wine. The Baron also asked him how he thought up his own wonderful music, and Mozart, most unusually, told him.
abridged
WHEN I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer — say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep:* it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most. Whence and how they come I know not: nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me, I retain in memory, and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it, that is to say agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments, &c..
All this fires my soul; and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and refined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind; so that I can survey it like a fine picture, or a beautiful statue, at a glance.
* “An inimitable letter characterised by extraordinary contrasts” was biographer Edward Holmes’s assessment of the great composer’s reply to the inquisitive Baron V—. “Levity and sense, humour and melancholy, the most profound observations upon art and the happiest turns of thought, are here mixed up with incoherent eccentricity and irresistible nonsense.” The letter (of which this is only an excerpt) was also unusually long, as Mozart himself acknowledged. “Here, my best friend and well-wisher,” he ended, “the pages are full, and the bottle of your wine, which has done the duty of this day, is nearly empty. But since the letter which I wrote to my father-in-law to request the hand of my wife, I hardly ever have written such an enormously long one.”
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Baron V— wrote to Mozart. He asked how he went about composing. Mozart found it hard to explain.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
ICurious. IILetter. IIISatisfy.