Composer's genius came later in sublime expression

[spindrifter]

The Times December 29, 2006

Richard Morrison, Chief Music Critic

Mozart scholars won’t be surprised by the discovery of yet another remarkable piece of music apparently composed by the Salzburg wünderkind before he was 11. His earliest known compositions, two little piano pieces, were supposedly written in 1761. He would have been 5 then — though sceptics point out that, since the only surviving manuscript is in the handwriting of Wolfgang’s pushy father, Leopold (who is also the only source for the date), it is impossible to ascertain whether the pieces are the child’s unaided work.

What is certain is that in the next four or five years, as Leopold toured Wolfgang and his sister, Nannerl, who was almost as prodigious as her brother, around the courts of Europe, the boy made extraordinary progress as a composer. His first symphonies probably date from his 15-month stay in England in 1764 and 1765. By then, the boy’s gifts were the talk of aristocratic Europe. Mozart was summoned to appear before George III, who gave him some intricate keyboard tests. His abilities were investigated in a report to the Royal Society by the philosopher Daines Barrington.

All of which tends to confirm the popular conception of Mozart as a boy genius who had somehow bypassed the normal, laborious business of learning the tricks and techniques of musical composition, and instead took “dictation straight from God” (as the jealous Salieri puts it in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus).

That, though, is a highly romanticised view. Mozart was undoubtedly a stupendous natural talent, and a lightning-quick imbiber of musical style. But he was schooled in his craft by Leopold, himself one of Europe’s leading composers. What’s more, those long tours around Europe not only helped to fill the family coffers; they also provided the boy with a crash course in the latest symphonic fashions. And those fashions were not hard for a gifted child to imitate. In the mid-18th century, musical life had turned away from the learned fugues and complex counterpoints of Bach and Handel. Instead, people were entranced by a new simplicity called classicism, in which tunefulness and elegance counted for a more than spiritual depth.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2522288,00.html