Mozart Best Composer Ever? Maybe, Maybe Not

Mozart Best Composer Ever? Maybe, Maybe Not
Sarina Carlos/RR Auction via AP

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Roger Norrington and Mitsuko Uchida discuss Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's extraordinary musical legacy


There are myths and there are truths, and the former are often more entertaining than the latter. In Mozart's case, we have the glorious truths of his music but the true facts of his life have often been clouded by the mists of time and by tall tales. Our perception of Mozart has been moulded by legends. If he seems to loom larger than life, it is partly because each generation reinvents this composer for itself. There sometimes seem almost as many Mozarts as the staggering number of compositions that he left us.

The bare facts. Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus (or Gottlieb) Mozart was taught music by his father Leopold, a respected theorist, composer and violinist at the Salzburg court. (It seems likely that his education also included mathematics, languages, literature and religious training.) The child prodigy was taken on exhausting concert tours all over Europe and his skill as a composer benefited enormously from his experiences in Italy, Germany, France and England.

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