Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Born in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth27 January 1756
CitySalzburg, Austria
CountryAustria
I write [music] as a sow piddles.
Write to me and don't be so lazy. Otherwise I shall have to give you a thrashing. What fun! I'll break your head.
You know that I become quite powerless whenever I am obliged to write for an instrument which I cannot bear.
Writing music is my one and only passion and joy.
True perfection in all things is no longer known or prized - you must write music that is either so simple a coachman could sing it, or so unintelligble that audiences like it simply because no sane person could understand it.
To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman might sing it.
When I am at peace with myself . . . then thoughts flow into me most easily and at their best. Where they come from and how - that I cannot say . . . I'd be willing to work forever and forever if I were permitted to write only such music as I want to write and can write - which I myself think good.
I have never written the music that was in my heart to write; perhaps I never shall with this brain and these fingers, but I know that hereafter it will be written; when instead of these few inlets of the senses through which we now secure impressions from without, there shall be a flood of impressions from all sides; and instead of these few tones of our little octave, there shall be an infinite scale of harmonies - for I feel it - I am sure of it. This world of music, whose borders even now I have scarcely entered, is a reality, is immortal.
I cannot write in verse, for I am no poet. I cannot arrange the parts of speech with such art as to produce effects of light and shade, for I am no painter. Even by signs and gestures I cannot express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer. But I can do so by means of sounds, for I am a musician....
One must not make oneself cheap here -- that is a cardinal point -- or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.
Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.
When I am . . . traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.
My subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and define, 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 statute, at a glance.
My fatherland has always the first claim on me.