A fortunate result of the budding composer's extensive early travels was the contact it provided with a generous cross section of European musical traditions: German, British, French (though Leopold viewed that music with some suspicion) and Italian. While a number of these direct influences are well-known - Leopold himself and the sons of Bach, for example - the scope of influence upon Mozart was unusually rich. On the other hand, they are a proof that our little Wolfgang composed them himself, which perhaps quite naturally, everyone will not believe."Īs important still as refining his technical skill, young Mozart was expected and encouraged, as many young composers were, to do a kind of journeyman's work in the absorption of influence from the music of older, more accomplished, masters. Clearly the creative impulses of the young composer were occasionally susceptible to the lapses one expects of an inexperienced hand: "You will find three consecutive fifths in the violin part," father Leopold wrote of Wolfgang's first published work, "which my young gentleman perpetrated and which, although I corrected them left in. "Because of Mozart," playwright Wendy Wasserstein once lamented, "it's all over after age seven." Indeed, Mozart's considerable legend even today owes its existence largely to the barely credible notion of a mere boy who, in the words of his father " in his eighth year what one would expect only from a man of forty." Yet while the boy's wunderkind exploits retain a central position in discussions of his life and works, it is perhaps more interesting to view his youthful efforts as the stepping stones - and how gemlike they are - of a composer finding his way toward a mature and more fully realized means of expression.
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