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→Mozart's approach to composition: I changed the sentence from one affirming with complete certainty that his approach was "conscious" to one that acknowledges the possibility that his creative process ("experimenting... studying and reflecting") could also involve activities such as improvisation, in a stream-of-conscious way which is more of an intuitive method. It would not necessarily, at least, need to be structured or directed consciously. |
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[[File:Mozart (unfinished) by Lange 1782.jpg|250px|thumb|
Scholars have long studied how [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]] created his works. Nineteenth-century views on this topic were often based on a romantic, mythologizing conception of the process of composition. More recent scholarship addresses this issue by systematically examining authenticated letters and documents, and has arrived at rather different conclusions.
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==Mozart's approach to composition==
A surviving letter of Mozart's to his father [[Leopold Mozart|Leopold]] (31 July 1778) indicates that he considered composition an active process:<blockquote>You know that I plunge myself into music, so to speak—that I think about it all day long—that I like experimenting—studying—reflecting.</blockquote>One cannot quite determine from these words alone whether
==Sketches==
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==Use of a keyboard==
[[File:Portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 13 in Verona, 1770.jpg|thumb|1770 Verona portrait of Mozart, which shows the composer playing a [[harpsichord]]]]
Mozart sometimes used a keyboard to work out his musical thoughts. This can be deduced from his letters and other biographical material.<ref>This point is made by the authors of the [[Cornell University]] website "Mozart and the keyboard culture of his time", which also offers digital images of the letters in question. See [
<blockquote>
My room that I'm moving to is being prepared—I'm just off now to hire a keyboard, because I can't live there until that's been delivered, especially as I've got to write just now, and there isn't a minute to be lost.<ref>Cited from {{harvnb|Konrad|2006|p=102}}</ref></blockquote>
Konrad cites a similar letter written from Paris that indicates that Mozart didn't compose where he was staying, but visited another home to borrow the keyboard instrument there. Similar evidence is found in early biographies based on [[Constanze Mozart]]'s memories.<ref>{{
On the other hand, Mozart was in fact able to compose without a keyboard, according to various sources. German musicologist [[Hermann Abert]] cited Mozart's first biographer [[Franz Xaver Niemetschek]] in his book, who originally
==Incomplete works==
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===Improvisation as a time-saving device===
[[Volkmar Braunbehrens|Braunbehrens]] suggests that on at least one occasion, Mozart met a deadline by simply not writing down part of the music and improvising it instead while performing before the audience. This was evidently true of the [[Piano Concerto No. 26 (Mozart)|Piano Concerto in D, K. 537]], premiered 24 February 1788. In this work, the second movement opens with a solo passage for the pianist. The autograph (composer-written) score of the music gives the notes as follows:
{{Listen|type=music|filename=Mozart; Piano Concerto No. 26 in D Major, KV 537 "Coronation", 2. Larghetto.flac|title=Performance|description=By [[Lili Kraus]] in 1955}}
<score
\new PianoStaff <<
\new Staff \relative c'' {
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Braunbehrens and other scholars infer that Mozart could not conceivably have opened a movement with a completely unadorned melody line, and instead improvised a suitable accompaniment for the left hand. Similar passages occur throughout the concerto.
The work was published only in 1794, three years after Mozart's death, and the publisher [[Johann André]] found some other composer (whose identity is unknown) to fill in the missing passages; these interpolations have become the standard for performance.<ref>This section is based on {{harvtxt|Braunbehrens|1990|loc=5–7}}. For further discussion of the incomplete piano part in this concerto, see the [[Piano Concerto No. 26 (Mozart)#
==Mozart's memory==
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One may question whether, in these instances, Mozart remembered the entire keyboard part note-for-note. Given the independent testimony (above) for his ability to fill in gaps through improvisation, it would seem that Mozart could have done this as well in performing the violin sonatas.
Another instance of Mozart's powerful memory concerns his purported memorization and transcription of
==19th-century views==
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===The Rochlitz letter===
An important source for earlier conceptions concerning Mozart's composition method was the work of the early 19th century publisher [[Friedrich Rochlitz]]. He propagated anecdotes about Mozart that were long assumed authentic, but with more recent research are now widely doubted.{{sfn|Keefe|2006}} Among other things, Rochlitz published a letter,<ref>''[[Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung]]'' in 1815, vol. 17, pp. 561–566; {{harvnb|Konrad|2006|p=101}}</ref> purporting to be by Mozart but now considered fraudulent,<ref>The [[Cornell University]] website "Mozart and the keyboard culture of his time" offers an image of the original published version of the letter, as well as one of the salient reasons why it is considered fraudulent: it has Mozart saying "the letter I wrote to my father-in-law, to request the hand of my present wife"; [[Constanze Mozart]]'s father Fridolin Weber died before Mozart ever began courting her. See [
<blockquote>When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer; say traveling 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 abundantly. 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 the various instruments, &c.<ref>The letter is quoted as it appears in {{harvnb|Zaslaw|1994}}.</ref></blockquote>
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