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<blockquote>All this fires my soul, and provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost finished and complete in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once... When I proceed to write down my ideas, I take out of the bag of my memory, if I may use that phrase, what has previously been collected into it, in the way I have mentioned. For this reason, the committing to paper is done quickly enough, for everything is, as I said before, already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination.</blockquote>
Although it has been influential in historical conceptions of Mozart, the letter is no longer regarded as an accurate description of Mozart's compositional process.<ref>Konrad, 101</ref> On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that even if Rochlitz did forge the letter, he would have wanted to misrepresent what he knew of Mozart's actual compositional practice any more than he would have wanted to misrepresent his handwriting. Moreover, in direct support of Rochlitz's account, Mozart's first biographer, in collaboration with Mozart's wife, related a congruent description of how Mozart composed:▼
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<blockquote>Mozart wrote everything with a facility and rapidity, which perhaps at first sight could appear as carelessness or haste; and while writing he never came to the klavier. His imagination presented the whole work, when it came to him, clearly and vividly. ... In the quiet repose of the night, when no obstacle hindered his soul, the power of his imagination became incandescent with the most animated activity, and unfolded all the wealth of tone which nature had placed in his spirit ... Only the person who heard Mozart at such times knows the depth and the whole range of his musical genius: free and independent of all concern his spirit could soar in daring flight to the highest regions of art.<ref>Niemetschek, pp. 54–55</ref></blockquote>▼
▲<blockquote>Mozart wrote everything with a facility and rapidity, which perhaps at first sight could appear as carelessness or haste; and while writing he never came to the klavier. His imagination presented the whole work, when it came to him, clearly and vividly. ... In the quiet repose of the night, when no obstacle hindered his soul, the power of his imagination became incandescent with the most animated activity, and unfolded all the wealth of tone which nature had placed in his spirit ... Only the person who heard Mozart at such times knows the depth and the whole range of his musical genius: free and independent of all concern his spirit could soar in daring flight to the highest regions of art.<ref>Niemetschek, pp. 54–55</ref></blockquote>
▲Moreover, the contents of the Rochlitz letter were relayed by such authorities as the mathematician [[Henri Poincaré]] and the musician [[Albert Lavignac]]<ref>Albert Lavignac, ''L'éducation musicale'', p. 290</ref> and had a great influence on the popular view of Mozart's compositional process. And even as late as 1952 a volume of collected papers from a symposium on the creative process reproduce the letter, albeit with a warning that "the authenticity of this letter remains in doubt".<ref>Brewster Ghiseli (editor), ''The Creative Process: A Symposium'', University of California Press, 1952, p. 34</ref>
==Notes==
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