OPPOSITE Mozart's mother Anna Maria came from a modest Salzburg family and was known for her cheerfulness good temper and thrifty housekeeping He wanted to write his own He started by improvising at the clavier creating something new out of a piece or an exercise that he had already learned Then he attempted to write out the music that he could hear building inside his head As the child showed his father the smudge of notes amongst various blots of ink that was his first composition Leopold remarked that the piece looked too difficult for anyone to play The boy explained That s why it's a concerto you must practice it until you get it right look here s how it goes And he proceeded to plunk out just enough notes so that his astonished father could understand After that first scribbled attempt by Wolfgang Leopold began notating his son's compositions in Nannerl's lesson notebook when the boy was six The earliest surviving record is called Andante for piano K Ia in C it is dated 1761 14
QUOTE Young Mozart is certainly a prodigy for his age and I am really extremely fond of him I have so good an opinion of the innate goodness of the young man that I hope that despite the adulation of his father he will not allow himself to be spoilt but will turn out an honorable man Italian poet Metastasio upon meeting Mozart in 1771 D
and contains only six short measures or bars of music Wolfgang began his storied career as a composer by imitating the exercises that his father wrote for the chil dren s lessons He soon figured out how to replicate the same forms and follow the same rules inherent in each composition quickly mastering the syntax and grammar of this unique language The six year old was not daunted by the task and curiously was not easily frustrated by the careful process of arranging notes together to form musical phrases For this young composer did not make many mistakes He knew what he needed to do to struc ture a piece of music so that other people would be able to study it as well Leopold was convinced that his son was a miracle a gift from God He was equally certain that it was his duty to let the world know about it WOLFGANG AMADE US MOZART 17
