“Your countenance … was so grave that many intelligent persons, seeing your talent so early developed and your face always serious and thoughtful, were concerned for the length of your life.”
Leopold Mozart, in a letter to his son, Wolfgang.
“He was always strumming on something—his hat, his watch fob, the table, the chair, as if they were the keyboard.”
Constanze Mozart, wife.
“This boy will consign us all to oblivion!”
Johann Hasse after hearing Ascanio in Alba, Milan, 1771.
“Too easy for children; too difficult for masters.”
Pianist and composer Artur Schnabel, of Mozart’s sonatas.
“A spiritual creation, in which the details as well as the whole are pervaded by one spirit and by the breath of one life.”
Goethe on Mozart’s operas.