------Wild Ideas #8 is published by Henry Grynnsten. The PDF version can also be found at efanzines.com. Letter of Comment: mail [email protected]. January 2021. ------Editorial The idea of the “genius” is an antiquated one that doesn’t take account of modern research on expertise, but is however still used in the humanities, for example in literary studies and music history. With “genius” you can explain anything ex nihilo, since it’s kind of equivalent to the miracle. William Shakespeare, for example, is described as a genius who appeared out of nowhere, wrote the greatest literature that ever existed when he was in London, then disappeared into the countryside, where he wrote nothing. And he did this without the least trace of himself in the plays, it is claimed, it was pure invention. But how can you create great literature without using your own experience and feelings at all? Another example of a so-called genius in the arts is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was already fully developed when he popped out of the womb, descended out of the sky like an incarnate god – but again, how can you write something that moves people at the age of five if you have no experience and your brain is still 20 years from being fully mature (25 is the age when the whole brain of a human stops developing physically)? This view of art is of something disconnected from people, their experience and struggles. Many agree that Mozart wasn’t an innovator – but being innovative is part and parcel of being a genius. It’s in the very definition of the term. This means that he wasn’t even a genius in the ordinary sense of the word. He’s just a genius by convention, we just like to call him that. Because we like miracles. But he could play the harpsichord when he was five, couldn’t he? Well, there are any number of Korean five-year-olds who can play the piano very well, are they geniuses too? The hype around Mozart is unbelievable and contains obvious semi-religious elements. Listening to Mozart while pregnant can supposedly increase your child’s IQ. It all began with Wolfgang’s father Leopold, who started the hype, and was continued by the widow and biographers close to her, then music historians and ultimately even the Nazis. Then there are the many signs that music written by him was actually written by others. Some of this is now certain and generally accepted by the authorities. Some have whispered that first his father, then possibly his sister, wrote at least some of his music, and not only that, but that the Mozart family stole music by others and pasted Wolfgang’s name on the compositions. There are whole lists of works that were previously falsely attributed to him. Since we know that works were falsely attributed to Mozart, it’s just a question of degree. But people become very upset by this. Even though not a single note of the music is changed, many don’t want their beliefs changed about how it was written – their beliefs about the genius, about the miracle. That is why this topic is highly controversial and will cause a lot of anger. However, I’m not taking a definite “anti-establishment” stance, just asking questions, because the facts of Mozart’s life so readily invite another reading of events. I freely admit that all this could just be fantasy, but there are many clues indicating that there were several other hands behind the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

- Henry Grynnsten.

1 The Wizard of Mozart Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!1

Pianist Joyce Hatto collapsed over the keyboard soon after she started playing during a concert at the Festival Hall in 1976. And with that her career was over. The story is told in the documentary “The Great Piano Scam”.2 Hatto withdrew, and with that the story could be over and nobody would have given another thought to who this competent but average pianist was. The world of classical music is full of pianists. But towards the end of her life she suddenly bloomed to a degree that shot her up to the status of one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. She started making a series of brilliant recordings in a shed in the garden. “The Indomitable Champion of Liszt” wrote The Guardian. The Boston Globe thought she was “the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of ”. Classical music magazines were enthusiastic. This wasn’t without precedent. The great pianist Glenn Gould withdrew from public performances in 1964, and spent the rest of his life up to 1982 making outstanding recordings, alone in the studio with audio engineers as his only audience. But after Hatto’s death came the doubts. Was it possible that someone who suffered from cancer could have made so many brilliant recordings – in a shed in the garden? Classical music experts soon discovered that every last album had been copied outright from the records of other pianists. Over 100 CD’s worth of music, produced by Hatto’s husband William Barrington-Coupe, were fake. There wasn’t even any shed in the garden. How could the experts in the field have been so mistaken, even if the husband had manipulated the original material? For example, Barrington-Coupe slowed down the recording of Paul Kim’s performance of Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus by Olivier Messiaen with 2.4 percent,3 and nobody noticed anything until the scandal broke. 2.4 percent, is that really all it takes to fool the classical music world? If a scam like this has happened once, it should have happened several times. And it has. Another case is Mamoru Samuragochi, who for 18 years composed so brilliantly that he was called “Japan’s Beethoven”. But in reality the music was composed by a professor Takashi Niigaki.4 He was just one case of musical fraud perpetrated in our digital age. The point is not to say that this is a major crime – which can be debated – but that it happens and that even experts can be fooled. If you go back in time, to a time before advanced audio software that can compare CD recordings, before the internet for research, before millions of eyes that can spot anomalies online, to a time with unsigned handwritten music sheets, when time has washed over the events and obliterated many traces, then fraud and deception should have been even easier to accomplish and even harder to detect. And it was and it is. There are numerous examples of falsely attributed music from the “classical” era, and often the only thing we have to go on is sheet music, sometimes without a name on it. Is it possible that there could be cases of musical fraud even among the greatest composers? Serious researchers are now questioning Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself. Dr Pei-Gwen South, possibly (not surprisingly in this context) a pseudonym, writes that

It is high time that scholars and Mozartians take off the rose-coloured glasses and view the facts without reference to an image or ideal of the composer which is not only illusory but fraudulent … and predictably receives heavy criticism and ridicule. One commentator calls the article “drivel” and the author a “crank”.5 Insults and invectives aren’t arguments, but this is of course the natural result if you question established truths, however rational you are, whatever solid facts you present (not necessarily defending Dr Pei-Gwen South).

2 The ideas presented in this essay might be based on misunderstandings, misconceptions and shallow research – for various reasons I can not research Mozart or his music at any depth, one being that it would take an enormous amount of time, another that I’m not a musicologist – but they are the result of rational questioning. What I have found just by looking at Mozart’s biography are anomalies and weird facts that could point to a different story to the one we’ve been told. It can be difficult to discern what is rational questioning and what is pure conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories make outlandish claims and involve hundreds, thousands or more people who work in the dark for years, sometimes hundreds of years, to gather power and money and steer the course of politics and history in a certain direction. Questioning Mozart is in my view not a conspiracy theory. There was no conspiracy surrounding him, it is just, as this article claims, a case of musical forgery – the degree of which is to be determined, it could well have been minor. It consisted of hype and presentation of music not written by him as written by him, perpetrated by himself, his father, his sister and after his death by his widow. That’s it. The seeds of hype from Mozart’s lifetime then continued their natural growth where they had been planted in the culture; they grew from the shape they had been given from the beginning simply by people following the example or pattern set in the second half of the 18th century. The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was never analyzed critically enough, which is due to the culture surrounding classical music and the humanities, as well as to an antiquated conception of “the genius”, which is a kind of miracle. As in the case of Shakespeare, there are also huge financial interests at stake. Record and concert companies live on the idea of Mozart as a prodigy and musical genius, it is essential to catch especially ordinary (non-expert, non-musician) people’s interest and get them to buy CD’s and tickets.6 One of the people who started this is conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989), who

… turned classical music into a cash cow for himself and his partners, Mozart into a commodity for sale by the boxset and Salzburg into an advertising hoarding for his enterprises.7

Even if you’re not that into classical music, you can always enjoy a Mozartkugel – pistachio, marzipan and nougat in a little chocolate ball wrapped with an idealized picture of the composer,8 a little piece of heaven dropped down like manna straight into your mouth. Now Mozart has been raised to a level that is no longer human, he is said to be a genius who surpasses everyone else; according to some there’s Mozart and then the rest; he is a god. People like Alfred Einstein (1880–1952) and Bruno Walter (1876–1962) “preached that every note of Mozart was an ineffable, celestial perfection”.9 Of course you are allowed to think so, but the risk is that it clouds your judgment and ability to critically analyze the origins of the music. It’s gone so far that the music of this semi-human being is considered to be healing. Even mice benefit from Mozart’s music. In a study at the University of Utah, music by Mozart was played to mice, who were also given pain medication. This combination reduced mouse pain by more than 90 percent, and inflammation by 70 percent.10 So the music is somehow outside of the human world. By listening to Mozart you’re also supposed to be able to increase your IQ – this is the so-called Mozart effect. Actress Helena Bonham Carter has said that her child became “unbelievably smart” after it listened to Mozart and other classical music in utero.11 At one time, every newborn in Tennessee and Georgia were to be given a CD with Mozart magic music to increase the child’s intelligence, and “Florida’s legislature passed a law requiring that classical music be played daily in state-funded childcare and educational programs.”12 Behind all this fantasy is of course plain boring reality, and that reality includes Mozart. However, many have a hard time accepting this. Italian musicians and musicologists Luca Bianchini and Anna Trombetta are among the serious researchers who have tried to get at the naked truth behind Mozart the myth and written several books about the subject, for example Mozart. La costruzione di un genio (2019) and the two-part Mozart. La caduta

3 degli dei of around 1,000 pages (2016, 2017) – a third part is yet to be published13 – in which they have identified 2,500 inaccuracies.14 Here is one they have pointed out: When the Mozart family was in London in 1764–1765, the eight-year old genius wrote simple little compositions filled with errors, in line with what a musical child of that age would be able to compose. At the same time, however, he wrote his first symphony, Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major.15 A skeptic should already begin questioning things. How is it possible to write such childish compositions and a complete symphony at the same time? Joe Meerdter writes that it’s probable that his father Leopold “transcribed” the symphony for his son.16 You might ask yourself how that kind of trickery affected such a small child. If it is true, it means that Wolfgang grew up accepting this kind of behavior as something completely normal.

Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni (unconfirmed): The Boy Mozart (1763) Commissioned by Leopold Mozart, so certainly idealized

An anecdote from after Wolfgang’s death illustrates how events can be interpreted in a wholly different light if you change perspective. Leopold and Johann Andreas Schachtner, a musician friend, “were looking at a blotchy effort by the young Wolfgang to write down music”.

“At first we laughed at what seemed such pure gibberish, but his father then began to observe the most important matter, the notes and music,” Schachtner recounted. “He stared long at the sheet, and then tears, tears of joy and wonder, fell from his eyes. ‘It is so very difficult that no one could play it,’ Leopold said. And Wolfgang replied: ‘That’s why it’s a concerto. You must practice it till you can get it right.””17

This is supposed to support the idea that Wolfgang wrote keyboard concertos when he was 7 or 8. An alternative take on the anecdote is the simple one of reading what it says: Schachtner saw gibberish because it was gibberish. He didn’t say that he saw notes and music, just that Leopold did or claimed that he did. It’s absurd to assume that an experienced musician should have to stare long at a sheet of paper before he sees notes. Leopold’s tears could just as well have been sentimentality over a memory of the boy, or something else. Maybe this was the beginning of Leopold “interpreting” his son’s meaningless scribblings and writing it out neatly. Because we know from the anecdote that young

4 Wolfgang had written some blotchy gibberish. We also know that he is supposed to have written masterpieces when young. We also can be fairly certain that Leopold wrote some of his son’s early works. Leopold might have rationalized his “transcribing” by telling himself that he saw the music in Wolfgang’s “first draft”. Child prodigies as a rule don’t become adult geniuses. They can practice and become expert in narrow fields by following the rules, wanting to please their parents or other adults. What is needed for true genius, however, is being original. And it isn’t possible to program a child to become creative, professor of management and psychology Adam Grant says.18 South Koreans are obsessed with the genius cult and try to foster their offspring to become prodigies. Kim Ung-yong was one of them. He had an IQ of 210. A writer remembers him “solving complicated math problems and speaking foreign languages on television. Later, he graduated from a local college and became an ordinary office worker.” When the children can’t live up to expectations, they and adults around them may resort to fabrication and plagiarism.19 There are sometimes doubts about the abilities of child prodigies, for example with the painter Marla Olmstead20 Forcing early and speedy development doesn’t necessarily translate to robust adult proficiency. In 1772, one Louis de Visme wrote in a letter that “... if I may judge by the Musick I heard of his [Wolfgang’s] composition in the Orchestra, he is one further instance of early Fruit, which is more extraordinary than excellent.”21 That has the sound of a tiger dad child prodigy. It takes 10,000 hours of focused practice to become an expert, according to research by among others Anders Ericsson, that Malcolm Gladwell popularized in his successful book Outliers22 – although there is more to it than that, as Ericsson points out in his own book.23 Even Mozart had to spend 10,000 hours on his art before he could achieve anything. He is not an exception and cannot have been a genius from birth, as his father wanted to claim. Today we understand more about child development than at that time. Anders Ericsson is doubtful of the fact the Mozart could compose as a child. The scientist has never found any natural talents of that kind during his research stretching over decades. All people who have accomplished great things have done so after intense and prolonged practice. Ericsson writes that “... the claims of Mozart composing at six and eight years old are almost certainly overstated.” Leopold probably wrote those works that “... Wolfgang ‘composed’ at eleven.” He probably didn’t write any serious works before the age of 15 or 16, after a decade of serious training.24 In the light of this modern research, anecdotes such as the above take on a different meaning, as well as the “genius” concept that is still used in literary studies and music history. This antiquated conception has made it possible to do sloppy research on figures such as William Shakespeare and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and to casually dismiss critical questions and rational arguments. Using the word “genius”, even otherwise serious academics can claim that Shakespeare was such a genius that not one word he wrote had any connection with his life, or that Mozart composed masterpieces when he was eight. But suppose that Mozart really did write masterpieces when he was very young – his first composition is alleged to have been written when he was five.25 This means that he couldn’t have composed music that expressed feelings of any depth, grounded in his own experience, for the simple reason that he didn’t have any experience. Also, the human brain takes almost two further decades to become fully mature, so he couldn’t have had any possibility of expressing complex emotions, quite aside from the fact that as a person he was childish into adulthood. The conclusion is that the music would just have been the result of some mechanical ability devoid of deeper value. Compare this with piano playing. Who would you rather listen to, a Korean five-year-old child prodigy or Glenn Gould playing the same piece? There is some kind of fascination listening to that child, but surely there is a difference between it and Glenn Gould. And the major difference is experience as well as intellectual and emotional maturity coming through in the music or interpretation. Literary studies, music history and probably other disciplines in the humanities simply don’t seem

5 to have absorbed modern research on expertise and creativity. If you look objectively at the facts of even such a towering figure as Mozart, you soon find facts that have been there all the time, but that have been ignored. In 1768, the 12-year-old composed La finta semplice. Joseph II had said that “the young boy should write an opera”, and who says no to an emperor, to the Holy Roman Emperor? But when the opera was supposed to be performed, Leopold and Wolfgang ran into trouble. Other composers, as well as the theater director, said that it couldn’t have been written by a 12-year-old, and that it was his father who was the real creator. The orchestra revolted, and the project ran aground.26 Anna Trombetta says in a video on the manuscript of the so-called Paris Symphony, now in Regensburg, that there is another name barely legible under Mozart’s, perhaps “Luchesi”.27 Leopold and Wolfgang did meet composer Andrea Luchesi (1741–1801) in Italy in 1771, when Wolfgang would have been 15, and received a harpsichord concerto from him.28 There are now long lists of works previously attributed to Mozart, but that are no longer thought to have been written by him. Wikipedia recounts the causes of why this came to be; Mozart had a habit of copying other musicians “for his own study purposes” and Mozart “would sometimes include the work of another – usually young and struggling – composer in one of his regular symphony concerts”.29 In another context, and today, habits like these could easily be read in a less than flattering way. Ruth Halliwell writes in her book The Mozart Family about the little genius’s father Leopold that “... he was quite prepared to lie to achieve his end ... he also taught his son to lie in certain circumstances”.30 One small example of how this worked is found in a letter that he wrote to his wife.

… Leopold said he was ill and had to stay in Milan, but in the corner he wrote to his wife that he was actually well. He asked her to cut that piece of paper after reading it. The wife forgot to do so, and so we know about the deception against the archbishop.31

So Leopold was quite prepared to lie, and the letters were meant to present something that wasn’t necessarily true to people other than the recipient. And apparently, the whole family was skilled at forgery. Writes Wolfgang to his sister Maria Anna (1751–1829), also called Marianne and Nannerl:

To return to your good wishes, I must say that I suspected it was H Martinelli who wrote your Italian greetings, but because you’re always such a clever girl and were able to arrange things so skilfully by adding H Martinelli’s best wishes in the same handwriting beneath your own Italian congratulations, it was impossible for me to tell the difference ...32

But how did Nannerl acquire this skill at copying handwriting? Obviously you become good at something if you do it a lot, simple as that. This means that Nannerl must have spent a lot of time copying the handwriting of other people. And of course you can also imitate the musical notation that someone else has written. As it was Leopold who taught her, it makes sense that she copied his handwriting. If this is so, it might be difficult to distinguish hers from his from what is attributed to Wolfgang. From the start, Leopold Mozart promoted the image of Wolfgang Amadeus as a genius, an infant prodigy, and toured around Europe with him and Nannerl. Of course it’s convenient for us to be critical of Leopold for his methods, but he lived in a hard society and you had to use all available methods to make it. And exaggerated PR and hype is not exactly unknown to us today, popular musicians not excluded. But there is a thin line between hyping and faking. You have to fake it till you make it, but you might not be able to shake that fake once you’ve made it, and be stuck in it. The fact that both of Leopold’s children could play instruments very well can of course hardly be explained away. According to a contemporary source, Wolfgang played “marvelously”, but Nannerl was “masterly”.33 In a review in 1763, the Augsburger Intelligenz wrote

6 Imagine an eleven-year-old girl, performing the most difficult sonatas and concertos of the greatest composers, on the harpsichord or fortepiano, with precision, with incredible lightness, with impeccable taste. It was a source of wonder to many.34

But it’s another question entirely if they both were great composers, and that from a young age. Remember that you can’t program a child to become creative. Leopold wasn’t a musical genius, so they were possibly not born with any ability greater than any other child’s. You can cultivate children to become piano virtuosi – just look at South Korea, China, other Asian countries, and tiger moms from elsewhere – but you can’t cultivate children to become great composers, for which you have to be creative. Yet we know that Nannerl wrote great music from a very good source – Wolfgang himself. He wrote in a letter “My dear sister! I’m amazed to discover that you can compose so delightfully.”35 In the letter about his sister’s forging skills mentioned earlier, he wrote “I said to Papa at once: Oh! If only I were as clever and wise as she is!”36 The first quote is quite strange in and of itself. What does he mean by “discover”? He must have known about his big sister’s skills since he was a toddler. If she was a great composer, which Wolfgang says himself, then for some time she must have been ahead of him, since she was almost four and a half years older and modern research by Ericsson shows that you need a decade before you are able to compose serious work. She must have been very skilled at 15, 16, when Wolfgang was just 11 or 12, and of course he knew about it. Originally, Leopold wanted to show off both his children, but it seems that it was mostly the little boy that awakened the interest of people. Boys and men at that time, and now, fit better into the hero and genius cult, boys can grow up to be great masters. Girls, on the other hand, were supposed to get married at a suitable age and become mothers. People in the 18th century just weren’t familiar with many female geniuses. As Grove Music Online writes, “from 1769 onwards she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent on travels with her brother” even though Leopold described her as “one of the most skilful pianists in Europe”.37 It seems as if Leopold voluntarily waived the possibility of an extra income, which is strange, an anomaly. Even if she wouldn’t have been as adored as Wolfgang, certainly she could have earned some money. Wikipedia lists 33 female composers born from 10 years before and 10 years after Nannerl’s birth (1751).38 The number of performers must have been much higher. The reason why she was pushed away from the light must be explained better than that it was because of Leopold’s sense of propriety. He spends many years raising and meticulously educating his daughter to become an excellent musician, fully aware that it was all to be for nothing as soon as she turned 18. In that case, he would have thought like this: “I have spent all my time making my daughter one of the most skillful pianists in Europe [which at that time would have meant the world]. Now that people say she’s masterly I will throw it all away and forbid her to play. Righto!” Imagine spending all your time for nearly two decades on a project, and just when you’ve achieved your goal … you just throw it away. And you knew this would happen when you started! Then Nannerl spends the next 15 years neither playing nor composing nor being a wife and mother. Surely Leopold would have seen to it that she got married within a couple of years if that was his plan. She even fell in love with someone, the army captain and member of the war council Franz d’Ippold, but her father didn’t want her to become the wife and mother that he had wanted. Still, d’Ippold remained friends with Nannerl – and Leopold.39 Another anomaly is that none of the masterpieces written by Nannerl have survived. If she was the sister of the greatest musical genius of all time, wouldn’t there have been a great interest in caring for and spreading her works as well? Wouldn’t at least some pieces have survived? But no, there’s not a trace. Not one note. Not even in her own music book, the so-called “Nannerl Notenbuch”. This reminds one of the same kind of phenomenon that surrounds William Shakespeare: not one manuscript page of his has survived. This emptiness has to be explained.

7 Professor Martin Jarvis of Charles Darwin University spent five years together with a US forensic document specialist and an Australian police forensic scientist to analyze the handwriting of the Mozart family. He discovered that Nannerl wrote music that her brother then played. Said Jarvis, “We have only just opened the crack in the door. Maria Anna has always been this mysterious piece in history. What else we can find? Who knows?”40 If we assume that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wasn’t a particularly brilliant composer, even though he was a great musician, then he would have depended first on his father Leopold and then his sister for his music. In addition, there is evidence that the family used the work of others. This might have included borrowing, plagiarizing, buying, and procuring music by various other means. There are too many suspicious passages in Mozart’s music to even recount here.41 A few examples will suffice. Scholars now agree that Symphony No. 37, previously thought to be by Mozart, was in fact written by Michael Haydn (1737–1806), younger brother of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). Cognoscenti, musicologists and classical musicians were clueless and could not distinguish Haydn from Mozart, and probably thought that this was incontrovertibly music by the greatest genius of them all – until 1907, when the truth was found out.42 It’s been said that Wolfgang “probably copied out the score in order to learn from it”.43 It’s strange that he had to copy it since it’s claimed that he had photographic memory. He was said to have written down the whole of Miserere by Gregorio Allegri from memory after having heard it just once.44 Wolfgang “just wrote a new slow introduction and tinkered with the wind parts” and pasted his name on No. 37. His greatest symphony, No. 41, the so-called Jupiter, “has a stunning last movement that is a masterpiece of counterpoint.” But the four note theme comes from Haydn’s Symphony No. 13.45 Mozart, whichever Mozart that was, took other pieces for the Jupiter from Michael Haydn’s symphonies Nos. 23, 28, and 39.46 Anton Eberl (1765–1807) was a composer whose works were often “mistaken” as Mozart’s. “Even more surprising was the documented fact that there was no protest from Mozart against the use of his name on Eberl’s compositions.” If he had any pride in himself, or if he considered himself to be more talented than everyone else, he would never have accepted to have music by others attributed to him. Eberl was a friend of Mozart’s, and too timid to protest, but he finally published a notice in a newspaper claiming his authorship of the pieces.47 The mystery as to why Wolfgang allowed this to go on has to be explained, and one explanation is that he wanted it to go on. Some believe that Mozart “often wrote out complete works at one sitting” that “he must have been carrying around in his head for days, weeks or months”.48 This means that he walked around idle for a long time, and then suddenly threw down a masterpiece straight out of his head. A simpler explanation could be that the scores were copied, from other works or from earlier, messier drafts. Then there is no need for the speculation that he carried around the music in his head and did nothing – at least didn’t work on the complete work in question – for days, weeks or months, and why his work was so tidy on the page. If Mozart was such a unique musical genius, he should have been innovative and breaking new creative ground. But according to Norman Lebrecht, composer Pierre Boulez stated that “Mozart was a regressive force who added nothing to the development of music”. Lebrecht continues: “... Mozart pushed no musical form forward beyond existing borders. He was conformist to a fault, a conservative composer.”49 That doesn’t exactly tally with him being a genius, if Boulez is at least partially right. A genius is someone who breaks new ground. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, genius “involves originality, creativity, and the ability to think and work in areas not previously explored”.50 Mozart did not go “beyond existing borders”, if we are to believe Lebrecht. One explanation for this lack of innovation is that Wolfgang (as well as Nannerl) never was a regular student with a serious teacher; almost his only teacher was his father, but “Leopold never studied composition and was dismissed from University”.51 And as described above, you can make a child a great musician, but you can’t make him or her a great composer.

8 Mozart was often ill as a child and was also affected by smallpox, which could perhaps explain some of his personality traits, and he died at just 35, from unknown causes. Clearly his health wasn’t the best. He didn’t look like he does on the idealized images, which Tom Service points out in the BBC documentary “The Joy of Mozart”, so even our visual image of him is wrong. He was short – 162 cm (5'4")52 – and had a disproportionately large head.53

Unknown: Bologna Mozart (1777) 1777 copy of a lost original, considered to be an authentic portrait

Throughout his life, the composer was addicted to scatological humor, joking about feces like a small child, “... I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin”, he wrote to a cousin, and it wasn’t in anger but intended as a funny joke.54 Again and again he returns to poop in his letters. In 10,5 % of 371 preserved letters there is scatological content,55 and it is unknown how many have been destroyed for this very reason. In his diaries he noted the toilet habits of those closest to him and who farted when and where. Characteristically, he named one of his compositions “Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber” (“Lick my ass really good and clean”) … but it has turned out that it was actually written by amateur composer Wenzel Trnka von Krzowitz (1739–1791).56 Once again it’s said that the piece was attributed to Mozart “by mistake”. Here we go again, another one of those “mistakes”.57 You might also ask yourself why the world’s greatest musical genius, who is supposed to have been able to improvise a piece as easily as Joe Blow writes a text message, and had such an incredibly sophisticated musical taste, used a piece by an amateur composer. Just to add scatological lyrics. Why didn’t he throw together something brilliant in 10 minutes? At the level he is supposed to have been at, he would have been able to do that easily. So that doesn’t sound like a great genius, and you would have to assume a radical split in Wolfgang’s personality to accept it: on the one hand an underdeveloped personality because of stunted psychological development – perhaps partly because of physical illnesses – stuck in childhood, and on

9 the other hand a sublime composer. Or as Peter Shaffer, scriptwriter for Miloš Forman’s movie Amadeus (1984), said, “... his letters read like something written by an eight-year-old. At breakfast he’d be writing this puerile, foul-mouthed stuff to his cousin; by evening, he’d be completing a masterpiece….”58 You might think that it sounds like two different people. Maybe because it was two different people? The simplest explanation is often the correct one. Otherwise, you have to explain how you on the one hand are emotionally underdeveloped, on the other hand emotionally mature at the same time, or one at breakfast and another in the evening. We also know that Wolfgang supposedly composed sublime pieces when he was a child, when he certainly, as any child, wasn’t fully developed. His puerile behavior has led to speculation that he suffered from Tourette syndrome or some other neurological disorder. There are many examples of the strange behavior of Wolfgang. He invented nonsense words and infantile nicknames for people like Hinkity Honky, Rozka-Pumpa, Nàtschibinìtschibi, Runzifunzi and Dinimininimi.59 He was very vulgar and used names like duchess Ass-dropping (Arschbömerl), countess Pee-well (Brunzgern), princess Muck-smelling (Riechzumtreck), Bejeweled Fart (Schmuckfözgen) and Blackshitter (Blackscheisser).60 It goes on and on and on. He couldn’t sit still, he fidgeted and moved repetitively, jumped around, pretended to play on furniture and clothes. Once he got tired of playing and “began to leap over tables and chairs, miaow like a cat, and turn somersaults like an unruly boy”.61 Wolfgang was so clumsy that Constance had to help him cut his food.62 Of course he never cut an onion for cooking, but he couldn’t even cut the food on the plate in front of him. It seems a little strange that a man who is so incredibly clumsy with a knife and fork that he can’t cut a potato had no problems at all writing notes with a quill and ink. “Beethoven, famous for his messy (and at times indecipherable) sketches ... a chaotic mess for scholars to untangle. Compare and contrast to Mozart’s (much tidier) work ....” Classic fm writes and only creates more questions.63 You would think that someone who couldn’t even cut his food with a knife and fork would have difficulty writing such neat notes, while his sister would have been better at this. Nannerl wrote of her brother that

This same being who, considered as an artist, had reached the highest stage of development even from his very earliest years, remained to the end of his life completely childish in every other aspect of existence. Never, until he died, did he learn to exercise the most elementary forms of self‐ control.64

He lacked the ability to hold on to money and died broke. You might ask yourself what he spent his money on. The explanation is said to have been expensive tastes, gambling debts, that he was gullible and gave loans to all and sundry. New documents have however shown that he made 10,000 florins a year, placing him among the top five percent of wage-earners in Vienna at the time. But researchers “were unable to prove lingering suspicions that gambling debts took a big bite out of Mozart’s earnings”.65 So where did the money go, since he died broke? Another question that has puzzled many is why Mozart moved so often. It has been explained that people moved house more often then than now,66 which doesn’t sound very convincing. An alternative idea is that people who move often are people who don’t want to be found. Maybe there were people who were looking for him, for example because they had some claim on him, and maybe not just for money. His wife Constanze was according to herself used to receiving “angry visitors” while her husband was hiding in some corner of the apartment. At other times you could find the greatest musical genius of all time hiding “in a small hollow in the hedge furthest down in the garden”.67 One person who didn’t haunt him was Italian composer Antonio Salieri (1750–1825). This is another case of pure invention growing up around Mozart. Salieri was supposed to hate Wolfgang’s guts because of his talent, plotted against and eventually poisoned his rival. It was Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) who started this strand of fakery in the Mozart tapestry with his play Mozart and Salieri

10 (1831), which was the basis of an opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This slander was continued in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus (1979) which was then adapted into the movie Amadeus (1984) by Miloš Forman. So if Mozart is the good boy-god, he must of course have a nemesis, the Italian Salieri – and we all know how treacherous and scheming the Italians are. In reality, they even collaborated on a piece of music, which was discovered in 2015. Or at least, it bears the names “Salieri” and “Mozart” in some kind of code.68 Again this secrecy, the names written in code. Of course there are plenty of eccentric people who have been brilliant in their fields. But another interpretation is that Wolfgang was actually affected by illnesses during his childhood and couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations of being a genius – even if he could play more or less virtuosically – and that the myth around him is just that, a myth, that over time has grown to unreasonable proportions. And that to some degree it was his father and sister who wrote his compositions. Nannerl was very disciplined, obedient and controlled, something that perhaps was necessary or came naturally considering the other child. She wasn’t sickly or childish and didn’t have any interest in scatological humor. From an early age she must have realized what had to be done to keep the family together and pull in the money. She probably felt a great responsibility to take care of her beloved little brother and did not want to let her dear father down. Many people in a similar situation would have done the same thing. Children with disabled siblings become more empathetic and responsible, and love their brother or sister with special needs more than is usual in families. Seeing the struggles of their parents, they feel they can not make mistakes and have to always be perfect.69 This seems to fit very well with Nannerl. The fact that Marianne didn’t get married until the age of 33 is one of the mysteries with Mozart’s sister. Nobody knows why it took so long. The same goes for her firstborn, that she for some mysterious reason handed over to her father, who was to take care of the child from a very early age, and whom she only got back once Leopold died. People have thought that he wanted to foster another boy genius. But if the scenario given here is true, he knew that Wolfgang wasn’t a genius, so maybe he wanted to have one more go at it. There has been speculation that Nannerl needed to take care of her stepchildren, as if this could be a sufficient reason for a mother to give away her child. Surely this capable woman would have been able to take care of another child, especially since she had servants. Another explanation could be that she needed time to compose immortal masterpieces. That might be the reason why she, under pressure from her father, gave up her love Franz d’Ippold, then could only marry late in life (for that time), and finally had to give up her child. A woman who is so devoted that she can hand over her child to her father can of course accept writing music that is handed over to her brother, without the least demand to receive any fame for herself. And at this time, Mozart wasn’t yet the demi-god he became later. It is known that the father, the son and the hidden spirit kept sending music back and forth between themselves. For instance, Leopold paid to copy Wolfgang’s music to send to her. Or was it Nannerl’s music that he copied and sent to Wolfgang, a much more sensible expense? Why would it have been so important that she got Wolfgang’s music that he would pay to have it copied for her? It was he who had decided that she should withdraw from performing and become a full-time wife and mother, but here he is sending her music. And she was not a mother since she gave away her child. These are mixed messages. Mozart wrote about the Haffner Symphony in a letter after his father had sent the work to him in 1783: “My new Haffner symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect ...”.70 What exactly did he mean by this? This is another example of Wolfgang not using his photographic memory. And this was music that he was supposed to have written himself and worked on for a long time. Or carried around in his head for months, then to suddenly write down. Did the music disappear from his head once he had put it down on paper?

11 Compare Wolfgang’s quote about his sister and the symphony in the original:

Cara sorella mia! Ich habe mich recht verwundert, daß du so schön Componiren kanst ...71

Die Neue Haffner Sinfonie hat mich ganz surpreniert – dann ich wusste kein Wort mehr davon; – die muß gewis guten Effect machen ...72

There are also mysterious messages in his letters;

Pray try to find the “Art of Ciphering” which you copied out, but I have lost it, and know nothing about it. So pray do write it out again for me, with some other copies of sums, and send them to me here. [April 21, 1770.]

Do not, I entreat, forget about THE ONE OTHER, where no other can ever be. You understand me, I know. [Aug. 31, 1771.]

I hope that you kept your promise and went last Sunday to D——N——[in cipher]. [Oct. 28, 1772.]

I entreat you not to forget, before your journey, ... to perform your promise, that is, to make a certain visit. I have my reasons for this. Pray present my kind regards in that quarter, but in the most impressive and tender manner … [Dec. 28, 1774.]73

This shows that they expected their letters to be read by others, and that their letters contained secret messages. Of course these passages could be about anything but music, but the Mozarts did use a secret code “to keep politically sensitive comments from the eyes of the censors”.74 Ah yes, you couldn’t forget about all the political activism and views that the Mozarts are so famous for. Another circumstance that could be added to maybe support this idea is that women play an important role in Mozart operas. “Indeed, many of Mozart’s operatic heroines act with courage and resourcefulness that equal and sometimes surpass those of the men around them ...” Uri Golomb notes.75 Anat Sharon, researcher at the Open University of Israel, says that “the depictions of women in Mozart’s operas are deeper, broader and more interesting than the depictions of men” while men “tend to be rather confused.” In The Marriage of Figaro, the servant Susanna is, behind the scenes, “an intelligent woman who knows how to read, write and play music.”76 All of Mozart’s women, from Zerlina and the Queen of the Night to Despina, are the subject and not the object of a story, Kristi Brown-Montesano thinks.77 Wolfgang has been described as “perhaps the first feminist composer”.78 Composer Semyon Bychkov thinks that Così fan tutte is the first feminist opera in history.79 Many think that Mozart’s music is feminine. On a forum for classical music, a user writes that “... Mozart in general sounds very feminine the vast majority of the time”.80 John Allison says that “Compared with, say, Beethoven’s music, Mozart’s was in simplistic terms a feminine art” and it is “manifestly clear” that he was influenced by women.81 Of course, neither Wolfgang nor Nannerl wrote the librettos themselves, but they chose them and worked with the librettists. In The Marriage of Figaro, the male character Cherubino is dressed as a woman. In The Magic Flute, both Prince Tamino and Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, are initiated into the order of Isis and Osiris, a reference to Freemasonry, that Wolfgang was involved with. Elizabeth Aldworth is reported to have been the first woman accepted into the organization, which took place in 1718 at the latest.82 Both Wolfgang and Leopold became members in 1785, and their names are recorded in contemporary documents, but according to the expertise it’s unlikely that a woman could have become a member in Austria at that time.83

12 What can be drawn from this is, however, that both father and son were involved with a secret society, and that it is another sign of how secrecy was woven into the story of this family. Wolfgang had many interests, not only ceremonies and rituals in secret societies. The Magic Flute was so arduous to write for the composer that he supposedly collapsed, exhausted. This goes against the image that he carried around the music in his head for months and then just wrote it down in his neat handwriting, so different from Beethoven’s struggles that can be seen on the page. Actually Wolfgang spent a lot of time during its composition in a gazebo and often drank champagne with his companions.84 But the opera is said to have been a collaborative work anyway.85 He also had a lot of time for horseback riding, to do card tricks, to play billiards and to bowl, fence, and play charades, when he didn’t devote himself to his dogs, cats and birds.86 You might think that he should sit and compose for most of the time, considering how much he managed during his short life. In a letter he does claim that he composes for up to around 7 hours a day.87 According to his letter, the schedule looks like this:

Mozart’s daily schedule 6:00 wakes up/already done with his hairdresser 7:00 fully dressed 7:00-9:00 composes 9:00-13.00 gives lessons 13:00-18:00 eating 18:00-21:00 at a concert or writes 21:00-23:00 with Constanze 23:00-1:00 writes

He first says that he is already done with his hairdresser at 6:00, but at the end he says that he gets up at 6:00. Four hours of sleep – if he got up at 5:00 to get ready and have time to go to his hairdresser – seems unrealistic for such a fun-loving young man, and one begins to wonder how much of this is propaganda. How does this disciplined agenda accord with the habit of always having “a bottle of wine on his piano” and drinking “loads of Champagne during the daytime”?88 He seems to have been more of an alcoholic than a workaholic, as his hours composing are about the same as a normal workday in Western Europe in the 2000s – and this in a letter, fabricated or not, that was probably produced with the possibility that it could be read by others. His father wanted him to be more industrious, and described him as rather easygoing, indolent, and lazy.89 One detail is conspicuously absent, besides time for billiards, riding, bowling, fencing, pets etc. – in fact, any pleasure. And that is practice. When does he practice? There is zero hours devoted to practice in his schedule, and he is considered to have been a virtuoso. Certainly he would sit at his fortepiano while composing and stand by it while giving lessons, but that is still not focused practice. But maybe a genius can do all these things: they don’t need to sleep, they can be alcoholics and need little practice and still be the best. Because they are geniuses they don’t have to work for what they achieve. However, this goes against what science now tells us about expertise. The family worked together to raise Wolfgang to the status of a genius, against the odds. But what people want to hear, now and then, is that it all came automatically, that unto us a genius is born, unto us a son is given.90 We want to believe in the miracle, in people who don’t have to practice for 10,000 hours and ten years before being able to produce great art. It should just come effortlessly, like a lottery winning. And this is what Leopold started. It was a private propaganda campaign that was successful, a hyped product that was bought. Because we want to believe in the commercials. The letters that the family wrote were intended for the public and dressed the truth significantly. The question is how many of Mozart’s letters were actually written by him. At the age of 13 he is supposed to have expressed himself like this:

13 MY DEAR YOUNG LADY,– I beg you will pardon the liberty I take in plaguing you with these few lines; but as you said yesterday that there was nothing you could not understand in Latin, and I might write what I chose in that language, I could not resist the bold impulse to write you a few Latin lines.91

Then comes a piece of Latin. This doesn’t sound very much like the Wolfgang who was like a child for all of his life and who wrote about poop as often as he could, on the contrary, to wave about Latin quotes seems like pure propaganda. Besides, why couldn’t he have spoken or written those lines when they met the day before? We know that Leopold transcribed his music. And that he had a very mature and well-behaved sister four and a half years his senior. After his death, Constanze and her second husband Georg Nissen set about diligently cleaning up Wolfgang’s memory, which included destroying most of the correspondence between him and his wife. “And of the ones that were kept, certain words and entire paragraphs have been blacked out.”92 They would of course only have done this if the letters were embarrassing. Nannerl also gave Nissen letters – but remember her forging skills. Considering what is still left of scatology, there must have been even worse examples that were destroyed, and letters where the truth – whatever it is – was revealed or hinted at, for instance, perhaps, of underhanded methods of producing music. He sometimes sounds stilted and contrived in his letters. On April 25, 1770, when he was 14, he wrote to his sister in Italian from Rome

When I have finished this letter, I am going to complete a symphony that I have begun. The aria is finished. The copyist (who is my father) has the symphony, because we do not choose it to be copied by any one else, or it might be stolen.93

“The copyist (who is my father)” seems more addressed to a general reader than to his sister. And again there is the smell of stolen music. Apparently, it was a common occurrence that music was stolen, at least by those damn deceitful Italians. Was Salieri already lurking around in the shadows? One wonders why the letter was written in Italian, if he suspected the Italians. Towards the end of 1786, Leopold became ill, and died the following year. And at that precise moment, Wolfgang’s finances went downhill and he had to start borrowing money. At the same time he also became less productive – before a sudden return to form in his last year, after long trips to Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin and other places in Germany during 1789 and 1790. And then he died of what some suspect was poison. One way of interpreting the chain of events is that Leopold’s death had a direct effect on Wolfgang’s output, which led to his decreasing income. That might mean, if the ideas described here are true, that Leopold furnished him with music. For this reason, Mozart now had to get music from elsewhere. He dried up, but then after travels he made a comeback, so to speak. Perhaps he traveled around to get music he could claim as his own. He was probably desperate and careless and not as discreet as he needed to have been in this hunt for music, which could have upset people. And then came, suddenly, death. Requiem in D minor was to be Mozart’s last work and is among his most admired, commissioned by a mysterious stranger who frightens the composer in Amadeus, which of course isn’t very historically accurate. Historian Alex von Tunzelmann thinks that the movie is “laughably wrong”.94 Even though Hollywood movies about historical events and people prefer fantasy over reality even when the fantasy is less dramatic, there seems to be something with the composer that attracts myth-making. Director Miloš Forman, who grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia, usually made films where things aren’t the way they seem. Man on the Moon (1999) is about comedian Andy Kaufman, whom you never knew if he was joking or being serious and who might have led a double life – he claimed never to have smoked, but died of lung cancer;95 Valmont (1989) is about people who spend their entire life performing sophisticated deceptions; in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) you don’t know who is

14 actually crazy; and The Firemen’s Ball (1967) is about a dance where corruption, stealing and all manner of cheating thrives just under the surface as a metaphor for Forman’s society at the time. Things disappear when the lights are turned off, and then everyone acts as if they’re innocent. This is relevant since Forman was obviously drawn to this kind of matter, and the reason that he chose Mozart to portray could partly have been because he subconsciously recognized in the composer something of this duplicitousness that he was so used to and interested in depicting. This could be explained if we assume that the official Mozart story was so whitewashed and sanitized and adjusted by Leopold, Constanze and early biographers that the character “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” feels unrealistic to sensitive artists like Forman. They sense that this isn’t a believable person, and so join in the game and continue it. But not even Requiem in D minor was written by Wolfgang. What was left by him was the beginning. The rest was completed by Mozart’s student Franz Xaver Süßmayr, with the addition of a smaller piece by Joseph Eybler. The question is whose name would have been written beneath the title if Mozart had lived for another year. The mysterious stranger was in fact Anton Leitgeb, valet of Count Franz von Walsegg-Stuppach, who “had acquired the reputation of palming other people’s music off as his own”.96 Apparently he planned to claim the piece as his – he used to commission works by composers and then publish them under his own name.97 Once again these hints about music theft that surround Mozart. At least we can say that Walsegg probably wasn’t alone in this practice. After the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, several biographies about him were written that also became the sources of later biographies. Several of these early biographers had connections with the Mozart family. Anna Trombetta describes in a talk that the first was written by Schlichtegroll, who got his information from Nannerl, the second by Niemetschek, who is said to have known the composer for a long time and took care of two of his sons and became their stepfather, and the third by Nissen, married to Constanze, Wolfgang’s widow.98 None of them were in other words very objective. On the contrary, they had strong motivations to increase Mozart’s reputation, and they got their information from people who had even stronger ones, besides the obvious point that biographies at this time weren’t exactly objective to begin with. Later, Mozart became celebrated by nationalists and in the 1930s along came the Nazis who used the composer for their own ends. He was then put on an even higher pedestal as a German genius, which Erik Levi describes in his book Mozart and the Nazis.99 The Nazis continued in Wolfgang’s footsteps in 1933 when they publicized the composer’s Hymn to Germany. The problem is that it wasn’t written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at all.100 Also in 1933, yet another piece of music by Mozart was published, the Adélaïde Concerto, written at the age of 10, and given a number in the Köchel catalogue, the official list of all his compositions. But what do you know, Mozart didn’t write that one either. It was faked by the publisher Marius Casadesus.101 The pattern keeps repeating. Leopold Mozart started the hype, it continued to be inflated by Wolfgang’s widow and early biographers connected with her, and then it just kept going. Leopold also started faking music that Wolfgang was supposed to have written as a child, this much is pretty clear, not least from modern research on expertise by Anders Ericsson. Then pieces by others were appropriated, a practice that continued to the end of his life, if the ideas presented here are true. And again people kept repeating the pattern that had been set, and wrote music they claimed were by Mozart. His myth reached such a level that all that was left was “genius” and it was no longer possible to see the stripped-down, gray reality behind. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” The great and powerful Wizard of Oz turns out to be a white-haired old man who works machinery that makes him appear god-like.102

15 An example of the inability to see what’s in front of one’s eyes came in 2009 when new music written by Mozart was found. In her sister’s music book, called “Nannerl Notenbuch”. In handwriting that is claimed to be Leopold’s; “his father was using the Nannerl music book to write out his son’s pieces”.103 Why didn’t Leopold use Wolfgang’s music book to write Wolfgang’s music? Did he then use Wolfgang’s music book to write Nannerl’s music? Leopold also wrote down pieces by contemporary composers in Nannerl’s book for her to play, and there is also the handwriting of “two or three anonymous Salzburg copyists”. In other words, it seems as if Nannerl’s music book contains music and handwriting by everyone except by the one who’s name is on it. “Curiously none of the pieces were inscribed by Nannerl herself ” writes Wikipedia.104 Yes, here is another curiosity in the Mozart saga that doesn’t make sense. A simpler explanation is that it indeed contains music by Nannerl, and that she herself used different handwriting styles to do it. We know that she was capable of imitating the writing of others perfectly, and it wouldn’t be at all strange if she exercised that talent in her own music book. We know that she was a brilliant composer, and for this reason must have practiced composing since she was a child. This means that there once must have been a great many pieces by Nannerl Mozart. But not one trace of what she wrote is, apparently, even in the music book that is called Nannerl Notenbuch. Her notes are gone without a trace. All the notes. Every single one. This is the same kind of phenomenon as with William Shakespeare: every last manuscript that he wrote is gone. In both cases, they were famous during their lifetimes, and there would be every incentive possible to keep manuscripts by them. Family, children, fans, souvenir hunters, dealers – everyone would want these manuscripts. So a better explanation would be that it’s Nannerl’s music that’s in Nannerl’s music book. But if you only think “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” you won’t be able to see anything else even if it’s there right in front of your eyes. It’s a common phenomenon that we only see what we expect to see. And if one also remembers that she was a skillful forger, everything has to be questioned about these old manuscripts, both the music and the letters. When Wolfgang had died, Nannerl is reported to have torn out pages from her own music book and given them to friends and fans, the sheets supposedly being music by her brother. An alternative explanation is, again, that Nannerl quite simply composed music in Nannerl’s music book, but that now she was finally free from having to produce music for her brother. In that light, the tearing out of pages could have been an act of liberation, a way of ending this chapter in her life. So what does that enigmatic smile on her portrait really hide?

Unknown: Portrait of Maria Anna Mozart (18th century)

16 What all this leads to is the conclusion that some part of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music wasn’t written by himself. As Pei-Gwen South writes,

… it is not a question of whether or not Mozart composed all that has been attributed to him – we know for certain that he did not, and that many of the works once thought to be his were actually written by other composers. The question is the extent to which this is the case.105

This should be fairly uncontroversial. It is in fact the case, and all agree, that many works were falsely attributed to him. We have seen how Mozart included other composer’s works in his own. We can also be certain that some of his early works were actually written by his father, as Anders Ericsson thinks is highly likely.106 The fact that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wasn’t a genius in the usual sense – since he wasn’t an innovator – also leads to the conclusion that the other people who wrote some of his music need not have been geniuses either, which makes a switch of author not impossible. It is also known that Nannerl Mozart was a very good composer, that all her work has mysteriously vanished, that she was good at imitating other people’s handwriting, and that pieces by “Mozart” have been found in her music book, where everybody but herself apparently wrote according to the prevailing view. This means that at least there is a possibility that some of her compositions were mistaken for Wolfgang’s, in the most cautious interpretation. A more daring interpretation is that she wrote a lot of the music. It’s exciting because it would stimulate a lot of thinking, research and debate, new perspectives on, and a greater understanding of, the music of Mozart, and generally how humans deal with culture and why traditional views of cultural phenomena are so hard to challenge. None of this of course changes any of the music. Every last note stays the same. You can think that the music by Mozart is as brilliant as you like. Changing the story of its creation shouldn’t be a catastrophe and provoke some kind of mental breakdown. We could discuss the topic calmly and rationally. But if you depend for your appreciation of the music on an antiquated, semi-religious view of the composer, then you’re in trouble.

17 Notes All images in Wild Ideas #7 are in the public domain, except for the cover image, © Henry Grynnsten 2021.

1 Victor Fleming: The Wizard of Oz (1939). At the end of the movie, the dog Toto pulls back a curtain, revealing the truth, that the great Wizard of Oz is actually just an ordinary man, operating machinery to make him seem god-like. 2 Susannah Price: “The Great Piano Scam”. Documentary, 2009. 3 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Hatto 4 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Samuragochi 5 Pei-Gwen South: “Exploding the Myth About Mozart”, 2010. http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/viewtopic.php? t=35225 6 Georg Predota: “Luca Bianchini & Anna Trombetta: Fall of the Gods The Making of the Mozart Legend”, 2018. https://interlude.hk/luca-bianchini-anna-trombetta-fall-gods-making-mozart-legend/ 7 Norman Lebrecht: “The Mozart Delusion”, 2012. https://standpointmag.co.uk/the-mozart-delusion/ 8 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozartkugel 9 Lebrecht (n. 7). 10 Cara MacDonald, KSL.com: “Mozart combined with medication alleviates pain and seizures, researchers say”, 2019. https://www.ksl.com/article/46525083/mozart-combined-with-medication-alleviates-pain-and-seizures-researchers-say? fbclid=IwAR1FhNl6QBuAbM7Z_MZ847qV1xRX5FMT1LWPlKIrx-Dv-Sy2Y27oA2nbkHc 11 Telegraph Reporter: “‘Mozart effect’: can classical music really make your baby smarter? Does the so-called “Mozart effect” exist?”, 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11500314/Mozart-effect-can-classical-music- really-make-your-baby-smarter.html 12 The Skeptic’s Dictionary: “Mozart effect”, 2015. http://skepdic.com/mozart.html 13 Luca Bianchini & Anna Trombetta: Mozart. La costruzione di un genio, 2019, p. 121. 14 Predota (n. 6). The first part has now been released in an English version with the title Mozart. The Fall of the Gods – Part I (2020). 15 Roberto Mori: “Mozart, la caduta degli dei – Intervista a Luca Bianchini e Anna Trombetta”, 2016. https://www.connessiallopera.it/interviste/2016/mozart-la-caduta-degli-dei-intervista-a-luca-bianchini-e-anna- trombetta/ 16 Joe Meerdter: “Biography”. https://www.midiworld.com/mozart1.htm 17 Daniel J Wakin: Two Works Attributed to Mozart, Age 7 or 8, 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/arts/music/03mozart.html 18 Adam Grant: “Why few child prodigies grow up to be geniuses”, 2016. https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/why- few-child-prodigies-grow-up-to-be-geniuses 19 Yang Sung-Hee: “Korea’s obsession with geniuses”, 2015. https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2015/11/28/etc/Koreas-obsession-with-geniuses/3012130.html 20 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marla_Olmstead#Controversy 21 Hermann Abert: W A Mozart, 2007 (1923–1924), p. 1346. 22 Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success, 2008. 23 Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool: Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Random House, 2017 (2016). 24 Ericsson & Pool (n. 23), p. 213–214. 25 31 Classic fM: “This is the first piece that Mozart ever wrote… when he was FIVE years old”, 2016. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/guides/first-composition-minuet-trio/ 26 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_finta_semplice 27 Mozart La Caduta degli Dei: “Intervista degli autori di Mozart la caduta degli dei a TMN”, 2017. https://www.mozartlacadutadeglidei.it/2017/04/10/intervista-degli-autori-di-mozart-la-caduta-degli-dei-a-tmn/ – at ca. 33 min, “Sulla sinfonia Parigina si potrebbe … si potrebbe aprire un capitolo aparte ecco perché si ritrova in un ... nella biblioteca di Regensburg con il nome di Mozart chi sovrascrive un altro nome di un altro compositore, forse Luchesi, non siamo sicuri, potrebbe essere Martin Kraus o qualche altro nome, pero le nome di Mozart é stato scritto sopra.” 28 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Luchesi 29 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_symphonies_of_spurious_or_doubtful_authenticity 30 Ruth Halliwell: The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context. Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 19. https://books.google.se/books?id=TUMyCTKlAr0C 31 Georg Predota: “Luca Bianchini & Anna Trombetta: Fall of the Gods Engaging the Mozart Myth”, 2018. https://interlude.hk/luca-bianchini-anna-trombetta-fall-gods-engaging-mozart-myth/ 32 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Postscript to a letter by Leopold to his wife dated 3 November, 1770. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/mozartwords/index.php?lang=&letter=19 33 Classic fM: “Was Mozart’s sister actually the most talented musician in the family?”, 2019. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/nannerl-mozarts-sister-better-musician/ 34 Quoted by The Other Mozart, 2012. http://theothermozart.com/ 35 Georg Predota: “Muse and Musings Inspired by the marvelous horse face!”, 2016. https://interlude.hk/muse-musings- inspired-marvelous-horse-face/ Notes All images in Wild Ideas #7 are in the public domain, except for the cover image, © Henry Grynnsten 2021.

36 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Postscript to a letter by Leopold to his wife dated 3 November, 1770. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/mozartwords/index.php?lang=&letter=19 37 Eva Rieger: “Mozart [‘Nannerl’], Maria Anna (Walburga Ignatia)”. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo- 9781561592630-e-6002278231 38 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_composers_by_birth_date 39 Abert (n. 21), pp. 1350–1351. 40 Jonathan Pearlman: “Mozart’s sister ‘composed works used by younger brother’”, 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11848915/Mozarts-sister-composed- works-used-by-younger-brother.html 41 South (n. 5). 42 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._37_(Mozart) 43 Pierre Cherrier: “Michael Haydn & Mozart”, 2018. http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2018/01/michael-haydn-mozart.html 44 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miserere_(Allegri) 45 Bryan Townsend: “The Amazing Mr. Haydn”, 2013. http://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-amazing-mr- haydn.html 46 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._41_(Mozart)#IV._Molto_allegro 47 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Eberl 48 Donal Henahan: “Music View; Mozart’s Brilliance is Not Dimmed By Analysis”, 1985. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/25/arts/music-view-mozart-s-brilliance-is-not-dimmed-by-analysis.html 49 Lebrecht (n. 7). 50 Barbara Kerr: “Genius”, 2007 (1998), in Encyclopædia Britannica. 51 Predota (n. 6). 52 Mozart’s Music: “Mozart Q & A”. http://mozartsmusic.blogspot.com/p/mozart-q_10.html 53 Chris Rodley: “The Joy of Mozart”. Documentary, 2015, with Tom Service. 54 Wikipedia has a whole page on Mozart’s scatological interests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology 55 Benjamin Simkin: “Mozart’s Scatological Disorder”, 1992. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29718015?seq=1 56 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzel_Trnka 57 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leck_mir_den_Arsch_fein_recht_sch%C3%B6n_sauber 58 Clemency Burton-Hill: “What Amadeus gets wrong”, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150224-what- amadeus-gets-wrong 59 Lucien Karhausen: The Bleeding of Mozart, 2011. p. 129–130. 60 Karhausen (n. 59), p. 128. 61 Jennifer Hambrick: “Mozart Minute: What Mozart’s Friends Said about Him”, 2015. https://radio.wosu.org/post/mozart-minute-what-mozarts-friends-said-about-him#stream/0 62 Viveca Servatius: Constance Mozart, 2012, p. 79. The sentence in Swedish reads in translation: “But in spite of his skill at the piano, he was clumsy with his hands and Constanze had to help him cut his food.” 63 Classic fM: “What did the great composers’ handwriting look like?” https://www.classicfm.com/discover- music/latest/composer-manuscript-handwriting/ 64 Aidin Ashoori and Joseph Jankovic: “Mozart’s movements and behaviour: a case of Tourette’s syndrome?”, 2007. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117611/ 65 Billboard Staff: “Documents Suggest Mozart Wasn’t Poor”, 2006. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/58873/documents-suggest-mozart-wasnt-poor 66 Servatius (n. 62), p. 66. 67 Servatius (n. 62), p. 125. 68 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_la_ricuperata_salute_di_Ofelia 69 Jamie Davis Smith: “Eight things siblings of children with special needs struggle with”, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/12/20/8-things-siblings-of-children-with-special-needs- struggle-with/ 70 Brett Van Gansbeke: “Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K. 385 ‘Haffner’”. http://www.orchestralbassoon.com/mozart-35 71 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Letter to sister dated 7 July, 1770. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/mozartwords/dualview.php? lang=ITA&version=modernised&bd=197&layout=portrait 72 Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/35._Sinfonie_(Mozart) 73 The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (1769-1791.), 1866. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5307/5307-h/5307- h.htm 74 Marcus du Sautoy: “How composers from Mozart to Bach made their music add up”, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/05/mozart-bach-music-numbers-codes Notes All images in Wild Ideas #7 are in the public domain, except for the cover image, © Henry Grynnsten 2021.

75 Uri Golomb: “Feminism, Chauvinism and Masonic Allegory: The Role of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute”, 2006. http://www.academia.edu/384543/Feminism_Chauvinism_and_Masonic_Allegory_The_Role_of_Pamina_in_Mozart_ s_The_Magic_Flute 76 Open Letter: “Oh Susanna: The Wise Women of Mozart”, 2008. https://www- e.openu.ac.il/geninfor/openletter/ol20/12-13.pdf 77 University of California Press: “Understanding the Women of Mozart’s Operas”, 2007. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520248021/understanding-the-women-of-mozarts-operas 78 John Allison: “Mozart’s feminine side. John Allison reviews Mozart’s Women by Jane Glover”, 2005. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3646778/Mozarts-feminine-side.html 79 Semyon Bychkov: “Semyon Bychkov on Mozart’s Così fan tutte: ‘It’s anything except what you expected’”, 2016. https://www.roh.org.uk/news/semyon-bychkov-on-mozarts-cosi-fan-tutte-its-anything-except-what-you-expected 80 Saul Dzorelashvili on “Masculine of Feminine?” thread, 2011. http://www.talkclassical.com/12719-masculine-feminine- 4.html#post151302 81 John Allison: “Mozart’s feminine side”, 2005. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3646778/Mozarts-feminine- side.html 82 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Aldworth 83 E-mail from Dr Max Palla, Freimaurer-Museum, Austria, 2017-08-19. 84 Servatius (n. 62), p. 132. 85 Predota (n. 6) 86 A Brief History of Music: “Mozart (1756-1791)”. https://readnomore.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/mozart/ 87 Mozart’s Music: “Mozart Q & A”. http://mozartsmusic.blogspot.com/p/mozart-q_10.html 88 Antonio Capurso: “Five classical composers that loved wine”, 2020. https://wineandotherstories.com/five-classical- composers-that-loved-wine/ 89 South (n. 5). 90 Isaiah 9:6, King James Bible. 91 The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular: “Reviewed Work: The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Ludwig Nohl, Lady Wallace, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart”, 1866. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3352734? seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents 92 Lynette: “People: Constanze Weber Mozart: The perfect wife?”, 2010. http://sofaithfulaheart.blogspot.com/2010/06/people-constanze-weber-mozart-perfect.html 93 The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (n. 73). 94 Alex von Tunzelmann: “Amadeus: the fart jokes can’t conceal how laughably wrong this is”, 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/oct/22/amadeus-reel-history 95 Biography.com Editors: “Andy Kaufman Biography”, 2020 (2017). https://www.biography.com/performer/andy- kaufman 96 Classic fM: “Mozart - Requiem: A masterpiece shrouded in mystery.” https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/guides/mozart-requiem-full-works-concert-highlight-week/ 97 Jan Dirk Blom: A Dictionary of Hallucinations, 2009, p. 342. https://books.google.se/books? id=KJtQptBcZloC&q=Franz+von+Walsegg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false 98 Luca Bianchini: “Biblioteca Rajna di Sondrio. Presentazione del volume MOZART. LA CADUTA DEGLI DEI”, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ2dQ1dJinA 99 Erik Levi: Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon. Yale University Press, 2010. 100Toby Thacker: “Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon (review)”, 2012. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/487060/summary 101Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A9la%C3%AFde_Concerto 102Fleming (n. 1). 103Daniel J Wakin: “Two Works Attributed to Mozart, Age 7 or 8”, 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/arts/music/03mozart.html 104Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nannerl_Notenbuch 105South (n. 5). 106Ericsson & Pool (n. 23).