- Mozart composed this symphony in London in 1764. He was 8.
- The Mozart family stayed in England from April 23, 1764-July 24, 1765. While they were there:
- The Mozart siblings performed twice for King George III
- Wolfgang performed a solo show between the acts of a performance of Handel’s Acis and Galatea.
- His performance consisted of ‘several fine select Pieces of his own Composition on the Harpsichord and on the Organ’
- The philosopher Daniel Barrington set out to test Wolfgang’s composing abilities and wrote a record of the encounter. Here’s an excerpt:
“… I then desired him to compose a Song of Rage, such as might be proper for the opera stage. The boy again looked back with much archness, and began five or six lines of a jargon recitative proper to precede a Song of Anger…in the middle of it, he had worked himself up to such a pitch, that he beat his harpsichord like a person possessed, rising sometimes in his chair. The word he pitched upon for this second extemporary composition was, Perfido.”
Daniel Barrington1
Sources
- Cliff Eisen, and Stanley Sadie, “Mozart, (Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 19, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278233.
Cut IDs
40796