Mozart's compositional method

More recent scholarship addresses this issue by systematically examining authenticated letters and documents, and has arrived at rather different conclusions.

Konrad suggests that "Improvisation [at which Mozart was highly skilled; see below] or the actual trying out of particularly challenging imaginative possibilities could compensate in these cases for the lack of sketches.

[5] For instance, on 1 August 1781, Mozart wrote to his father Leopold concerning his living arrangements in Vienna, where he had recently moved:

[6]Konrad cites a similar letter written from Paris that indicates that Mozart didn't compose where he was staying, but visited another home to borrow the keyboard instrument there.

German musicologist Hermann Abert cited Mozart's first biographer Franz Xaver Niemetschek in his book, who originally wrote: "He never went to the keyboard when composing."

In a number of cases, the historical record shows that what Mozart thought was an opportunity for performance or sale evaporated during the course of composition.

This ability was apparent even in his childhood, as the Benedictine priest Placidus Scharl recalled: Even in the sixth year of his age he would play the most difficult pieces for the pianoforte, of his own invention.

His father said to me before the assembled company: So that no doubt shall remain as to my son's talent, write for him, for to-morrow, a very difficult Sonata movement.

The boy had not stopped; but following the modulations, he had substituted a quantity of passages for those which I had written ...[12]The meeting of Grétry and the young Mozart apparently took place in 1766.

According to a witness, "An experienced musician gave him a fugue theme, which he worked out for more than an hour with such science, dexterity, harmony, and proper attention to rhythm, that even the greatest connoisseurs were astounded.

Braunbehrens suggests that on at least one occasion, Mozart met a deadline by simply not writing down part of the music and improvising it instead while performing before the audience.

The autograph (composer-written) score of the music gives the notes as follows: Braunbehrens and other scholars infer that Mozart could not conceivably have opened a movement with a completely unadorned melody line, and instead improvised a suitable accompaniment for the left hand.

Another instance of Mozart's powerful memory concerns his purported memorization and transcription of Gregorio Allegri's Miserere in the Sistine Chapel as a 14-year-old.

The work in question is somewhat repetitive, alternating the same four and five-part settings, and Maynard Solomon suggested that Mozart may have seen another copy earlier, but added that he "certainly had the capacity to write out the Miserere from memory".

An important source for earlier conceptions concerning Mozart's composition method was the work of the early 19th century publisher Friedrich Rochlitz.

If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me, how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it, that is to say, agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of the various instruments, &c.[28]Rochlitz's forged letter also was used in earlier study to bolster the (apparently false) story that Mozart could compose relying entirely on his memory, without the use of keyboard or sketches: 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.

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.