He calculated a long break as twenty or thirty bars.”)

Mozart loved billiards and would often compose while playing (“Mozart had bundles of music paper in his pocket when he entered a public billiards room and composed while waiting his turn.

(A reader recommended Jane Glover’s Mozart’s Women to me)

Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, was a gifted pianist, and got to try out many of Mozart’s compositions first.

(At least, thanks to her business savvy, she eventually ended up wealthy.) That means that poor Constanze was pregnant, nursing, or grieving for the whole 9 years of their marriage. So, do that awful math: they’re married in August 1782, have their first kid in August 1783, last kid July 1791.

Constanze had six children, only two of whom survived.

Mozart’s dad might not have been quite the exploitive father the myth makes him out to be: he was actually a successful musician who gave up a good deal of his career in service of his son’s gift.Mozart was in debt for most of his life, sure, but so were lots of other people, as there was a currency shortage - he never really lived in real poverty, in fact, he lived quite well (his most expensive possessions were a nice piano and his own pool table).

Mozart was concert-level on the keyboard, the violin, and the viola, and was able to play virtually all the other instruments in the orchestra in order to compose, correct, etc.Honestly, most of what I knew about Mozart beforehand was gleaned from one of my favorite movies, Amadeus, so this book is a reasonably decent starting point, as part of Johnson’s mission is to quickly deflate the myths around the composer. Picked this up at the library, saw it was only 150 pages, gave it a go.

Mozart by paul johnson