Mozart on Craft

“People are mistaken, if they think that my art has come easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has devoted so much effort in the study of composition as have I. There is scarcely a famous master in must whose works I have not diligently, and often repeatedly, studied.”

– Mozart, in Franz Xaver Niemestchek’s Biography of Mozart, 1808.
Cited in Marshall, Robert (1995) Mozart Speaks. Shirmer, p. 196.

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