The Mozart Myth
I don't know how many times I've heard about how Mozart would compose entire musical scores in his head and only write them down once they were finished. Even authors who stress that creativity requires false starts and hard work have said that Mozart may have been an exception. But maybe he wasn't.
In his new book How to Fly a Horse, Kevin Ashton says that the Mozart story above is a myth based on a forged letter. According to Ashton,
Mozart's real letters-to his father, to his sister, and to others-reveal his true creative process. He was exceptionally talented, but he did not write by magic. He sketched his compositions, revised them, and sometimes got stuck. He could not work without a piano or harpsichord. He would set work aside and return to it later. " Masterpieces did not come to him complete in uninterrupted streams of imagination, nor without an instrument, nor did he write them whole and unchanged. The letter is not only forged, it is false.
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