     Musical mystery tour, from a to z, inspired by the 200th anniversary 
of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's discordant death.  Amadeus--Mozart's middle 
name is also the name of Peter Shaffer's acclaimed play on the life of 
Mozart, which was subsequently made unto the Oscar-winning film of the 
same name.  Amadeus means just "beloved of God," and Peter Shaffer used 
the name to emphasize that the greatest inspiration cannot be simply 
reasoned, that something above ourselves is the only true source of 
creation.  The dramatic metaphor, both on stage and in film, is an 
impressive one.  But Shaffer's poetic license offers an often false 
historical picture of the composer.  Mozart was playful, yes; he was 
hardly a teetotaler, yes.  But he was not simply a drunken yokel; after 
a childhood in the finest courts of Europe, he could put on the social 
graces when necessary.
     Beethoven and Bach--History conveniently inserts Mozart the 
classicist between Bach the baroque and Beethoven the romantic.  
Bach was something of an old fogy, but Mozart loved imitating Bach 
fugues for both piano and symphony music.  Bach's son was one of 
Mozart's best friends, and they must have discussed the more serious 
composer with a mixture of awe and humor.  On the other hand, Beethoven 
played Mozart's music constantly, although he thought Mozart's own 
piano playing "antiquated."  Beethoven wrote, "to my last breath I 
shall be one of Mozart's greatest admirers."  And in a benefit for 
Mozart's wife, he played one of Mozart's piano concertos as a tribute.
     Constanze--Mozatrt's wife has been departed as unfaithful and the 
foolish.  The reality is that Mozart could never have written music 
without his wife by his side.  After Mozart's death she needed money, 
and in her exhausting rounds to get this money, she made many an 
enemy.  But contemporaries tell about Mozart's dependence on his wife, 
her understanding, the fact that never once in their nine years 
together did they ever separate.
     Debts--Mozart was never as poor as later generations made him out to 
be.  His home was comfortable, his assignments were regular, if not 
terribly well paid.  But money was constantly on his mind.  No, he 
wasn't slavish to one patron, as Haydn was.  But he was never satisfied 
with his payments--which were invariably late.
     Emperor Joseph II--Did he exploit Mozart or aid him?  One of Mozart's 
greatest patrons, Emperor Joseph refused to offer Mozart a "stead 
job."  Mozart was of two minds about this.  He knew that having a 
reliable income would help, but he also knew that he could not 
respond like Haydn, simply offering notes on the spot.  Then, too, 
Mozart was too audacious to be simply an imperial courtier.
     Flute--Did Mozart actually despise the flute?  He did write to his 
father, "I become quite powerless whenever I am obliged to write for 
this instrument, which I cannot bear."  One of the world's great 
flautists, Jean-Pierre Rampal, has said that Mozart actually loved 
the flute, but was simply in a bad mood when he wrote of his displeasure 
and that his solos prove how much he felt for the instrument.
     Gourmandism--Did Mozart actually enjoy the famed kugel (marzipan 
cake), which was names in his honor?  Nobody knows.  In his hundreds of 
letters, he never comments on the great dinners given in his honor.  
And it seems that food was of no importance to the composer.  
One food historian has written that he probably dined on pickled 
cabbage regularly.  It was cheap, popular and probably contributed to 
Mozart's stomach problems.  On the other hand, one only need consider 
Don Giovanni to know that Mozart was hardly oblivious to food.  The 
Don's last aria is nothing less than a description of a huge banquet.  
So magnificent is this banquet that he keeps describing the menu 
even as he is dragged to hell!
     Haydn--What good friends they were, how amiable and respectful they 
were of each other, yet how different in their callings.  Haydn was, 
first and last, paid to provide entertainment for courts and aristocrats 
of his age.  One somehow cannot imagine him in any other century.  
Mozart, though, could transmute his music into any age.
     Infant prodigy--Was Mozart the youngest composer?  While he began 
composing at the age of four, he was outdone by Camille Saint-Saens, 
who was writing a the age of three.  Nobody remembers Saint-Saens' 
works, but Mozart's were lovingly preserved by his father in little 
notebooks that can still be seen in Vienna today.
     Jocularity--Was Mozart as stupidly funny as Peter Shaffer made him 
to be?  He was a notorious practical joker.  Yet there was often 
reason in his madness.  In 1787, a singer playing Zerlina in the first 
performance of Don Giovanni confessed that she was unable to scream 
in the right manner and the right manner and the right place for the 
composer.  Finally, Mozart asked the orchestra to repeat the work while 
he sneaked on stage.  When she was about to sing, he pinched her bottom 
and she shrieked!  "Now that," said Mozart, "is the way you should do 
it on stage!"
     Kingdom--How great was the imagination of the prodigy Mozart?  
Consider the kingdom of Rucken.  Rucken means "back," and in his childhood 
Mozart created this kingdom with its own laws and subjects.  Everybody 
was good, people smiled, the kings were wonderful.  Mozart even drew 
maps of the kingdom of Rucken, though, alas, they are gone today.  What 
is the significance of Rucken?  At no time was Rucken simply a hiding 
place, a respite from his years as a prodigy.  It was an artistic 
creation, a world of the imagination, as real as the creation of the 
music itself.
     Lachrimosa--When composing the Requiem Mass, Mozart did not compose 
it in order.  In fact, he composed only a single movement in total, 
this the Introitus, the first section.  Other parts were sketched 
out in his usual style.  The Lachrimosa consists of only eight bars in 
Mozart's hand; these are almost certainly the last eight bars the 
composer ever wrote.
     Masonic connections--How could Mozart, so filled with creativity, 
ebullience, joy and sadness together, join an organization like the 
Freemasons?  Mozart belonged for many reasons.  In 1784, he almost died 
from tuberculosis, and in this bush with death ordinary Catholicism 
seemed, to the composer, simply insufficient.  For succor, he turned 
to the religion of the elect, with its profusion of symbols and magic.
     Nobility--While The Marriage of Figaro was described as Mozart's 
parody of the nobility, Mozart's own feelings were more complex.  
From his first journeys to the great courts of Europe, he loved the 
aristocracy, aped their fashions and felt that such beauty and splendor 
were part of the natural order of things.
     Opera--Mozart died at 35 and composed no less than 25 works for the 
stage:  intermezzos and serenades, comic operas, operettas, comedies.  
Historically, he was the first important composer to write opera to 
German tents.  But even in Italian he was revolutionary.  One could 
say that along with Monteverdi and Wagner, only Mozart had the sense 
of characterization, orchestral color and musical ideas that gave 
insight into the idiosyncrasies of his characters.
     Pantheon--Where is Mozart in the musical pantheon?  Bioacchino 
Rossini was once asked who the greatest composer was.  "Beethoven," 
he was asked.  "Oh, Mozart," he shrugged.  "Mozart wasn't among the 
great composers.  He was the only composer."  
Richard Strauss, in a rare moment of humility, said that he would 
exchange every one of his own operas if he could have written merely 
two bars from a scene of Don Giovanni.
     Quickness--How fast did Mozart actually write his work?  In his last 
year, La Clemenza Di Tito, which only recently has been considered a 
masterpiece, was written and orchestrated in 18 days.  In the same year, 
his three last symphonies were written in a total of five weeks.  And 
in those same five weeks Mozart composed several songs and sonatas well.  
The Don Giovanni overture was written in a single sitting.  And, yes, he 
did write on tablecloths, envelopes and other scraps of paper.
     Radical--When a publisher told him to be more accessible, more like 
Haydn, less dramatic, less self-absorbed, he asked why.  "If you do not 
write more what people want," said the publisher, "you will have no 
market for your music."  "Then," said Mozart, "I will write nothing more.  
And I will go hungry.  Don Giovanni was not written for the public," he 
said.  "It was written for myself and few friends."
     Salieri--Did Antonio Salieri Kill Mozart?  Mozart, ever the 
hypochondriac, felt that he was being poisoned.  Salieri was certainly 
jealous of his genius.  Chances are that Salieri didn't poison him, and 
the latest medical analysis puts Mozart's death sown to streptococcal 
infections, allergic hypersensitivity and a decline in kidney functions.
     Travels/travails--Both confused Mozart's personality.  He had been 
traveling through Europe from the age of four.  When a border guard once 
stopped him, asking for identification, the six-year-old Mozart simply 
took out his violin and played it for the guard, who let him move on.
     As for Mozart's travails, they were endless.  Money problems, work 
problems, lack of appreciation, the list is endless.  And yet, on the 
same day that Mozart would write a letter lamenting his personal 
hardships, he would compose a concerto, a sonata or a symphony of charm 
or ebullience.  The dividing line between catastrophe and creation is 
not for mortal man to comprehend.
     Understanding--Mozart often said that he wrote music mainly for 
himself, but he needed adulation, he needed appreciation.  In a moment 
of rare confession, he wrote to his father:  "Give me the best instrument 
in Europe, but listeners who understand nothing or do not wish to 
understand and who do not feel with me in what I am playing, and all my 
pleasure is spoiled."
     Vienna--Was Vienna really the one true inspiration for Mozart?  
while virtually every 18th-and 19th-century Central European musician 
settled here for long periods, during Mozart's time Vienna was 
dominated by politics.  The emperor, while admiring Mozart, was miserly 
and loved his own intrigues.  Mozart did not die a pauper here, but his 
happiness in creation was diminished by Vienna itself.
     Working habits--Mozart never had working habits.  He had no days 
or nights when inspiration came.  Inspiration was unstoppable!  When he 
was four, his father, Leopold Mozart, found him writing notes for a 
clavier concerto.  When asked to see the work in progress, Mozart 
gave it to his father for a few minutes, then took it back and, even 
while talking, finished it.  When Mozart was 10, his father became 
dangerously ill, and the family was not allowed to touch the barber 
complained that he couldn't give Mozart a haircut, because at any 
moment the composer might run to the clavier and jot down a new piece 
of inspiration.
     X--Who was that masked man who appeared at Mozart's door and 
commissioned him to write the Requiem in February 1791?  It was Count 
von Walsegg, who often commissioned that he would put under his 
own name.
     Youth--Was father Leopold Mozart exploiting his precocious son?  
Twentieth-century sociologists and psychologists may analyze all they 
want to, but not a word of anger or doubt was ever written by Mozart 
against his father.
     Zaide--Permit me to end on a personal note.  If Richard Strauss 
could choose two of Mozart's bar s to be the greatest ever written, I can 
choose three movements that seem archetypal Mozart.  For simplicity 
that somehow transforms itself into a depth of tragedy and compassion, 
there is the almost naive theme from the A Minor Rondo, K.511.  Second, 
I nominate a rare recording of the 40th symphony performed by Bruno 
Walter and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.  At the climax of the 
first movement, Walter takes a most forgivable liberty, by actually 
stopping the orchestra for half a beat.  It is as if he had ascended 
Mount Everest and, instead of moving down, says, "Look about us.  Look 
at the universe we have conquered."  That silence is as beautiful as the 
notes that encompass it.  My third choice is a relatively unknown aria 
that seems to rise from the unfinished opera, Zaide.  Dame Kiri Te Kanawa 
has recorded Ruhe Sanft, mein holdes Leben, an aria that seems to rise 
from the depths of the earth.  Serious and lyrical, soaring and 
dignified, its personality comes from the penetration of Mozart's own 
immortal soul.