preparation. He began to study music at four and wrote his first symphony at
the age ofeight.
I have graphed the number of works that Mozart produced in each year of
his careerin figure 23.1. The figure shows thatMozart’s productivity increased
steadily for the first 10 or 12 years of his career, as reported by Groves (1954)
and Koechel (1965). It also shows that Mozart did produce works in the very
early part of his career when he had had only a year or two of preparation. If
these are works of very high quality, then we could conclude, for Mozart at
least, that long preparation is not a necessary condition for the production of
outstanding musical works. However, these early works may not be of very
high quality. Perhaps they have been preserved for their historical rather than
fortheirmusicalvalue.
Figure23.1
Graph of Mozart’s compositions. The year marked 0 on the graph is 1760, the year when Mozart
was 4 and began intensive musical training. The solid line in the figure is based on information
fromGrove’s Dictionary of Music(1954). The dashed line is based on Koechel’s listings (1965) as
revisedbymodernmusicologists.Thesetwosourcesareinreasonableagreementaboutwhatworks
were producedwhen.
552 John R.Hayes