Let's assume that the history of western classical music had been the same as it is except for one difference: Mozart had been born 200 years later, in 1956. Up to that time, while deprived of Wolfgang Amadeus' oeuvre, we would have had the benefit of his contemporaries, Haydn, of course, but also of composers who are now often considered the second team, if considered at all, like Salieri, Hummel, and Dittersdorf. In the meantime, classical music would be developing with input from all the other composers, giants and lesser mortals, that have been coming upon the scene, just as has actually happened, but without the influence, direct or indirect, of Mozart. Finally, assume that Mozart, born in 1956, were to exhibit the same precocity, and compose the same works that he had actually composed two hundred years earlier. How do the readers here believe his music would have been received? Would it have been recognized as the work of a genius or simply tolerantly accepted, if not disdainfully dismissed, as clever pastiche by a child prodigy grown up? My own feeling is that his four greatest operas (*Magic Flute* and the three DaPonte operas) would be received w/ possibly even greater acclaim than during his lifetime (except of course by those who don't like any opera). I should also suspect his major choral works would also be well received. But I wonder about his chamber music, his concertos, his symphonies. I'd like to think the same listeners who consider these to be works of transcendent beauty and magnificence, in the actual world, where this music was composed in the eighteenth century, would feel the same way if the music had not been written until two centuries later. But I'm not sure. Walter Meyer