Jeremey McMillan wrote:

>One part of Mozart's genius is that he can compose spontaneuosly in his
>head and simply write down what he already composed.

Will this myth be perpetuated forever???  It's been 150 years since Otto
Jahn, Mozart's first serious biographer, debunked the forged "Letter to
Baron B" and wrote that we are doing Mozart a disservice by claiming that
he simply wrote down, effortlessly, whatever just came, miraculously, to
his head.  There are very few composers who left so many sketches, drafts,
and fragments as Mozart, and it is quite obvious to anybody who bothers to
look into Mozart's compositional process that this "spontaneous composing"
is a Romantic myth.  To be fair, even many scholars in the past preferred
to ignore both the sketches, etc. and Mozart's his own words to the effect
that "people think composing comes easily to me, but in reality I have to
work hard on writing music" (not en exact quotation, but that the gist of
it).  No evidence will convince people who want their Mozart mythical and
Romantic - and totally distorted.

-Margaret