Mozart Serenade in C

When I looked at a photo of page of one of the parts (not in Mozart's hand) of this newly unearthed piece from Mozart's childhood, it looked far less spectacular than the pieces he wrote in his later teenage years. This performance makes it clear that the thirteen-year-old Mozart was a kid with serious talent and ability, who had a firm grasp on the musical idioms of the mid 18th century he was exposed to inside and outside of Salzburg.



The young Mozart spent much of his thirteenth year (and much of his childhood) traveling through Europe and being showcased, along with his sister, as a child prodigy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's teacher had been, up to that time, his father. Leopold Mozart was certainly an excellent violin teacher, but he had only so much to teach about composition to a person of his son's musical calibre.

The Mozarts met Padre Martini in 1770, and it was through Wolfgang's study with a truly great teacher that he was able to develop his considerable talent into far more than considerable artistry.

I imagine that there are people who are kind of shocked to hear something mediocre coming from Mozart. We hold our musical gods to very high standards. It is my feeling that a lot of mediocre music by people who became great composers, like Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, served as kindling. That this little Serenade didn't make it into Mozart's catalog is no surprise to me.