Father always knew that I was a precocious little boy. Mother, more accurately, described it as exhausting.
There I sat, perched over my beloved harpsichord, legs dangling, quill in hand, staring at a sheet of paper filled with empty staves[i]. “Go on Wolferl”, Father urged, “Write what you hear, compose.”
I listened carefully. I heard Nannerl practicing her scales, church bells harmonizing unintentionally, a neighbor frying cabbage, and some birds arguing with themselves. I scribbled it all down, my first attempt at a symphony[ii], a musical portrait of domestic life. In truth, the page looked less like music and more like the frantic wanderings of an ink-trenched mouse. Father, however, saw something else. He carefully copied my markings into the Nannerl Notenbuch[iii], titled it “Andante in C for Piano”, and proudly announced that his son had composed his first piece.
I felt proud as a peacock – until Father insisted that I perform it.
The audience consisted of three priests, two noblewomen, and one very confused baker who appeared to have entered the room by mistake. I climbed onto the harpsichord bench and suddenly felt like a hundred eyeballs fixed on me. I froze. Father coughed meaningfully. I considered fainting.
Instead, I began to play all the sounds I had heard earlier. When I finished, everyone applauded. The baker even cried – possibly from confusion – but I counted it as a success, nonetheless.
[i] A stave is five horizontal lines that indicate the pitch of musical notes. The musical notes on a stave are A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.
[ii] Mozart’s first symphony was “Symphony No. 1 in E-flat” written during his stay in London in August/September 1764 which, at age 8, was his 16th composition.
[iii] The Nannerl Notenbuch (English: Nannerl’s Music Book) is a book in which Leopold Mozart wrote pieces for Nannerl to learn and play.