Painted portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his late twenties, in profile looking down, swept-back light brown hair, white lace cravat and brown coat, against a faded rose ground

Portraits · Composers · VI of XVII

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1756–1791 · Composer

People are wrong to think my art came easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has spent so much labour on the study of composition as I.

Ueberhaupt irrt man, wenn man denkt, daß mir meine Kunst so leicht geworden ist. Ich versichere Sie, lieber Freund! niemand hat so viel Mühe auf das Studium der Komposition verwendet als ich.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart · as recorded by Niemetschek, 1808 · our translation
Read it in the source →

In Prague in 1787, after the first rehearsals of Don Giovanni, Mozart went walking with the orchestra director Johann Baptist Kucharz. People are wrong, he told him, to think his art came easily.

His first biographer, Franz Xaver Niemetschek, printed the conversation in the 1808 edition of his life of Mozart. Mozart went on: there was hardly a famous master whose works he had not studied, often several times over.

Said to Johann Baptist Kucharz, orchestra director in Prague, on a walk after the first rehearsals of Don Giovanni, 1787. Franz Xaver Niemetschek, Lebensbeschreibung des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, aus Originalquellen, 2nd enlarged ed. (Prague: Herrlische Buchhandlung, 1808), p. 88 (setting on p. 87).

The originals

Joseph Lange's unfinished oil portrait of Mozart, 1782–83: profile turned to the left, head bowed, high swept-back hair and a white cravat
The likenessPAINTED BY JOSEPH LANGE · 1782–83Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (Lange died 1831; faithful photograph of a 2D work, PD-Art). Unfinished oil portrait, Mozart Museum, Salzburg. Wikimedia Commons. Reference crop: two faint ghost letterings in the hair (visible in the scan) retouched out.
A page of Mozart's handwritten orchestral score, the opening of the Don Giovanni overture, with staves for strings, winds, brass and timpani
Don Giovanni · Overture, 1787The first page of the overture, in his hand. Don Giovanni opened in Prague on 29 October 1787.Autograph score, vol. 1 (Overture), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musique, MS-1548 (1). Public domain, Gallica via Wikimedia Commons.