![]() Musicologists have since pointed out that Mozart’s feat of memory was extraordinary but maybe not as miraculous as it sounds at first. ![]() ![]() That night Mozart was unable to fall asleep, so he got up and amused himself by transcribing the whole thing from memory. He went back to hear the piece a second time a few days later, using the performance to correct a few errors in his copy, which he had concealed in his hat. Only three authorized copies were ever made. In 1770 Mozart and his father heard a performance of the Miserere during Holy Week. Allegri had been a priest and member of the choir of the Sistine Chapel, and his composition, a setting of the 50th Psalm, was so well loved by the occupants of the Vatican that at some point it became forbidden to transcribe it for performance elsewhere. The story concerns a famous piece of late Renaissance choral music, the Miserere, composed by Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652). One episode stands out, from a visit to the Vatican in 1770, when Mozart was 14 years old. When he was seven years old, the Mozart family went on the first of several tours to demonstrate the prodigious musical abilities of the young marvel and his elder sister Maria Anna (“Nannerel”), who was also remarkably gifted. So there is no shortage of anecdotes about the young Mozart’s astonishing musical dexterity, memory, and creativity in composition. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the child prodigy par excellence, playing songs on the harpsichord at four years old and composing simple music at five.
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