Mozart’s birthday was this past Friday, January 27th. His musical genius may never find a rival – with over 600 written compositions given to our culture in his short 35 years of life, this is truly remarkable.
This weekend, I was finishing up a wonderful book by Brenda Ueland called ‘If You Want To Write – A Book about Art, Spirit and Independence.” Brenda delivers an inspiring work for anyone who desires to write, but more importantly she is effective in this short little paperback at igniting the reader’s creative fire.
With all of the press Mozart received for his birthday, it was especially poignant that I wrap up this book yesterday with a quote from Mozart on creativity. Like his work, this inspiration is relevant even today.
I really can say no more on this subject than the following: for I myself know no more about it and cannot account for it. When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer – say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come I know not; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me, I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account so as to make a good dish of it, that is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of the various instruments.
All this fires my soul, and provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it may be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture, a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successfully, but I hear them as it were, gleich alles zusammen, all at once. What a delight that is I cannot tell! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream. Still the actual hearing of the tout ensemble, is after all the best. What has been produced I do not easily forget, and this is perhaps the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for.
Happy Birthday Mozart. Thank you for sharing your gifts.