and dress, ready to properly face aristocratic surroundings as his father's dream would represent the destiny of his son. This is how a young fourteen year old Goethe saw him during an exhibition in Frankfurt in 1763: "a little man with his wig and his sword". Much literary hagiography shows us an image of Wolfgang as a little genius innately gifted with a creativity that led him to compose a mass production of masterpieces, without fatigue or error.
A few years ago, a study was done by the Cambridge University (Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, published by the Cambridge Press), and based on the accurate analysis of 120 gifted personalities in various fields of expertise, this simplified method of identifying a genius was contested. From the study emerges a formula of genius which, in its synthetic and bare truth, is composed as follows: 1% innate ability and inspiration, 29% qualified instruction and formation, 70% hard work (prolonged, since on average the genius personalities that were analyzed had to apply themselves with consistency for at least ten years, if not more, in order to obtain the first great results).
In any case, another more concise saying, and not without humor (which could be attributed to Hemingway, as well as Edison or even Mozart himself) states that "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". Or rather: sweat and fatigue.
From the tender young age of 3 years old, Mozart showed signs of the 1% genius inspiration, but the subsequent years (many more than what the Cambridge study indicates) were applied to his formation (thanks to the outstanding teachings of his father and his musical studies from other significant composers) and for the rest of his life, he honored that 70% of hard work as we see in the formula. Regarding young Wolfgang's quality of studies, aside from the musical preparation of which his father was sufficiently prepared, some would disagree as defining it as world-class. While it is true that Leopold had a high level of cultural upbringing, having attended the Jesuit school in Augsburg and at least one year of university in Salzburg, can we truly consider Wolfgang's general cultural education equal to his musical genius?
Undoubtedly, the foundation of his musical formation imparted by his father, combined with the experiences of a life full of many European journeys, gave him passage into a world that very few of his peers could have only dreamed about. From his letters and from what other sources tell us, however, Wolfgang never developed a passion for anything that was not musical. Of the monuments and artistic masterpieces that he had seen in the various cities visited, he never left a written comment. Likewise for any literature that he may have read.
He writes to his mother from Milan about a hanging that he witnessed (he had also seen one in Lyon) without mentioning, for example, the Duomo, Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" or any work of art housed in the city. Neither was Wolfgang a great reader. We know that he read "One Thousand and One Nights", some stories, a few comedies by Molière and Goldoni, and of course, many librettos of opera which were useful for his favorite diversion: creating the melodramma.
Hence, a human being deprived of educational experiences typical of the various developmental phases that he never found in the culture (or in literature, a wealth of potential inspiration toward education, discussion and debate) that would have rivaled the excessive power of his interior musical world. We could compare Wolfgang to the custom used in Paris in his epoch which speaks of the cultural preparation of the ladies-in-waiting for their entry into society from the convents and boarding schools reserved for nobility, who "knew everything without having learned anything". But, in contrast to the above-mentioned ladies, he never learned to truly "be a member of society", to understand human nature (on an individual level or publicly) or to conform to that which was considered appropriate for a person of his social station.
Artistically speaking, he was honest and sincere, even to a self-destructive fault...and this led him to the solitude of the last years of his life. We could cite "The Solitude of Prime Numbers", alluding him to the famous Italian novel...and he was certainly a prime number, undividable if not to himself and the nature of individualism. The first number, whose dividing relationship with the prime number only served to put him in front of his own image. The prime number contains all numbers (attainable through multiplication) and so this is how we are able to discern all of the principle composers of his epoch and every single developmental phase of form and expressive innovations of which they are characterized. In my opinion, all of the aspects of his formation explain that quality of the inability to live and integrate positive relations with other humans that would characterize the brief adult life of Mozart. We will take a closer look at these aspects in due time, based on the correspondence with his father and sister.
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