a: "I have spared
neither pains nor labor in order to produce something excellent for
Prague. People are indeed mistaken in imagining that art has been an
easy matter to me. I assure you, my dear friend, no one has expended
so much labor on the study of composition as I have. There is hardly a
famous master whose works I have not studied thoroughly and
repeatedly."

Jahn surmises, doubtless correctly, that the reason why Mozart
habitually delayed putting down his pieces on paper, was because this
process, being a mere matter of copying, did not interest him so much
as the composing and creating, which were all done before he took up
the pen. "You know," he writes to his father, "that I am immersed in
music, as it were, that I am occupied with it all day long, that I
like to study, speculate, reflect." He was often absent-minded and
even followed his thoughts while playing billiards or nine pins, or
riding. Like Beethoven, he walked up and down the room, absorbed in
thought, even while washing his hands; and his hair-dresser used to
complain that Mozart would never sit still, but would jump up every
now and then and walk across the room to jot down something, or touch
the piano, while _he_ had to run after him holding on to his pigtail.

Allusion has been made to the fact that it was almost always in the
open air that new ideas sprouted in Mozart's mind, especially when he
was travelling. Whenever a new theme occurred to him he would jot it
down on a slip of paper, and he always had a special leather bag for
preserving these sketches, which he carefully guarded. These sketches
differ somewhat in appearance, but generally they contained the melody
or vocal part, together with the bass, and brief indications of the
middle parts, and here and there mention of a special instrument.
This was sufficient subsequently to recall the whole composition to
his memory. In elaborating his scores he hardly ever made any
deviations from the original conception, not even in the
instrumentation; which seems the more remarkable when we reflect that
he was the originator of many new orchestral combinations, the beauty
of which presented itself to his imagination before his ears had ever
heard them in actuality. These new tone-colors, as Jahn remarks,
existed intrinsically in the orchestra as a statue does in the marble;
but it remained for the artist to bring them out; and that Mozart was
bound to have them is shown by the anecdote of a m