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<h1>MOZART’S YOUTH</h1>
<p class="center"><span class="large"><i>Translated from the German of
<br/>Franz Hoffmann</i></span></p>
<p class="center"><span class="small">BY</span>
<br/><span class="large">GEORGE P. UPTON</span></P>
<h2>Preface</h2>
<p>The life-story of Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart contained in this volume closes
with his admission to membership in the
Accademia Filarmonica at Bologna, Italy.
Mozart was then in his fifteenth year. Up to that
time his life had been a happy one, free from care,
untouched by adversity, and crowned with continuous
successes. He was admired by the people,
considered a prodigy by the greatest composers,
and was received with extraordinary honors at the
Courts of Austria, France, Holland, and England.
His twenty remaining years, embittered by enmities
and saddened by privations and misfortunes, find
no place in this life-story. They were occupied
almost exclusively with artistic tours, during which
he brought out many of his greatest works, among
them, “Mitridate,” “Idomeneo,” “Marriage of
Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” and “The Magic Flute.”
The last-named opera made its appearance in 1789,
and the same year he began the immortal “Requiem,”
the composition of which was so significant
in its relation to his rapidly approaching end. He
died two years later. He was then in impoverished
circumstances. His funeral was of the kind common
among the poorest class. No note of music was
heard. No friend accompanied the solitary hearse
to the cemetery where this great genius was left in a
pauper’s grave. His life-story in this volume leaves
him crowned with honors, the idol of his time, a marvel
to the greatest musicians, flushed with success
and exultant in the pride of genius, standing on the
threshold of youthful manhood, the brightest, most
beautiful, most attractive, most lovable figure in
the world of music. It is one of the attractions of
this little volume that it takes leave of him there,
before the sunshine of his life was obscured by a
single cloud.</p>
<p><span class="jr">G. P. U.</span></p>
<p><span class="small"><span class="sc">Chicago</span>, 1904.</span></p>
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