If you think you understand Mozart you may, (as my Mother would say), have ‘another think coming’…

Let’s start with a question — one that is almost rhetorical in nature — namely, if anyone were to deliberately lock-out Mozart from jobs or opportunities, must not questions be asked about their credibility as a musician?  Or can we just make excuses for them, on the basis of Wolf’s being obnoxious?

In short, is there any ethical responsibility to others regarding genius or not?  Oh, I suppose we have to add into this question the axiom that everyone, even his worst detractors, consider Mozart to have been a genius. And yet, after Wolf died, didn’t the very people who agreed to his murder in the first place (perhaps through what is called an ‘evil-eye’) became the ones parading his music like a banner, pretending to be as good as Mozart — even pretending that they were him?

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