Why do we celebrate Mozart in what seems to be exaggerated terms? Where Handel was a great epic composer, Bach a great religious composer, Gluck, a dramatic writer, Haydn more versatile than many of the others yet not dramatic, Beethoven lyric, free and hating all tyrannies, in Mozart we have great opera, great masses, great epics, symphonies and chamber music quartets and quintets. The list of his works is gigantic! How he was able in the short span of his life, to write down so much, to say nothing of composing them, is a problem that cannot be solved! With his usual tendency not to finish work until the last minute, he wrote the overture to _Don Giovanni_ the night before the first performance. He composed and scored it for orchestra in less time that it took the copyists to copy the parts, and the audience was forced to wait almost an hour until Mozart appeared at the conductor’s stand to direct the unrehearsed overture. When the curtain rose on the first act Mozart said, “The overture went off very well on the whole, although a good many notes certainly fell under the desks!” Mozart promised a group of country dances to a count, but failed to keep his word. The count invited him, putting dinner time an hour ahead. When Mozart arrived he was shown into a room, was given music paper, quills and ink and was asked to compose, then and there, four country dances to be performed the next evening. In a half hour’s time he wrote the entire orchestra score and earned his dinner! Mozart could be not only humorous, but tragic in the same work, making his humor seem greater by contrast. _Don Giovanni_ and the _Magic Flute_ could be called tragic-comedies they are so rich in both moods. In the _Marriage of Figaro_ he originated what Emil Naumann calls conversational opera, although Rossini’s _Barber of Seville_, and Donizetti’s _Daughter of the Regiment_ follow it in style they do not reach it in real fun, melody and quality. When we say some of his operas were humorous we do not mean that they were comic operas. In _Don Giovanni_ he originated romantic opera, and although Weber in _Oberon_ and other operas have their fine moments, none approach the awe-inspiring, continuous beauty of Mozart’s. He was the first to write a great fairy opera, _The Magic Flute_, composed when he was writing the Requiem! Although the librettist wrote it for money, Mozart wanted it idealistic and true to his beliefs. _Cosi Fan Tutti_ (They’re All Alike) was really and truly comic opera, and _Titus_ shows his mastery of the formal and severe style. So in all these he left models for those who followed him. Had he done but this one thing he would have been great indeed. Coming into the world when he did, he was the connecting link between the old Italian opera and Gluck, who idealized what the old Florentines did, on the one hand, and the romantic and romantic comic opera of the later masters of Germany and France, on the other.