David Grier: Mozart Quote

When I am, as it were, completely myself, all alone, and of good cheer, say, traveling in a carriage, walking after a good meal, during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me, I retain in my memory, and I am accustom, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of the various instruments. All this fires my soul, provided I am not disturbed, and my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined. The whole, though it may be long, stands near complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in imagination the parts successfully, but I hear them all at once. What a delight this is I cannot tell. All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream. Still the actual hearing of the ensemble is, after all, the best. What has been produced I do not easily forget, and this is perhaps the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for. When I proceed to write down my ideas, I take out of the bag of my memory what has been previously collected into it. For this reason the committing to paper is done quickly, for everything is already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what was in my imagination. At this point, I can therefore suffer myself to be very disturbed; for whatever may be going on around me, I write, and even talk, but only of fowls or geese, of Gretel or Barbel, or some such matters. But why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style that makes them mine and different from other composers, is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so large, or , in short make's it Mozart's, and different from those of other people. For I really do not study or aim at any originality.