Did Mozart Excel at Musical Computation?

[Stephen Tashi]

There are tasks in composing music for orchestra that involve a type of computation, such as transposing music from its actual notes to the representation of the music in the different keys needed by players of "transposing instruments". Is it known whether Mozart excelled at such computational tasks?

 

[dkotschessaa]

I think it is very much like doing mental arithmetic. Some might have a gift for it, but it can be learned, practiced, mastered, and then one can go right out of mastery by not practicing. It seems Mozart was more industrious than we are sometimes lead to believe, according to the perspective here.

I think many people have the misleading impression, principally from that very brilliant film, that Mozart was a bawdy, undisciplined philanderer who occasionally had flashes of genius,' said Grabsky. 'In fact, he was going to concerts every night, meeting musicians, listening to other people's work, writing and rewriting his own. He was very practical about his work, and entrepreneurial.'

I had a high school music teacher who once had to transpose a piano score a HALF STEP (this is insanely hard IMO) for a live performance. I thought he was brilliant, but he was sweating by the end of it!

-Dave K