Under his father’s careful tutelage the young Wolfgang, together with his sister Maria Anna, who was almost equally precocious, advanced rapidly in music. When he was but three he picked out simple chords at the piano; at four he played minuets and other short pieces; and at five he composed them. His early compositions were carefully copied out in a sketch-book, at first by his father and later by himself, and dated; so that we have documentary evidence that they were actually written by him at an almost incredibly early age. The first, dictated when he was five years old, is a Minuet and Trio.
[Music: score] [Illustration: FIGURE XIV. MOZART’S FIRST COMPOSITION. MINUET, WITH TRIO.]
In this childlike but well-organized piece is shown already a perfect mastery of the simple three-part song-form which is, as we have seen, the structural embryo of the sonata. Both minuet and trio consist of (a) an eight-measure sentence, cadencing in the dominant, or contrasted tonal centre, (b) a four-measure clause of contrast, and (c) a four-measure clause echoing the last half of the first sentence, and closing in the home-key. Thus both halves of the piece, and the entire piece, as a whole, illustrate the fundamental principles of musical design in a very consummate way. All this, however, Mozart might have done simply by careful observation and imitation of methods familiar to all contemporary composers. What is therefore even more remarkable in such early work is the variety of detail that he manages to introduce. In view of the fact, which we shall later find very significant, that his skill as an artist lay largely in his command over _variety_ of effect (while Haydn’s consisted more in the salient unity of his composition), it is exceedingly interesting to note that, at five years old, Mozart uses so complex a device as shifted rhythm[34] in the manipulation of his motif. In the fifth measure of the minuet, namely, he writes his motif on the second and third beats, thus producing a very charming effect of cross-accentuation. It is also noticeable that in so short a piece as this we find triplets (measures 7 and 15) and groups of sixteenth notes (in the trio), obviously introduced for the sake of rhythmic diversity.