Leopold imagined his son “made” for life. But the boy’s music, for all its charm and fluency, still wanted the unmistakably creative touch. The tireless traveler, Dr. Burney, wrote a little later: “If I may judge of the music which I have heard of his composition, in the orchestra, he is one further instance of the early fruit being more extraordinary than excellent.” And the composer Hasse believed that “young Mozart is certainly a prodigy for his age. The father adores his son overmuch and does all he can to spoil him; but I have so good an opinion of the innate goodness of the boy that I hope that, despite his father’s adulation, he will not allow himself to be spoiled.”
The pair went briefly to Salzburg in 1771 and started south again for Milan, where _Ascanio in Alba_ was to be given in October. The work was duly presented for the princely nuptials along with Hasse’s opera _Ruggiero_, likewise commissioned for the festivities. According to the father’s report, the youth’s _festa teatrale_ completely eclipsed the work of the venerable master who, far from being jealous, is said to have remarked, “This boy will throw us all into the shade.”
Scarcely were the travelers home once more than the kindly Archbishop died. His successor was the former Bishop of Gurk, Hieronymus, Count of Colloredo. Like many others, the Mozarts scented trouble, for Colloredo was a hard-boiled bigot and in every respect the reverse of his predecessor. He lives on in history principally as Mozart’s evil genius and as the man who, in the end, was to fan Wolfgang’s detestation of Salzburg to white heat and to drive him to open mutiny. Hieronymus knew by a kind of intuition that his new subjects were not well disposed to him so, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, “he despised them and held himself aloof.” His rule, says Paumgartner, was something other than the “ancient regime” of his forerunner, the musical highlights of which had been Leopold Mozart, Ernst Eberlin, and Cajetan Adlgasser. Colloredo was a revolutionary and a deadly foe of routine and sought to put his ideas into force by sharpest disciplinary measures. His taste, however, ran to the easy grace of Italian music; yet he did in his chilly way at first look upon Wolfgang as a talent he might use for the greater glory of his court. For his new master’s festive installation in 1772 the composer wrote a one-act serenata along the lines of his _Ascanio_, entitled _Il Sogno di Scipione_, to a text by Metastasio, adapted from Cicero. The score was a typical “occasional work” of allegorical character. Far more important in the creative sense are at least eight symphonies and four _divertimenti_, in all of which are traces of the ripening genius shortly to emerge.