I Am A Composer And I

This declaration comes from a letter Mozart wrote to his father Leopold in February 1778, during a fraught period in Mannheim when Leopold was pressing him to give up his attachment to the Weber family and move to Paris to find employment. The title Kapellmeister — court music director, the highest musical position in the eighteenth century — is here claimed by Mozart as a birthright rather than an appointment. Leopold himself had spent decades working toward the lesser rank of deputy Kapellmeister in Salzburg. The letter is a direct assertion of artistic vocation: Mozart was refusing to subordinate composing to the demands of patronage.