Music Even In Situations Of The

This is a translation of Mozart's celebrated 26 September 1781 letter to his father, written while composing Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The original German articulates his core aesthetic principle: that even in the most violent and dramatic situations, the music must never "offend the ear" but must always give pleasure — "must always remain music." The standard scholarly translation by Emily Anderson (The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 1938) renders the idea as: "passions, violent or not, must never be expressed to the point of disgust, and music must never offend the ear." This letter is among the most frequently cited of his writings on compositional philosophy.