Apparently this was an exercise book he made for a parisian tutee, who later fled the french revolution, leading to the confiscation of the notebook by the revolutionaries.
> I have it on good authority that it is a handwritten notebook.
I'm suspicious. Didn't Mozart use a word processor?
I mean, not a PC program, that would be ridiculous, but one of those dedicated stand-alone word processor systems (like Smith-Corona made) that they used in ancient times.
One of my pet peeves is what seems to be an overwhelming desire in writers to always put an adjective in front of every noun. You can never just let it be a "notebook", it has to be some kind of notebook.
It's even worse in product naming and advertising. Nothing can be just "vanilla", you have to even put an adjective in front of your adjectives, like "Mexican vanilla".
Note-book, as in "book containing musical notes". I expected a regular notebook (for the other kind of notes, that people like you and me might write)...
More than you can possibly imagine. There are warehouses full of unread papers. Any one of which could contain a reference to somebody or something important.
There was a recently discovered letter, possibly to Shakespeare's wife, which would completely change our understanding of their marriage, and even the way his plays depict women. The only way to find such things is by hordes of grad students trudging their way through fragile paper and messy handwriting.
Any time something of popular historical interest like this pops up I think about that.
If you've not read it then Robert Harris's (factual) book about the affair is entertaining, not least because such a broad sweep of dislikeable characters were undone by greed and folly!
He was a niche-specialty career archivist, sorting through his library's collection of stuff from the right era and area. That is the discovery story behind a rather large fraction of such documents.
Even inside the tiny niche of the classical music history world, a book of daily exercises - written for some now-obscure student, and owned by a national library - is actually a pretty minor thing.
Very few counterfeiters bother doing nickles and dimes.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/
This review doesn't spoil the movie https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/19/in-the-hand-of-...
Side note, imdb's per country rating histograms are mesmerizing https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/ratings/ how different the Iranian ratings are vs the UK.
Tom Lehrer.
Lehrer did 97
FYI, most people speak the vast majority of their quotes before the day they die.
You stiffed Mozart!? A curse on your ghost!
I'm suspicious. Didn't Mozart use a word processor?
I mean, not a PC program, that would be ridiculous, but one of those dedicated stand-alone word processor systems (like Smith-Corona made) that they used in ancient times.
It's even worse in product naming and advertising. Nothing can be just "vanilla", you have to even put an adjective in front of your adjectives, like "Mexican vanilla".
EDIT: s/verb/noun/
There was a recently discovered letter, possibly to Shakespeare's wife, which would completely change our understanding of their marriage, and even the way his plays depict women. The only way to find such things is by hordes of grad students trudging their way through fragile paper and messy handwriting.
https://youtu.be/wk-sIeh7BcI?si=188fGFMD_f3DrkXP
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkqfpkTTy2w
https://guides.loc.gov/beethoven/manuscripts
https://youtu.be/wk-sIeh7BcI?si=188fGFMD_f3DrkXP
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries
If you've not read it then Robert Harris's (factual) book about the affair is entertaining, not least because such a broad sweep of dislikeable characters were undone by greed and folly!
Color me sceptical
Very few counterfeiters bother doing nickles and dimes.