Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)

The first mention of Mozart's playing of the organ was of a performance on the instrument at Ybbs on 4th October 1762, when he was six. The Mozart family had travelled from Linz towards Vienna on the Danube. Priests who were in their company stopped at Ybbs to say Mass, and the boy, in his father's account, played about on the organ to such effect that members of the religious community left w hat they were at to listen to him in amazernent. The following summer the Mozarts set out on the first great journey through Europe. In Wasserburg, where they were delayed by a broken carriage-wheel, and Mozart played the organ in the church, his father showed him the use of the pedals, and he then proceeded to play standing up on the pedals, which otherwise his legs would never have reached.

Leopold Mozart's letters to his friend, landlord and banker, Lorenz Hagenauer, continue to inform us of the family's progress. In Heidel