Allegedly, Mozart’s widow burned 90 percent of his early sketches for his music to create the myth that he was such a genius that he composed everything in his head. Certainly, no one can deny Mozart’s gift, whether his compositions came out of his head in their final states or not, but if the story is true, his widow was a shrewd publicist. As Michelangelo once said about his painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, “If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.”
