A Rapid Composer
The evening before the first performance of “Don Juan” at Prag, Mozart told his wife that he intended to write the overture during the night, and asked her to make a punch for him and stay with him, to keep him awake. But exertion and sleepiness made the work so hard, that his wife begged him to rest on the sofa, promising to waken him in an hour. He slept so soundly that she let him sleep two hours. It was five o’clock when she wakened him. At seven the copyist was to come. Mozart worked now so rapidly, that in two hours the overture was finished.