Upside down, Fedora Last disappeared under the sea. With that, the City capsized completely, sending up a massive column of spray hundreds of feet high.
Marine City floated upside down in the bay like a gigantic chocolate cake, its rust-coloured base exposed to view. After reaching an angle of 180 degrees, the City did not complete a turn of 360 degrees. It did not refloat itself. And Mayor Fedora Last was never seen or heard of again.
Bravo Herr Mozart!
The real name of the great composer Mozart was Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Gottlieb Amadé Amadeus Mozart.
Mozart was born at the age of three. The reason for this is not known. He was born in his father’s house at Salzburg – probably because he didn’t have a mother.
It is said that, as soon as he was born, Mozart sat at a piano belonging to someone called Klavier and played a three-note chord. As we may judge from this surviving anecdote, Mozart only had three fingers.
As proof of his genius, we have the Nannerl Music Book, which Mozart composed for his sister at the age of four. This included eight minuets, designed to help his sister practise playing an instrument called the “Nannerl”. Köchel names the composer of these minuets as a certain “Wolfgängerl”. This was probably Mozart’s doppelgängerl.
A friend of Mozart’s father was a violinist called Schachtner. His violin was made of butter, which gradually melted, making its tone one-eighth lower than that of other violins. So Schachtner gave up and started playing the trumpet instead.
Once, Schachtner played his trumpet in front of Mozart. The boy was so shocked that he dropped dead on the spot. But he came back to life straight afterwards.
One day, when Mozart’s father and Schachtner got together to play a trio, the four-year-old Mozart asked if he could join in. His father refused, saying he hadn’t learnt to play the violin yet. Mozart had a tantrum, so his father reluctantly let him have his way. The child proceeded to play the second violin with his right hand and the first with his left. What’s more, he played all six of Wenzel’s compositions at the same time.
Mozart still didn’t know how to use a pen when he was five. The score of a concerto composed by Mozart as a five-year-old is so splattered with ink, and this ink is so smeared over the page by the child’s fingers, that it is unreadable. When he saw this, Mozart’s father wept in despair. That’s why, if this concerto were ever performed, it would truly be a miracle.
When he was six, Mozart was taken on a concert tour of Vienna by his father. There, he was invited to play for the Empress Maria Theresa and the Emperor Francis I at the Palace of Schönbrunn. During the performance, Mozart is said to have covered the keyboard with a cloth and played with one finger. It would seem that, by this time, Mozart only had one finger left.
There were a number of princes and princesses of Mozart’s age in the Palace at this time. When Mozart slipped and fell on the polished parquet floor of the Palace, one of the girls helped him up. In his joy, Mozart promised, “I will surely make you my wife!”
The girl’s name was Marie Antoinette. She took the promise seriously, and waited for him. But Mozart never came to claim his bride. She lost patience and went off to marry Louis XVI of France instead.
Even then, she still held a secret passion for Mozart. When he died in 1791, her grief made her provoke the people into starting the French Revolution. Stepping up to the guillotine herself, she ordered the executioner to behead her, thereby committing assisted suicide.
When he was eight, Mozart travelled to London. There, tutored by Johann Christian Bach among others, he composed a number of pieces including the ‘Londoner Skizzenbuch’, ‘K19a’, and ‘Köchel-Einstein 15a-ss’.
Mozart received his first ever commission at the age of ten. He composed a piece called ‘Licenza’ for two patrons, Recitativo and Aria. But it’s not very good.
In the following year, Mozart performed the ‘Obligation of the First Commandment’ for Apollo and Hyacinthus. Nobody seems to know exactly what this was.
In the autumn of Mozart’s eleventh year, Maria Josepha, ninth daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, was to marry King Ferdinand IV of Naples. When Mozart heard of this, he was furious (he’d mistaken her for Marie Antoinette). Though suffering from smallpox, he went back to Vienna to stop