Mozart wrote his first symphony at age eight

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote the symphony now numbered as his first Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, K. 16 in London in 1764, when he was just eight years old.

The circumstances were almost mundane. The Mozart family was midway through a years-long grand tour of Europe’s courts, showing off the boy and his older sister Nannerl as prodigies, when their father Leopold fell seriously ill. They retreated to a house on Ebury Street in Chelsea so he could recover, and loud keyboard playing was banned in the sickroom. By family tradition, the bored child filled the silence by composing Nannerl later recalled sitting beside him and being told not to forget to give the horns something to do.

A symphony, written by a child told to keep the noise down.

K. 16 is a compact, three-movement work for oboes, horns, and strings the kind of bright, galant music Mozart was soaking up in London from Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian, whose influence is audible throughout. This is no scribbled novelty; it is a genuine, fully playable symphony in an established form, written out in a child’s careful hand. The autograph survives today in Kraków.

Mozart’s pace barely slowed afterward. He toured Europe’s palaces before he was a teenager and, by his death at just 35, had produced a catalog of more than 600 works operas, concertos, dozens of further symphonies, and the Requiem he left unfinished at the end. The improbable career that astonished Europe had, in effect, already begun in a quiet London bedroom.