History records Mozart as a man whose melodies seemed to have sprung from angels, reaching him faster than he could write them down. How did he manage to develop and excel professionally in spite of family tragedies and personal hardship? What made this amazing musical polymath tick? In this book Dr Amos Navon answers profound and hypnotic questions about the man behind the music by examining those elements in Mozart’s life that shaped his personality and determined his destiny. Navon describes Mozart’s remarkable development through writing wind instrument music for virtuoso friends and explores Mozart’s collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist of his three greatest operas. But this is not simply a dry exploration of composition. We learn of the very human Mozart -- of Constanze, who barely survived as Mozart’s wife and the mother of his children, and who, after his death, spent her life keeping her husband’s memory alive. The rounded-out story of this intensely human being reflects Mozart’s dependence on friends in times of financial need, the role of gambling in his daily life, his attitude toward religion, and whether his ultimate dream of living a wealthy, bourgeois life ever really materialised.