The Best Book on Mozart

"His categories assume unwarrantably that the composer always expressed his art more personally when transforming tradition than by conforming to it, that Mozart, in short, was most Mozartean only when most radical. That is particularly dangerous with this composer because it may prevent us from recognizing that Mozart could be as inspired when he conformed to tradition as when he was revolutionary. The refusal to acknowledge that Mozart often showed his genius when he was most conventional has inspired such foolishness as Theodor W. Adorno's rueful assertion that Mozart, unlike Beethoven, could not always write the way he wanted, or Glenn Gould's attempt, by performance as well as writing, to demonstrate that Mozart in his last years had become an inferior composer..."