Music Feature - Lessons with Mozart

Jeremy Summerly eavesdrops on Thomas Attwood's composition lessons with Mozart. 'Study strict counterpoint for a year', said Mozart to the young Englishman freshly arrived in Vienna in 1785, 'and then we'll talk about fugues...'. Remarkably, the manuscripts from their lessons over the next year and a half survive, as does the study in Mozart's luxury apartment near St Stephen's Cathedral in the centre of Vienna; they provide a unique glimpse of a great composer setting out the tools and techniques of his trade. Also listening in to the master and pupil scribbling notes and wisecracks side by side are the Mozarthaus director Gerhard Vitek, composer and teacher Antony Pitts and the British Library's curator of music manuscripts Nicolas Bell. With the voices of Nicholas Dixon, Kathryn Knight and Toby Scholz as well as students from the Royal Academy of Music.