often prosy, after the manner of his time, there is always
something in his music."

(Mozart valued Handel most highly. He knew his masterpieces by
heart--not only the choruses but also many arias. [Reported by
Rochlitz. H.E.K.])

93. "Apropos, I intended, while asking you to send back the
rondo, to send me also the six fugues by Handel and the toccatas
and fugues by Eberlin. I go every Sunday to Baron von Swieten's,
and there nothing is played except Handel and Bach. I am making a
collection of the fugues,--those of Sebastian as well as of
Emanuel and Friedemann Bach; also of Handel's, and here the six
are lacking. Besides I want to let the baron hear those of
Eberlin. In all likelihood you know that the English Bach is
dead; a pity for the world of music."

(Vienna, April 10, 1782, to his father. Johann Ernst Eberlin
(Eberle), born in 1702, died in 1762 as archiepiscopal
chapelmaster in Salzburg. Many of his unpublished works are
preserved in Berlin. The "English" Bach was Johann Christian, son
of the great Johann Sebastian. As a child Mozart made his
acquaintance in London.)

94. "I shall be glad if papa has not yet had the works of Eberlin
copied, for I have gotten them meanwhile, and discovered,--for I
could not remember,--that they are too trivial and surely do not
deserve a place among those of Bach and Handel. All respect to
his four-part writing, but his clavier fugues are nothing but
long-drawn-out versetti."