After nearly a year passed at home in unremitting musical
instruction, and practice of various instruments as well as
composition, the father once more set off with all his family to
Vienna,--on this occasion with a view to Wolfgang paving the way
to Italy by the composition of an opera, (Italy, at that time,
being the Eldorado of music.) He succeeded in procuring the
scrittura of an opera buffa, "La Finta semplice;" but, when
finished, although the Emperor himself had intrusted the
composition to the boy, the cabals of envious singers effectually
prevented its being performed. But a German operetta which the
lad of twelve also wrote at that time, "Bastien und Bastienne,"
was given in private, at the summer residence of the Mesmer
family, in the suburb called Landstrasse. The father, too, had
some compensation by the Emperor commissioning his son to compose
a solemn mass for the consecration of the new Waisenhaus church,
which Wolfgang himself directed with the conductor's baton, in
presence of the Imperial Family, on the 7th December, 1768.

Immediately on their return home, the young virtuoso was
appointed archiepiscopal Concertmeister. He passed almost the
whole of the year 1769 in Salzburg, chiefly engaged in the
composition of masses. We also see him at that time eagerly
occupied in improving his knowledge of Latin, although two years
previously he had composed a comedy in that language,--"Apollo et
Hyacinthus." From this study proceeds the first letter which is
still extant from his hand:--



1.