Mozart essay - ideas please? Dmmetler?

[chocolate-chip chooky]

My 11yr old is enjoying studying Mozart at the moment.

She's playing Mozart pieces on the piano and we're reading biographies.

 

The next step is that I'd like her to write an essay. She's written essays before and has a good grasp on the basics of structure, academic writing style and referencing.

 

In the past, her essay topics have been general eg Marie Curie, The Hindenburg

 

I'm ready for her to have a more focused task for an essay, so that she has to address something in particular and tailor her research a bit more.

 

I'm struggling to come up with a good idea related to Mozart, that is interesting and also achievable for an 11yr old with decent (but still limited experience) skills.

 

Any ideas?  

 

I find his relationship with his father interesting and how this influenced his life and achievements, but I don't know if that would be too difficult.

I'm just brain-freezing on this at the moment.

 

Thank you  :o

[chocolate-chip chooky]

The story of his many names and how he referred to himself is very interesting and worth studying.

 

Ooh, sounds interesting! Thank you.

 

We've read about his many names, but nothing yet specifically about how he referred to himself.

 

We affectionately refer to him as 'Wolfie'.  :)

 

Do do tend to get a bit attached to the people we study and give them our own nicknames. 

[Dmmetler]

How his works were funded is kind of neat, but may be hard to find respurces on. In general, the way arts were treated then vs now is an interesting topic for study. His sister, Nannerl, and the doffeeence in their careers, is also kind of interesting (based on reports, she was at least as talented as he was early on, but the trajectory for a girl prodigy vs a boy was dramatic).

 

Finally, Mozart myths and what is actually known vs what has made it into the common knowledge base is really cool-he's a larger than life figure (who really started that during his life by design), but is also recent enough that it's possible to tease myths vs facts. If you want to narrow that topic, just researching the Magic Flute starts diving into conspiracy theory stuff.

[chocolate-chip chooky]

The story of his many names and how he referred to himself is very interesting and worth studying.

 

We listened to the first lecture yesterday of the Great Courses Great Masters: Mozart and it mentioned his love of wordplay and how he'd use different names for himself, including different languages and also things like spelling the name backwards. So interesting!

[chocolate-chip chooky]

How his works were funded is kind of neat, but may be hard to find respurces on. In general, the way arts were treated then vs now is an interesting topic for study. His sister, Nannerl, and the doffeeence in their careers, is also kind of interesting (based on reports, she was at least as talented as he was early on, but the trajectory for a girl prodigy vs a boy was dramatic).

 

Finally, Mozart myths and what is actually known vs what has made it into the common knowledge base is really cool-he's a larger than life figure (who really started that during his life by design), but is also recent enough that it's possible to tease myths vs facts. If you want to narrow that topic, just researching the Magic Flute starts diving into conspiracy theory stuff.

 

Thank you!

 

Our Great Courses course seems like it will head into some of this. The intro lecture was excellent. Wow, that presenter is passionate.

 

The treatment of Nannerl had my daughter on her soapbox  :001_smile: