28 January—By way of extended apology to Wolfgang Mozart, whose 268^th birthday we mentioned yesterday but didn’t observe properly, here’s the proper observation.

Wolf Mozart may well have coined the epithet “king of instruments” for the organ. Probably in German. But he composed very little music for the instrument he evidently admired. He transposed various works for performance on the mechanical organ (essentially a pneumatic version of a player piano) and other keyboard instruments and even had a piano with a pedal board in addition to a keyboard. But his compositions for pipe organ are rare.

(The very thought of playing an instrument with both hands—ten fingers—and two feet is daunting, to say the least. And that’s what organists do.)

Perhaps Mozart’s most noteworthy organ opus—written on commission for a mechanical organ—is his K 608 Fantasie in F Minor, from 1791. Here it is, played by a real person on a big old cathedral organ. You know Mozart wrote it because it’s full of phrases he used regularly: