This illustrated biography tells the fascinating story of classical music's supreme prodigy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756, began to play the clavier when he was three years old and was already composing at the age five. Until his death at age 35, he performed before European royalty and composed over 600 works, including timeless symphonies, concertos, quartets, operas and masses, many of them masterpieces.

Illustrated Lives Of The Great Composers is a wonderful insight drawing on personal letters, recollections, engravings, paintings and other images, with a CD featuring his greatest works.

Including contemporary reports and Mozart's own, voluminous correspondence, the author skilfully recreates Mozart's story from his prodigious boyhood in Salzburg through his first triumphs to shameful neglect at the end of his life and his eventual tragic death.

The illustrations are taken from contemporary engravings, paintings and from the titles pages of first editions. A specially produced CD is included featuring Mozart's greatest compositions.

Author Peggy Woodford graduated from St Anne's College, Oxford, and then spent a year in Rome on an Italian govenment scholarship. She has published a number of books in Britain and the USA.