The compositions of Mozart's Vienna decade (1781-1791) have become iconic in Western Culture, helping to shape our very notions of 'music', beauty' and 'genius'. On the other hand, however, the figure of Mozart is encrusted by layers of myth and legend that at times distort our understanding of his work. In particular, the Romantic myth of Mozart as an 'eternal child' (puer aeternus) has proved remarkably tenacious. Even Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, while ostensibly iconoclastic, in fact succeeded in perpetuating the myth in a new form. This module seeks to uncover the adult beneath the child - in other words, to understand Mozart as a musical thinker. It does so by examining Mozart's compositional techniques, his attitudes to compositional training methods, his musical aesthetics and his engagement ith the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment, illustrating these topics with selected works. The module also analyses some of the main trends in Mozart reception.