How a childhood obsession with Mozart and his Requiem still speaks to me today.

As a child, I have to admit, I was obsessed with Mozart.

There were two things that pulled me over the edge into total hero worship. One, the release of the film Amadeus, which showed me for the first time a composer who was as human as he was divine. He swore, he struggled, he wondered where the next penny was coming from but he was a genius to whom the muse seemed to visit on an annoyingly regular basis. Much of the film is fanciful speculation but it is a hook – it got you in. The power of a story told so beautifully with music.

As a rather odd music-wannabe teenager, didn’t we all just want to be like him? Did we all think that in some small way we had some of Mozart’s genius? University normally rectifies this somewhat heretical perception! But the real killer for me in terms of Mozart was singing at the age of 13 excerpts of his Requiem in concert at the Sydney Opera House as part of the combined secondary schools choral concerts. It was a life-changing moment....