A Mozart puzzle...

If I don't practice one day, I know it. Two days, the critics know it. Three days, the public knows it.
JASCHA HEIFETZ
____________________________

In his book Mozart: A Life, Maynard Solomon gives the following description of Mozart's typical daily routine:

During his early years in Vienna, Mozart would customarily arise at six o'clock, be at his desk by seven, and compose until nine or ten, when he would make the rounds of his pupils, giving lessons until one o'clock.  "Then I lunch," he reported to his sister...  Returning to his room after several hours of social visits, he would again compose ... "I often go on writing until one - and am up again at six." ... With variations, that was Mozart's daily routine as he described it in his letters home... [On some] days the only time he had for composing was in the evenings, "and of that I can never be sure, as I am often asked to perform at concerts." (p.309).

With Mozart's time divided between composing, teaching, socializing, and frequent concert performances, the above description of his daily routine suggests that Mozart had no time to practice at all, or at least that he did not practice regularly enough to warrant mentioning practice among his daily activities.  This I find very hard to believe, but since I have no compelling evidence to the contrary, the best I can do is offer a few rather inclusive speculations on this matter.

Bye-bye, the baby in the bathwater

[The music is] bizarre ... melodically as well as harmonically, and avoids natural flow ...  [Vocal writing] is overladen with surfeit of harmonies ... and tricky intervals which are often very hard for singers to remember and intone. 

For ... melody we have searched in vain; nor have we even found any varieties of form, indicating an original fancy at work...  All seems worn and hackneyed and unmeaning.  ... if effect there be, it must be monotonous, and bizarre.
 
There is a vast deal of ugly music ... that offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a coarse file.

[The singers] all carry on in indistinguishable, angular swoops and shrieks.  [The opera] boasts ... avoidance  - as if on principle - of any hint of beauty, expressive content or sensual delight...  [T]there is something singularly horrifying about this new score... It's a dehumanizing brand of art ... and to see it applied to the warm-blooded genre of opera is enough to chill the bones.

________________________________
Reading the above excerpts from reviews of contemporary operas, you may feel sorry for the audiences traumatized by sadistic composers.  You may also feel grateful to the critics whose unflinching reviews must have prevented many music lovers from becoming additional victims of these musical counterparts of Marquis de Sade.  And why wouldn't you feel this way, if the composer in these reviews is made to look like the defendant in a criminal trial charged with multiple counts of fraud, vandalism, and intentional infliction of pain and suffering?  (The defendant used false promises of an enjoyable experience to swindle hundreds of people.  He lured these people into a large building where he held them captive for hours while subjecting them to various forms of psychological and physical torture.)

But then suppose you learn that the first excerpt comes from a 1793 review of the then present state of opera and refers specifically to the operas of Mozart; the second comes from a 1844 article on the operas of Verdi; the third comes from a 1907 review of the American premiere of Strauss' Salome; and only the fourth and last excerpt comes from a review of an opera (Elliott Carter's What Next?) which is contemporary for both the critic and yourself.  Would you still feel sorry for the audiences? Grateful to the critics?
     Or would you instead begin to wonder if there is any line of work where incompetence and arrogance are encouraged and rewarded as much as they are in music criticism?