MOZART FINDS A MELODY

Costanza spins an upbeat tale from a wisp of fact in his solo debut. A case of writer’s block keeps young Mozart staring at a blank page, until his pet starling chirps an intriguing fragment of melody before escaping out the window. The composer’s ensuing search takes him through Vienna’s streets, where he hears laughter and other sounds that add to the birdsong—and by the weekend, there’s a new piano concerto to perform. As in his art for April Pulley Sayre’s Noodle Man: The Pasta Superhero (2002), Costanza suffuses his scenes with a golden light that falls alike on Mozart’s flyaway mane, on the elaborately costumed Viennese, and on that starling (colored here more like a hummingbird, but call it poetic license)—who returns in the end to perch on the composer’s baton. As chronicled in Mordicai Gerstein’s What Charlie Heard (2002), the later composer Charles Ives actually did create music inspired by ambient sounds, though to very different effect. But either tale makes a thought-provoking study of the creative process. (afterword) (Picture book. 7-9)