Editing Leopold Mozart (section)

==Assessment==
The assessment of Leopold Mozart as a person and as a father brings forth serious disagreement among scholars. The ''Grove Dictionary'' article, by [[Cliff Eisen]], denounces "his misrepresentation at the hands of later biographers":

{{quote|A man of broad cultural achievement ... Leopold Mozart may have been haughty, difficult to please and at times intractable, ... but there is no compelling evidence that Mozart was excessively manipulative, intolerant, autocratic or jealous of his son's talent. On the contrary, a careful reading in context of the family letters reveals a father who cared deeply for his son but who was frequently frustrated in his greatest ambition: to secure for Wolfgang a worldly position appropriate to his genius.<ref name=Grove-1 />}}

Other scholars have taken a harsher view. Solomon portrays Mozart as a man who loved his children but was unwilling to grant them their independence when they reached adulthood, resulting in considerable hardship for them. Daniel Steptoe makes a similar assessment, and particularly faults Leopold for having blamed Wolfgang for his mother's early death – not just immediately following the death in 1778 ("a crushing reply to a young man grieving for his mother"), but even later on in 1780.<ref>See {{harvnb|Steptoe|1996|p=25}}.</ref>

Robert Spaethling, who translated Mozart's letters, typically takes a position strongly sympathetic to Wolfgang in his struggles with his father; he describes Wolfgang's resignation of his Salzburg position and marriage to Constanze as a two-act "drama of liberation from Salzburg, specially Wolfgang's liberation from Leopold Mozart".<ref>See {{harvnb|Spaethling|2005|p=264}}.</ref>