Upon hearing Mozart’s Singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio, Emperor Joseph II is alleged to have said, “Too many notes.” The claim increased in popularity when Peter Schaffer put those words in his mouth in the travesty Amadeus. Quotations are tricky things, though. If I gratuitously claim someone said something, how do you know they didn’t? It’s the old issue of proving a negative.

The quotation, or something like it, has a source that long predates Schaffer. It’s the 1798 biography of Mozart by Franz Xaver Niemetschek. The full title is Leben des K.K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart nach Originalquellen beschrieben (life of the music director Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, written based on original sources). The attribution given there is:

Der Monarch der im Grunde von der neuen tiefeindringenden Musik entzückt war, sagte doch zu Mozart: »Zu schön für unsere Ohren, und gewaltig viel Noten lieber Mozart!«
 
»Gerade so viel, Eure Majestät, als nöthig ist,« versetzte dieser mit jenem edlen Stolze, und der Freymüthigkeit, die großen Geistern so gut anstehet. Er sah es ein, daß dieß nicht eigenes Urtheil, sondern nach gesagt war.

My translation: “The monarch was delighted at heart with the new, deeply impressive music, but said to Mozart, ‘Too beautiful for our ears, and powerfully many notes, dear Mozart!’ ‘Exactly as many, your majesty, as necessary,’ he responded with the noble pride and frankness that so much behooves great spirits. He recognized that this wasn’t his own opinion, but rather repeated someone’s.”

That’s hardly disparagement. At worst it’s an expression of being overwhelmed, having trouble taking it all in. The scene in Amadeus, though made up, captures the idea that someone else gave the emperor the words. Niemetschek mentions the supposed envy of the Italian composers.

Aside from that, there’s the question of whether the emperor really said it. Niemetschek doesn’t say where he got the quotation. It’s unlikely he was present on the occasion. It’s more likely that he got it from Mozart’s widow Constanze, who would have gotten it from Wolfgang and remembered it years later. At the time the event would have occurred, he wasn’t yet married to her. They were engaged at the time of the opera’s premiere, and he might have been telling her entertaining tales that he never expected to reach other ears.

It’s also possible Niemetschek made the quote up. Biographers are notorious for adding undocumented quotations for verisimilitude. Alternatively, Constanze might have misremembered or embellished what her husband told her.

This isn’t to argue that the exchange couldn’t have happened. However, there’s no evidence that the emperor said “zu viele Noten” (too many notes) or tried to belittle Mozart with anything to that effect.