It's not surprising that Peter Hoyt is a member of the organizing committee of the Mozart Festival.

A music historian, the assistant professor in the School of Music is an officer on the board of the Mozart Society of America. He also is a frequent pre-concert speaker for the mostly Mozart festival at New York City's Lincoln Center.

It's not surprising, too, that many of the musicians performing during the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth are faculty and students from USC.

"The amount that the School of Music has contributed to this festival is immeasurable," Hoyt said. "They have provided the glue that has helped bind the festival together. At almost all of the events, you will spot USC involvement."

Hoyt will present a lecture, "How Mozart Became Mozart," at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 2 at the Columbia Museum of Art. USC faculty and students from the School of Music are featured prominently in the Daily Festival Concerts held from 12:30 to 1 p.m. through Feb. 10 at Trinity Cathedral on Sumter Street.

It's not surprising either that Mozart, two and a half centuries after his birth, should be the centerpiece of a festival that encompasses not only music but also dance, theatre, education, and the visual arts.

"Mozart has truly come to define what it means to be a creative individual," Hoyt said. "You don't have to be a musician to relate to that concept."

In the mid-20th century, Hoyt said, Beethoven defined what it meant to be a composer to the public consciousness. But notions of celebrity and art changed in the last 50 years, and Mozart now fits that new image and has supplanted Beethoven in the popular imagination.

"Beethoven was famous for his struggles--with deafness, with his musical ideas--and he conducted his struggles in private," Hoyt said. "But you think of Mozart as someone who was very comfortable as a performer, as an improviser. He succeeded in every genre of composition. The fact that Mozart seemed to move so effortlessly in all these genres makes him a object of fascination."

Working on the Mozart Festival has helped Hoyt quickly become a part of Columbia's arts community and understand the University's importance in it.

"It's been a wonderful experience for me," he said. "I've been on the faculty only a year and a half, but to find myself immediately involved with all the performing arts groups in town really shows you how central USC is the life of the city."

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