It was Mozart's birthday on Friday, or more precisely the 250th anniversary of his birth. And nearly all the world cheered.

What is there to talk about that hasn't been listed elsewhere? The 1,650 Mozart pastries that were handed out prior to a concert in Helsinki? The 24 hour broadcast on Swedish radio of "Wolfie's hits and misses?" Or the mountains of kitsch, Mozart knickers and baby bottles come to mind, that were sold, or not, on the day itself?

Personally I would rather focus on two interviews conducted by the Associated Press, the first with a Salzburg cab driver, Andrea Gautsch, who claimed that Mozart came with mother's milk, and the second with Peggy Taylor from Richmond, VA, who has CDs of him playing all day.

After all, in a climate so pessimistic about the future of classical music, it's nice to know that some people still listen as they did in the possibly apocryphal halcyon days of the past when apparently everyone grew up with at least a fundamental knowledge of Mozart and Beethoven and that whole gang, to music of this kind without ceremony, without pretension, just because they like it.