Since the Royal Musical Association was founded in 1874, it has heard five papers on Mozart. Perhaps the most notable was read in 1932 by C. B. Oldman, under the title ‘Mozart and Modern Research’. As this gave me the idea for the present paper, and as Oldman's name will recur in it, I might briefly recall what he did for the Association and for Mozart. He was a member of Council for 37 years, and a vice-president for 21. Shortly before he died, in 1969, he gave up the chairmanship of the Proceedings Committee which he had held since 1953. From the mid-1920s, for nearly three decades, it was he in the British Museum, even during the arduous years of his Principal Keepership of Printed Books, to whom visiting musical scholars came for advice, particularly on Mozart, but on much else as well.