How many "Mozarts" of chess?

That's a fair, but different, objection. The point of calling someone a "Mozart" in their field is not meant to be a disservice to anyone. 

"Mozart" has become shorthand for, as you mention, child prodigies who remain prolific as adults. In the same way, "Einstein" is shorthand for someone who is a revolutionary genius.

Child prodigies as accomplished as Mozart? In mathemathics, how about Gauss? I'd say his accomplishments stand well against any prodigy in any other field. In chess, I wonder how many people forget that Kasparov was a prodigy and remained the #1 ranked player for over 20 years. Does anyone else in chess compare to that?

Can we have a BOB DYLAN of chess.

The Beatles.

Bob Dylan would be Ivanchuk.

stanhope13 wrote:

Can we have a BOB DYLAN of chess.

The Myth of Mozart...oy.  As much a myth for chess geniuses as for him.  Mozart worked like a dog on his composition.  Like any top notch GM who dedicates his life to the study of chess, Mozart dedicated his life to the composition of music.  It is a myth that he composed effortlessly.  Just as it is a myth that Top GMs achieve greatness without all of the hard work.  Regarding mozart:

Dr. Greenberg: A. "...Mozart had talent, yes, by the bucketful, but oh my, he did work hard. And let's not make it easy on ourselves by thinking of Mozart as a freak, an eternal child, an idiot touched by the hand of God. Unfair and untrue.''

And:

Q. Mozart completed most of works by dint of sheer memory?

A. ``A generation ago scholars thought Mozart composed everything in his head and then notated it on paper after the creative process was over.  He was most certainly capable of this, as works such as the Linz symphony (composed in four days) attest.  But his process of notating in layers, revealed by the different ink tints in his manuscripts, and his surviving sketches (some 90% of which were destroyed by his widow), have revealed a more nuanced sense of his creative process.’’

``The fragments—a larger number than by any other major composer (1 in 5 over his lifetime, 1 in 3 during the mature Vienna years)—are extraordinary in what they reveal about the creative process—both how he conceived his works and how he wrote them down.  Above all, the fragments frequently contain some of his most interesting, and most experimental ideas, and not infrequently one wonders why he finished some of his works instead of those left in draft stage (and by that I don’t mean the Requiem or other works begun in 1791, where clearly it is a question of death staying his hand).’’

-Robert Levin, pianist, musicologist, composer, and Mozart scholar. Levin has completed and reconstructed a number of classical works, including unfinished compositions by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Agree. Bronstein himself spotted he was convinced about Capablanca working over and over on middlegame positions that could lead into simple endgames where he was feeling comfortable.

Wrong gender but I nominate Jutta Hempel as a Mozart of chess

This myth is not isolated to Mozart; it persists about anyone who excels in his or her field.

When people who don't dedicate themselves to their field see how effortless it has become for someone who did, their ego kicks in and rationalizes, "it's not because I didn't apply myself as much, it's because he has a built-in advantage that I don't"

My fiancee is a very talented illustrator and her clients only see the quality of her finished work; they don't realize the years and years of drawing and drawing, improving incrementally, it took to get to that point.

Jeder Man sein eigener Mozart!

I think it's all bullcrap nonsense. 

Why Mozart of chess? Why not Beethoven, Bach, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Handel, Haydn, Vivaldi, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schubert, or even Bartok?

It is funny how much credit Mozart gets, us musicians are sometimes very annoyed by it.

Because Mozart is more famous? It's just a shorthand. We don't use Newton, Bohr, or Maxwell as metaphors for intellectual brilliance. We use Einstein. That doesn't mean those other guys weren't brilliant. 

If we had more famous chessplayers, maybe one of them would get the same treatment. 

I guess I was referring to why he is more famous, but you're still right.

No, it is because he was a prodigy child. That's what catch people's attention. 

I am the Bette Midler of chess.  I don't even know what I mean by that.

I was thinking "who is te Janis Joplin of chess?", and guess you are quite close because you were starring her in the movie "The Rose".

Who was the Ozzy Osbourne of chess? Was it Mikhail Tal? A true genius with fantastic voice, that could have done even better without booze?

We could be heroes, just for one day!

Xman, I'm a musician too.  The reason Mozart is used is because he is the only composer mentioned in your list who supposesly attained mastery "effortlessly".  Beethoven was know for taking, at times, years to complete compositions.  His sketch books are masses of confusion, crossouts, writeovers and everyother kind of struggle to get his ideas "right" as he worked through them.  His sketch books are EPIC.

Anyone heard of Florence Foster Jenkins? She was a talentless but very wealthy woman who had a fantasy that she was a great soprano. So she hired the NY Philharmonic and other orchestras and made recordings to feature her voice. Sadly for her, the recordings do feature her voice, which is appalling. 

So I nominate the current President of FIDE as the Florence Foster Jenkins of chess...

(I've just checked  - she hired Carnegie Hall, but never the NY Philharmonic. My humble apologies to them)