Dr. Eric Offenbacher, Mozart scholar, 96

If Mozart makes you smarter, Dr. Eric Offenbacher was indisputably a genius. The internationally known Mozart scholar and retired dentist died of natural causes early Monday (Jan. 5) at the Kline Galland Home in Seattle. He was 96.

Dr. Offenbacher first made the acquaintance of Mozart's music when he was a child playing the violin in a musical, Orthodox Jewish household in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.

Departing their homeland as the storm of the Holocaust began to gather, the Offenbachers moved to America. The young dentist volunteered for the U.S. military and served in the Philippines. His experiences there, he later said, convinced him he needed to bring music back into his life.

Dr. Offenbacher became a Mozart collector during the 42 years he practiced dentistry in New York, before moving with his wife, Gertrude, to Seattle in 1978. During the New York years, he also was active in the management of a 1966-78 New York concert series that presented such artists as pianist Murray Perahia and violinists Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman.

He assembled an internationally esteemed collection of Mozart manuscripts, books and other treasures, residing since 1987 at Harvard University as the "Biblioteca Mozartiana Eric Offenbacher." His collection of rare Mozart vocal recordings is housed at the University of Washington Music Library.

For Dr. Offenbacher, Mozart was always the composer who spoke to him, stirring a deeply personal reaction.

"I also was drawn to Mozart the man, this great composer with his imagination and his shortcomings, so human despite his genius," Dr. Offenbacher once told The Times. "I didn't have any money after the war, and by then I had two children, but I decided to collect what I could of Mozart."

That collection, established bit by bit, began with the rare recordings of vocal music.

"Later, my finances improved a little," Dr. Offenbacher said, "and I bought books and manuscripts, original documents where Mozart was mentioned for the first time in the English and French languages, first editions of his manuscripts that were published in his lifetime."

The gem of the Mozart collection is an extremely rare Mozart manuscript, the only surviving autograph leaf of one of his most celebrated instrumental works: the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola (K.364). The manuscript contains the end of the first movement on one side and two sketches for a cadenza on the reverse side.

"To hold in my hands something that Mozart had held in his — this was one of the proudest moments of my life," he said.

When Dr. Offenbacher and his wife sold their South Seattle home and moved to a retirement facility, he reverted to his old roots as a concert presenter, arranging for informal house concerts, lectures and opera video evenings for the enjoyment of fellow residents.

Dr. Offenbacher was preceded in death by his wife of 68 years in 2006. He is survived by a brother, who lives in Israel; by four daughters and their husbands (Ellen and Robert Friedman of Chicago; Evelyn and Naftali Stern of Haifa, Israel; Edna Landau and Ernst Bechhofer of New Rochelle, N.Y.; and Eva and Eli Genauer of Seattle). He also leaves behind 12 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren.

Remembrances in his name may be made to a favorite charity or to the Kline Galland Home, 7500 Seward Park Ave., Seattle, 98118.

The family has not announced plans for a memorial.