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(born Salzburg, 27 January
1756; died Vienna, 5 December
1791). Son of Leopold
Mozart.
Mozart showed musical gifts
at a very early age, composing
when he was five and when he
was six playing before the
Bavarian elector and the
Austrian empress. Leopold felt
that it was proper, and might
also be profitable, to exhibit
his children's God-given genius
(Maria Anna, 'Nannerl',
1751-1829, was a gifted
keyboard player): so in
mid-1763 the family set out on
a tour that took them to Paris
and London, visiting numerous
courts en route. Mozart
astonished his audiences with
his precocious skills; he
played to the French and
English royal families, had his
first music published and wrote
his earliest symphonies. The
family arrived home late in
1766; nine months later they
were off again, to Vienna,
where hopes of having an opera
by Mozart performed were
frustrated by intrigues.
They spent 1769 in Salzburg;
1770-73 saw three visits to
Italy, where Mozart wrote two
operas (Mitridate,
Lucio Silla) and a
serenata for performance in
Milan, and acquainted himself
with Italian styles. Summer
1773 saw a further visit to
Vienna, probably in the hope of
securing a post; there Mozart
wrote a set of string quartets
and, on his return, wrote a
group of symphonies including
his two earliest, nos.25 in g
Minor and 29 in A, in the
regular repertory. Apart from a
joumey to Munich for the
premiere of his opera La
finta giardiniera early in
1775, the period from 1774 to
mid-1777 was spent in Salzburg,
where Mozart worked as
Konzertmeister at the Prince-
Archbishop's court; his works
of these years include masses,
symphonies, all his violin
concertos, six piano sonatas,
several serenades and
divertimentos and his first
great piano concerto, K271.
In 1777 the Mozarts, seeing
limited opportunity in Salzburg
for a composer so hugely
gifted, resolved to seek a post
elsewhere for Wolfgang. He was
sent, with his mother, to
Munich and to Mannheim, but was
offered no position (though he
stayed over four months at
Mannheim, composing for piano
and flute and falling in love
with Aloysia Weber). His father
then dispatched him to Paris:
there he had minor successes,
notably with his Paris
Symphony, no.31, deftly
designed for the local taste.
But prospects there were poor
and Leopold ordered him home,
where a superior post had been
arranged at the court. He
returned slowly and alone; his
mother had died in Paris. The
years 1779-80 were spent in
Salzburg, playing in the
cathedral and at court,
composing sacred works,
symphonies, concertos,
serenades and dramatic music.
But opera remained at the
centre of his ambitions, and an
opportunity came with a
commission for a serious opera
for Munich. He went there to
compose it late in 1780; his
correspondence with Leopold
(through whom he communicated
with the librettist, in
Salzburg) is richly informative
about his approach to musical
drama. The work,
Idomeneo, was a success.
In it Mozart depicted serious,
heroic emotion with a richness
unparalleled elsewhere in his
works, with vivid orchestral
writing and an abundance of
profoundly expressive
orchestral recitative.
Mozart was then summoned
from Munich to Vienna, where
the Salzburg court was in
residence on the accession of a
new emperor. Fresh from his
success, he found himself
placed between the valets and
the cooks; his resentment
towards his employer,
exacerbated by the
Prince-Archbishop's refusal to
let him perform at events the
emperor was attending, soon led
to conflict, and in May 1781 he
resigned, or was kicked out of,
his job. He wanted a post at
the Imperial court in Vienna,
but was content to do freelance
work in a city that apparently
offered golden opportunities.
He made his living over the
ensuing years by teaching, by
publishing his music, by
playing at patrons' houses or
in public, by composing to
commission (particularly
operas); in 1787 he obtained a
minor court post as
Kammermusicus, which
gave him a reasonable salary
and required nothing beyond the
writing of dance music for
court balls. He always earned,
by musicians' standards, a good
income, and had a carriage and
servants; through lavish
spending and poor management he
suffered times of financial
difficulty and had to borrow.
In 1782 he married Constanze
Weber, Aloysia's younger
sister.
In his early years in
Vienna, Mozart built up his
reputation by publishing
(sonatas for piano, some with
violin), by playing the piano
and, in 1782, by having an
opera performed: Die
Entführung aus dem Serail,
a German Singspiel which went
far beyond the usual limits of
the tradition with its long,
elaborately written songs
(hence Emperor Joseph II's
famous observation, 'Too many
notes, my dear Mozart'). The
work was successful and was
taken into the repertories of
many provincial companies (for
which Mozart was not however
paid). In these years, too, he
wrote six string quartets which
he dedicated to the master of
the form, Haydn: they are
marked not only by their
variety of expression but by
their complex textures,
conceived as four-part
discourse, with the musical
ideas linked to this freshly
integrated treatment of the
medium. Haydn told Mozart's
father that Mozart was
'the greatest composer
known to me in person or by
name; he has taste and, what is
more, the greatest knowledge of
composition'.
In 1782 Mozart embarked on
the composition of piano
concertos, so that he could
appear both as composer and
soloist. He wrote 15 before the
end of 1786, with early 1784 as
the peak of activity. They
represent one of his greatest
achievements, with their formal
mastery, their subtle
relationships between piano and
orchestra (the wind instruments
especially) and their
combination of brilliance,
lyricism and symphonic growth.
In 1786 he wrote the first of
his three comic operas with
Lorenzo da Ponte as librettist,
Le nozze di Figaro: here
and in Don Giovanni
(given in Prague, 1787) Mozart
treats the interplay of social
and sexual tensions with keen
insight into human character
that - as again in the more
artificial sexual comedy of
Cosi fan tutte (1790) -
transcends the comic framework,
just as Die Zauberflöte
(1791) transcends, with its
elements of ritual and allegory
about human harmony and
enlightenment, the world of the
Viennese popular theatre from
which it springs.
Mozart lived in Vienna for
the rest of his life. He
undertook a number of joumeys:
to Salzburg in 1783, to
introduce his wife to his
family; to Prague three times,
for concerts and operas; to
Berlin in 1789, where he had
hopes of a post; to Frankfurt
in 1790, to play at coronation
celebrations. The last Prague
journey was for the premiere of
La clemenza di Tito
(1791), a traditional serious
opera written for coronation
celebrations, but composed with
a finesse and economy
characteristic of Mozart's late
music. Instrumental works of
these years include some piano
sonatas, three string quartets
written for the King of
Prussia, some string quintets,
which include one of his most
deeply felt works (K516 in g
Minor) and one of his most
nobly spacious (K515 in C), and
his last four symphonies - one
(no.38 in D) composed for
Prague in 1786, the others
written in 1788 and forming,
with the lyricism of no.39 in
E-flat, the tragic
suggestiveness of no.40 in g
Minor and the grandeur of no.41
in C, a climax to his
orchestral music. His final
works include the Clarinet
Concerto and some pieces for
masonic lodges (he had been a
freemason since 1784; masonic
teachings no doubt affected his
thinking, and his compositions,
in his last years). At his
death from a feverish illness
whose precise nature has given
rise to much speculation (he
was not poisoned), he left
unfinished the Requiem,
his first large-scale work for
the church since the c Minor
Mass of 1783, also unfinished;
a completion by his pupil
Süssmayr was long accepted as
the standard one but there have
been recent attempts to improve
on it. Mozart was buried in a
Vienna suburb, with little
ceremony and in an unmarked
grave, in accordance with
prevailing custom.
Source : Some
of the information on this page
came from a Wikipedia
article and is
licensed under the GNU
Documentation License.
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