Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musician capable of playing multiple instruments who started playing in public at the age of 6. Over the years, Mozart aligned himself with a variety of European venues and patrons, composing hundreds of works that included sonatas, symphonies, masses, chamber music, concertos and operas, marked by vivid emotion and sophisticated textures.
Central Europe in the midth century was going through a period of transition. The remnants of the Holy Roman Empire had divided into small semi-self-governing principalities. The result was competing rivalries between these municipalities for identity and recognition. Political leadership of small city-states like Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague was in the hands of the aristocracy and their wealth would commission artists and musicians to amuse, inspire, and entertain. The music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods was transitioning toward more full-bodied compositions with complex instrumentation.
The small city-state of Salzburg would be the birthplace of one of the most talented and prodigious musical composers of all time. Leopold was a successful composer, violinist, and assistant concert master at the Salzburg court. Leopold started Nannerl on keyboard when she was seven, as three-year old Wolfgang looked on. Mimicking her playing, Wolfgang quickly began to show a strong understanding of chords, tonality, and tempo. Soon, he too was being tutored by his father.
Leopold was a devoted and task-oriented teacher to both his children. He made the lessons fun, but also insisted on a strong work ethic and perfection. Fortunately, both children excelled well in these areas. Recognizing their special talents, Leopold devoted much of his time to their education in music as well as other subjects. He would soon go on to play the piano, organ and viola. Mozart met a number of accomplished musicians and became familiar with their works. Particularity important was his meeting with Johann Christian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach's youngest son in London who had a strong influence on Mozart.
The trips were long and often arduous, traveling in primitive conditions and waiting for invitations and reimbursements from the nobility.
Frequently, Mozart and other members of his family fell seriously ill and had to limit their performance schedule. In December , Mozart, then age 13, and his father departed from Salzburg for Italy, leaving his mother and sister at home. She was nearing marriageable age and according to the custom of the time, she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent in public. He wrote out the entire score from memory, returning only to correct a few minor errors.
During this time Mozart also wrote a new opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto for the court of Milan. Other commissions followed and in subsequent trips to Italy, Mozart wrote two other operas, Ascanio in Alba and Lucio Silla Mozart and his father returned from their last stay in Italy in March Upon their return, the new archbishop appointed young Mozart as assistant concertmaster with a small salary.
During this time, young Mozart had the opportunity to work in several different musical genres composing symphonies, string quartets, sonatas and serenades and a few operas.
He developed a passion for violin concertos producing what came to be the only five he wrote. In , he turned his efforts toward piano concertos, culminating in the Piano Concerto Number 9 in E flat major in early Mozart had just turned Despite his success with the compositions, Mozart was growing discontent with his position as assistant concert master and the confining environment of Salzburg.
He was ambitious and believed he could do more somewhere else. In August , Mozart set out on a trip to find more prosperous employment. There were several employment positions that initially proved promising, but all eventually fell through. He began to run out of funds and had to pawn several valuable personal items to pay traveling and living expenses. The lowest point of the trip was when his mother fell ill and died on July 3, Back in Salzburg in , Mozart produced a series of church works, including the Coronation Mass.
He also composed another opera for Munich, Idomeneo in He was treated as a mere servant, quartered with the help, and forbidden from performing before the Emperor for a fee equal to half his yearly salary in Salzburg.
A quarrel ensued and Mozart offered to resign his post. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer and for a time lived with friends at the home of Fridolin Weber. Mozart's years in Vienna, from age twenty-five to his death at thirty-five, cover one of the greatest developments in a short span in the history of music.
In these ten years Mozart's music grew rapidly beyond the realm of many of his contemporaries; it exhibited both ideas and methods of elaboration that few could follow, and to many the late Mozart seemed a difficult composer. The major instrumental works of this period bring together all the fields of Mozart's earlier activity and some new ones: six symphonies, including the famous last three: no.
He finished these three works within six weeks during the summer of , a remarkable feat even for him. In the field of the string quarter Mozart produced two important groups of works that completely overshadowed any he had written before in he published the six Quartets K. In he wrote the last three Quartets K. Mozart's development as an opera composer between and his death is even more remarkable, perhaps, since the problems of opera were more far-ranging than those of the larger instrumental forms and provided less adequate models.
Mozart then turned to Italian opera. In his last opera, The Magic Flute , Mozart turned back to German opera, and he produced a work combining many strands of popular theater and including musical expressions ranging from folk to opera. On concluding The Magic Flute , Mozart turned to work on what was to be his last project, the Requiem.
This Mass had been commissioned by a benefactor financial supporter said to have been unknown to Mozart, and he is supposed to have become obsessed with the belief that he was, in effect, writing it for himself. Ill and exhausted, he managed to finish the first two movements and sketches for several more, but the last three sections were entirely lacking when he died.
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography. Home What's On Figaro. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of the most influential, popular and prolific composers of the classical period. Map Academy of Music Dates are Apr.
Johannes Chrystostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart — was arguably the most gifted musician in the history of classical music. His inspiration is often described as 'divine', but he worked assiduously, not only to become the great composer he was, but also a conductor, virtuoso pianist, organist and violinist. Mozart's music embraces opera, symphony, concerto, chamber, choral, instrumental and vocal music, revealing an astonishing number of imperishable masterpieces.
Mozart was born in Salzburg, in Mozart's father, Leopold, was an ambitious composer and violinist. Though he was and still is considered a genius, he was also tactless, arrogant and had a scatological sense of humour. Mozart composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus when he was only In August he married Constanze Weber.
The Mozarts' marriage seemed to be a happy one. Constanze was easy-going, free-spending and usually pregnant. Only two of their six children survived.
Post-marriage, some of Mozart's best started to appear -the Haffner and Linz symphonies and five string quartets, for example.
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