Biography of Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , possibly the most influential composer of all time, was born in Salzburg, Austria on January 27, 1756. His parents, Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart, named him Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Gottlieb Mozart. He was one of seven children born to the couple, but only Wolfgang (his popular name) and an older sister, Maria Anna (born July 30, 1751) survived past infancy.
Leopold Mozart had dropped out of university in order to pursue a career in music, and at the time of Wolfgang’s birth he was employed with the court orchestra at Augsburg. The Mozart family was a tightly bonded unit, and it was within the family unit that Mozart would achieve most of the fame he received in his lifetime.
Leopold decided that he would take on the education of his children himself, and he concentrated on musical instruction. He was well pleased to realize that both of his offspring were gifted musicians, and began to see it as his God-given responsibility to guide them into a performing life. Mozart first picked up an instrument at age three, when he took an interest in the clavier his sister was learning and began to pick out notes and rhythms on his own.
Much of the true biography of Mozart has been written and deduced through the correspondence of both himself and his family. In one such letter, Leopold Mozart reflected to a friend late in life that he had perhaps made his children don the “iron shirt of discipline” too tightly (www.mozartproject.org).
Despite the regrets of an aging parent, the methods that Leopold undertook to educate his progeny cannot be said to have been anything but effective. Wolfgang learned his first musical composition, a scherzo by Gorg Christoph Wagenseil, days before he turned five, and in half an hour. He wrote his own first composition at five, a six measure andante in C Major. Between the ages of five and nine, Wolfgang would write thirty compositions. By the time he was twenty years old, he had completed 219.
Before the flowering of his prolific gifts, though, the young Wolfgang was to be exposed to the musical influences that he would so often remember and incorporate into his own writing. He was given this opportunity when his father, realizing the talents of his children needed to be known, and also taking advantage of the possibilities for the family purse, decided to take Wolfgang and Maria on tour to Vienna. This tour turned out to be groundbreaking, as noble household after noble household heard the children play and walked away amazed. Word soon spread throughout Austria of the prodigies, and the Mozarts found themselves performing before the Emperor and Empress at the Schonbrunn Palace. A young Wolfgang displayed all the innocent exuberance of childhood when he climbed up into the Empress’ lap (Ibid).
After this performance, the Mozarts were in high demand throughout the district. Leopold would book performance after performance both publicly and for private noble households. The children were usually called upon to perform two concerts a day. The group’s first major publicist, Baron Friedrich Melchior Grimm, stated that watching Wolfgang play was “âÂ?¦such an extraordinary phenomenon that one is hard put to believe what one sees with one’s eyes and hears with one’s ears.” The Mozarts continued to tour throughout Europe, and when a serious illness (which he believed would be the end of him) took Leopold, the tours came to a pause. During this time, Wofgang wrote his first symphony for all the instruments of an orchestra. He flourished during this break, and wrote two more symphonies before his father recovered and they again went on the road. He was eight years old (its.caltech.edu/~tan/Mozartreq/main.html).
The illness that so affected his father was not a new occurrence among the Mozarts. The whole family was prone to sickness, and Wolfgang had been severely sick several times since embarking on the tours. Both he and his sister were so sick at times that their parents gave up on them as lost, and summoned a priest to read them their last rites.
Mozart wrote his first opera, La Finta Semplice, at the age of twelve. Between fourteen and seventeen the Mozarts made three trips to Italy, where Mozart learned the Italian style of composing and incorporated it into his operas Mitridante and Lucio Silla (w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/Mozart.html). At eighteen, he began working as Kozertmeister at the Prince-Archbishop’s court in Salzburg, where he wrote masses, symphonies, all of his violin concertos, six piano sonatas, several serenades, and his first great piano concerto, K271 (ibid).
When Wolfgang turned 21, his family began to look for arenas where his extremely advanced skills as a composer could flourish, instead of remaining in the stifling environment of Salzburg. As usual, the Mozarts did their traveling together, but on a trip to Paris in 1778 Wolfgang’s mother died with a feverish illness. Two years later, Wofgang Mozart was summoned to Vienna where he wrote the opera Idomeneo. Despite the success of this work, however, Mozart felt that his time in Vienna was wasted in the employ of the Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, and they parted ways in sullen fashion, Mozart saying in a letter to his sister that he departed “with a kick in the seat of the pants” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart).
Mozart continued his musical career as a freelancer. He taught music, gave performances, and composed by commission. In 1782, he began concentrating on his piano concertos, in order that he could appear as both composer and soloist. In four years, he completed fifteen pieces. Mozart also married Constance Weber in 1782, to the consternation of his father. The marriage caused a rift that was never to be closed, and despite the couple’s visits and attempts to reconcile, Leopold Mozart died in 1787 never fully happy with the union.
In the year of his father’s death, Mozart was the composer of the Imperial and Royal Chamber, which paid a salary of 800fl a year. His work was not popular among his native provinces, but he had begun to gain fame throughout the rest of Europe. The new popularity did not translate into wealth, however, as there were neither performance rights nor copyright laws at this time. Ironically, Mozart only began seeing the returns from the massive impact his compositions were having on the rest of Europe in 1791, the year of his death, as publishers began to pay for the rights to publish his works. Mozart died on December 5, 1791 of a feverish illness that has never been fully explained, although several theories have been posited that suggest it could have been trichinosis, mercury poisoning, or rheumatic fever. He left behind a son, Karl Thomas (born in 1784) and a pregnant Constance. Both his sons would go on to become composers, and one of his students would complete Mozart’s Requiem, left unfinished upon his death.
Mozart’s contributions to the musical landscape are irrefutable. Haydn described him as “the greatest composer known to me in person or by name; he has taste and, what is more, the greatest knowledge of composition” (w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/Mozart.html). The influence of his work on their own art was readily acknowledged by Beethoven, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Reger.
“Wolfganag Amadeus Mozart.” Wolfganag Amadeus Mozart. Wikipedia. 23 Feb. 2006 .
The Mozart Project. The Mozart project. 23 Feb. 2006 .
Boynick, Matt. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 1996. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 23 Feb. 2006 .
