Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I

Introduction

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Austrian composer, who is considered one of the most brilliant and versatile composers ever. He worked in all musical genres of his era, wrote inspired works in each genre, and produced an extraordinary number of compositions, especially considering his short life. By the time Mozart died at age 35, he had completed 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, 17 piano sonatas, 7 major operas, and numerous works for voice and other instruments.

As a child prodigy Mozart toured Europe and became widely regarded as a miracle of nature because of his musical gifts as a performer of piano, harpsichord, and organ and as a composer of instrumental and vocal music. His mature masterpieces begin with the Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major (Jeunehomme, 1777), one of about a dozen outstanding concertos he wrote for piano. Also successful as an opera composer, Mozart wrote three exceptional Italian operas to texts by Italian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (All Women Do So, 1790). They were followed in 1791 by his supreme German opera, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

Mozart’s works were catalogued chronologically by Austrian music bibliographer Ludwig von Köchel, who published his catalog in 1862. The numbers he assigned, which are called Köchel numbers and are preceded by the initial K, remain the standard way of referring to works by Mozart. The Jeunehomme Concerto, for example, is K. 271.

II

Life

Mozart was born in Salzburg. From his father, violinist and composer Leopold Mozart, he received his early musical training. By age six he had become an accomplished performer on the clavier, violin, and organ and was highly skilled in sight-reading and musical improvisation. In 1762 Leopold took his six-year-old son on his first concert tour through the courts of Europe. The young Mozart absorbed the musical styles of the time through travel to Austria’s capital, Vienna; the German cities of Munich and Mannheim; Paris, France; London, England; and various centers in Italy. From 1762 to 1766, while he was often touring, he composed several symphonies, a few sacred works, and a number of sonatas for keyboard and violin.

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In London in 1764 Mozart met then-popular German composer Johann Christian Bach, son of Johann Sebastian Bach. The eight-year-old Mozart played four-hand piano sonatas with Bach while sitting on the composer’s lap. The symphonies of the younger Bach and of Carl Friedrich Abel, another German composer living in London, offered models for Mozart’s first symphonies (K. 16 and K. 19), written in 1764 and 1765 when he was eight and nine years old. In 1767, at age 11, Mozart transformed piano sonatas by various composers into his first four piano concertos through the addition of interludes and episodes for orchestra. He intended these works (K. 37, K. 39, K. 40, and K. 41) for his own performance. In 1768 he composed his first opera buffa (comic opera), La finta semplice (The Simple Pretense), and his first German operetta, Bastien und Bastienne. The following year La finta semplice was performed at the palace of the Salzburg archbishop, who appointed Mozart his concertmaster.

From 1769 to 1773, Mozart made three extended journeys to Italy with his father, during which he was remarkably productive and wrote not only symphonies and operas but also string quartets and several sacred works. In Milan he was commissioned to write an opera seria—that is, a serious opera in Italian on a heroic subject. The opera, Mitridati, rè di Ponto (Mithridates, King of Pontus), was produced in 1770 in Milan under Mozart’s direction with success. Also that year the pope made Mozart a knight of the Order of the Golden Spur.

A

Salzburg and Germany

From 1775 to 1780 Mozart was based mainly in Salzburg working for the archbishop Hieronymous von Colloredo. Although dissatisfied with the low pay and limited opportunities his employment offered, Mozart composed many works during this period, including his first important piano sonatas (K. 279 to K. 284, 1775). Despite his mother’s death in 1778 during a trip they made to Paris, he completed his Symphony No. 31 in D Major (Paris, K. 297) and Piano Sonata No. 8 in A Minor (K. 310) during the journey. In 1780 he received a commission from the court at Munich for an opera seria. He fulfilled this commission with Idomeneo, rè di Creta (Idomeneo, King of Crete, 1781), the most important opera seria of Mozart’s maturity and perhaps the greatest opera seria ever written.

Demeaning treatment from Colloredo, who had little interest in music, led Mozart to ask for dismissal from his service in 1781. This Mozart received, along with a kick in the rear as he departed, delivered by an employee of the archbishop. Mozart then began a career as a freelance musician in Vienna.

While working in Germany in 1777, Mozart fell in love with a singer, Aloysia Weber. His father warned him against marriage in a letter: “… it depends wholly on your own good sense and good conduct, whether you become a commonplace artist whom the world will forget, or a celebrated Capellmeister, of whom posterity will read hereafter in books—whether, infatuated with some pretty face, you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife and children in a state of starvation, or, after a well-spent Christian life, die peacefully in honour and independence, and your family well provided for.” Aloysia did not return Mozart’s feelings, however. Despite opposition from his father, Mozart married Aloysia’s sister, Constanze, in August 1782. Two years later he joined the fraternal order of Freemasonry.

B

Vienna

In the years after his marriage Mozart experienced some notable professional successes. These included an enthusiastic response from Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, the dominant figure in music at the time. Haydn was particularly impressed by a set of six string quartets (K. 387) that Mozart composed in 1785 and dedicated to Haydn, his admired friend and source of inspiration. A series of inspired piano concertos that Mozart composed for his own performance began with No. 14 in E-flat Major (K. 449) in 1784 and culminated in the premiere of No. 24 in C Minor (K. 491) in March 1786. Moreover, The Marriage of Figaro was first performed later that year in Vienna, Prague (in what is now the Czech Republic), and other cities to enthusiastic public response. In 1787 the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague received a similar response.

During the last years of his life Mozart was plagued at times by financial difficulties, as revealed in a series of letters he wrote to his fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg, in which he begged for loans. The resounding success of The Magic Flute, which had its premiere in late 1791, would have solved these problems, but it came too late for Mozart, who died on December 5, 1791. He spent his last months in feverish activity. In September he completed an opera seria, La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus). On his deathbed, Mozart labored on the Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626), while suffering from delusions that he had been poisoned. He died with the Requiem unfinished. The cause of his death is uncertain and has been the subject of much speculation.