Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Only available on StudyMode
  • Download(s) : 78
  • Published : May 26, 2013
Open Document
Text Preview

South German-Austrian family of musicians.
(1) (Johann Georg) Leopold Mozart
(2) Maria Anna (Walburga Ignatia) Mozart [‘Nannerl’] (3) (Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(4) (Maria) Constanze [Constantia] (Caecilia Josepha Johanna Aloisia) Mozart [née Weber; later Nissen] (5) Carl Thomas Mozart
(6) Franz Xaver Wolfgang [‘Wolfgang Amadeus’] Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context (Oxford, 1998)

(3) (Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


2. Travels, 1763–73.
3. Salzburg, 1773–80.
4. The break with Salzburg and the early Viennese years, 1780–83. 5. Vienna, 1784–8.
6. The final years.
7. Early works.
8. Works, 1772–81.
9. Works, 1781–8.
10. Works, 1789–91.
11. Aftermath: reception and scholarship.
Mozart: (3) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1. Ancestry and early childhood.

Mozart was baptized on the day after his birth at St Rupert's Cathedral as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus. The first two names record that 27 January was the feast day of St John Chrysostom, while Wolfgangus was the name of his maternal grandfather and Theophilus a name of his godfather, the merchant Joannes Theophilus Pergmayr; Mozart sometimes preferred the Latin form, Amadeus, but more frequently Amadè, Amadé or the German form Gottlieb. He was the seventh and last child born to Leopold Mozart and his wife Maria Anna, née Pertl (b St Gilgen, 25 Dec 1720; d Paris, 3 July 1778); only he and the fourth child, (2) Maria Anna (‘Nannerl’), survived. The name Mozart (spelt in a variety of forms including Mozarth, Mozhard and Mozer) is first recorded for a Heinrich Motzhart in Fischach, in 1331, and appears in other villages south-west of Augsburg, notably Heimberg, from the 14th century; the paternal ancestry of the family has been traced with some certainty to Ändris Motzhart, who lived in the Augsburg area in 1486. Several early member of the family were master masons (i.e. architects), builders, craftsmen and sculptors; two, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, were artists. Mozart's great grandfather David (c1620–1685) was a master mason, his grandfather Johann Georg (1679–1736) a master bookbinder in Augsburg. His mother's family came mainly from the Salzburg region and followed middle-class occupations. Her father, Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl, held important administrative and judicial posts at Hüllenstein, near St Gilgen, but a bout of ill-health pushed him into debt and his family was left destitute. Until 1773 the Mozart family rented an apartment on the third floor of the house of Johann Lorenz and Maria Theresia Hagenauer, who had a thriving grocery business with connections in several important European cities. They also acted as bankers to the Mozarts, establishing credit networks for Leopold during the tours of the 1760s. It was to the Hagenauers that most of Leopold's early letters, now the most important source of information about Mozart's travels during the 1760s, were addressed. Many of them were intended for public circulation: Leopold was keen to impress the children's triumphs...
tracking img