Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Template:IPA2, baptized Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart) (January 27, 1756December 5, 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His output of over 600 compositions includes works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of European composers and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire.


Family and early yearsEdit

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart, in the front room of Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg, the capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. His only sibling who survived past birth was an older sister: Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl. Mozart was baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Of these names, the first two refer to John Chrysostom, one of the Church Fathers, and they were names not employed in everyday life. The fourth name, meaning "beloved of God" in Greek, was variously translated in Mozart's lifetime as Amadeus (Latin), Gottlieb (German), and Amadé (French). Mozart's father Leopold announced the birth of his son in a letter to the publisher Johann Jakob Lotter with the words "...the boy is called Joannes Chrysostomus, Wolfgang, Gottlieb". Mozart himself preferred to use the third name (Wolfgang), and may also have taken a fancy to "Amadeus" over the years (see Mozart's name).

Mozart's father Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) was one of Europe's leading musical teachers. His influential textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, was published in 1756, the year of Mozart's birth (English, as "A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing", transl. E.Knocker; Oxford-New York, 1948). He was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, and a prolific and successful composer of instrumental music. Leopold gave up composing when his son's outstanding musical talents became evident. They first came to light when Wolfgang was about three years old, and Leopold, proud of Wolfgang's achievements, gave him intensive musical training, including instruction in clavier, violin, and organ. Leopold was Wolfgang's only teacher in his earliest years. A note by Leopold in Nannerl's music book – the Nannerl Notenbuch – records that little Wolfgang had learned several of the pieces at the age of four. Mozart's first compositions, a small Andante (K. 1a) and Allegro (K. 1b), were written in 1761, when he was five years old.[1]

Years of travelEdit

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During his formative years, Mozart made several European journeys, beginning with an exhibition in 1762 at the Court of the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, then in the same year at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking him and his father to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London (where Wolfgang Amadeus played with the famous Italian cellist Giovanni Battista Cirri), The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip Mozart met a great number of musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other great composers. A particularly important influence was Johann Christian Bach, who met Mozart in London in 1764–65. Bach's work is often taken to be an inspiration for Mozart's music. They again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768. On this trip Mozart contracted smallpox, and his healing was believed by Leopold as proof of God's plans concerning the child.



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Mozart in ViennaEdit

In 1781, Idomeneo, regarded as Mozart's first great opera, premiered in Munich. The following year, he visited Vienna in the company of his employer, the harsh Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. When they returned to Salzburg, Mozart, who was then Konzertmeister, became increasingly difficult, not wanting to follow the whims of the archbishop relating to musical affairs; and expressing these views, he soon fell out of the archbishop's favor. According to Mozart's own testimony, he was dismissed – literally – "with a kick in the arse".[3] Mozart chose to settle and develop his own freelance career in Vienna after its aristocracy began to take an interest in him.

On August 4, 1782, against his father's wishes, he married Constanze Weber (1763–1842), her name is also spelled "Costanze"; her father Fridolin was a half-brother of Carl Maria von Weber's father Franz Anton Weber. Although they had six children, only two survived infancy: Carl Thomas (1784–1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791–1844; later a minor composer himself). Neither of these sons married or had children who reached adulthood. Carl did father a daughter, Constanza, who died in 1833.

1782 was an auspicious one for Mozart's career: his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio") was a great success, and he began a series of concerts at which he premiered his own piano concertos as director of the ensemble and soloist.



In his early Vienna years, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from 1782–85, and are often judged to be his response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. In a letter to Haydn, Mozart wrote:

A father who had decided to send his sons out into the great world thought it his duty to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a man who was very celebrated at the time, and who happened moreover to be his best friend. In the same way I send my six sons to you... Please then, receive them kindly and be to them a father, guide, and friend!... I entreat you, however, to be indulgent to those faults which may have escaped a father's partial eye, and in spite of them, to continue your generous friendship towards one who so highly appreciates it."[4]


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Posthumous painting by Barbara Krafft in 1819


Mozart was influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment as an adult, and became a Freemason in 1785.[6] His lodge was specifically Catholic, rather than deistic, and he worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before the latter's death in 1787. Die Zauberflöte, his penultimate opera, includes Masonic themes and allegory. He was in the same Masonic Lodge as Haydn.

Mozart's life was occasionally fraught with financial difficulty. Though the extent of this difficulty has often been romanticized and exaggerated, he nonetheless did resort to borrowing money from close friends, some debts remaining unpaid even to his death. During the years 1784–1787 he lived in a lavish, seven-room apartment, which may be visited today at Domgasse 5, behind St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna; it was here, in 1786, that Mozart composed the opera Le nozze di Figaro.

Journey to Dresden, Leipzig, and BerlinEdit

In the spring of 1789, Wolfgang left Vienna for a journey which was to become his second to last. He was accompanying his patron Prince Karl Lichnowsky. The first leg of the trip led Mozart and Lichnowsky to Prague, where they arrived on April 10th 1789. In a letter of April 10th[7] to Constanze, Wolfgang reports that Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia was eagerly awaiting him in Potsdam.

The next stop of their voyage was Dresden which lay on the way to Berlin. Here, Mozart did what he had usually done on voyages like this: he performed, preferably for potential patrons. First, he gave a private concert which featured a quartet, a trio and Josepha Duschek singing several arias from Don Giovanni.[8] The next day, Mozart performed for Elector Friedrich August III of Saxony and his wife Amalie. The successful performance of the Coronation Concerto K. 537 earned him a snuff-box with 100 ducats. In addition to these performances, he also played for the Russian ambassador and in many noble houses.[9]

On April 18th, Lichnowsky and Mozart departed for Leipzig, where they arrived two days later. Here, Mozart improvised on the organ at the Thomaskirche in the presence of Cantor Friedrich Doles and organist Karl Friedrich Goerner. Probably on this occasion, the choir of the Thomasschule performed Bach's motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225 and Mozart took advantage of the situation and inspected the autograph.

From Leipzig, Mozart travelled to Berlin, where he arrived some time between April 23rd and April 26th. He was expecting to be welcomed by the King, but instead of receiving Mozart, Friedrich Wilhelm referred him to Jean-Pierre Duport, the director of the chamber music. As court documents show, Mozart's appearance at court was totally unexpected and therefore the King did not receive him. Nevertheless, Mozart composed a set of piano variations on a theme by Duport, K. 573 for the court. He spent some more days in the capital before briefly returning to Leipzig, where he gave a concert at the Gewandhaus. The concert which featured two symphonies, two piano concertos, a fantasy and two scenes performed by Josepha Duschek was apparently not well attended. Mozart writes back home, that "from the point of view of applause and glory this concert was absolutely magnificent but the profits were wretchedly meager" (letter, May 16th 1789).

Mozart and PragueEdit

Mozart had a special relationship with the city of Prague and its people. The audience there celebrated the Figaro with the much-deserved reverence he was missing in his hometown Vienna. His quotation "Meine Prager verstehen mich" (My Praguers understand me) became very famous in the Bohemian lands. Many tourists follow his tracks in Prague and visit the Mozart Museum of the Villa Bertramka where you can enjoy a chamber concert. In Prague, Don Giovanni premiered on October 29, 1787 at the Theatre of the Estates. Mozart wrote La clemenza di Tito for the festivities accompanying Leopold II's coronation in November 1790; Mozart obtained this commission after Antonio Salieri had allegedly rejected it.[10][11]

Final illness and deathEdit

Mozart's final illness and death are difficult topics for scholars, obscured by romantic stories and replete with conflicting theories. Scholars disagree about the cause of decline in Mozart's health – particularly at what point (or if at all) Mozart became aware of his impending death and whether this awareness influenced his final works. The romantic view holds that Mozart declined gradually and that his outlook and compositions paralleled this decline. In opposition to this, some present-day scholars point out correspondence from Mozart's final year indicating that he was in good cheer, as well as evidence that Mozart's death was sudden and a shock to his family and friends.

The actual cause of Mozart's death is also a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet-seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment. The practice of bleeding medical patients, common at that time, is also cited as a contributing cause. However, the most widely accepted version is that he died of acute rheumatic fever; he had had three or even four known attacks of it since his childhood, and this particular disease has a tendency to recur, leaving increasingly serious consequences each time, such as rampant infection and heart valve damage.[12]

Mozart died at approximately 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. With the onset of his illness, he had largely ceased work on his final composition, the Requiem. Popular belief has it that Mozart was thinking of his own impending death while writing this piece, and even that a messenger from the afterworld commissioned it. Documentary evidence has established that the anonymous commission came from one Franz Count of Walsegg on Schloss Stuppach, and that most if not all of the music had been written while Mozart was still in good health. A younger composer, and Mozart's friend and, some say, pupil, at the time, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, was engaged by Constanze to finish the Requiem, which he had been already helping the ill composer with, since Mozart could not write on account of his swollen limbs. He was not the first composer asked to finish the Requiem, as the widow had first approached another Mozart student, Joseph Eybler, who began work directly on the empty staves of Mozart's manuscript but then abandoned it.

Because he was buried in an unmarked grave, it has been popularly assumed that Mozart was penniless and forgotten when he died. He earned about 50,000 florins per year,[13] equivalent to at least 142,000 US dollars in 2006, which places him within the top 1% of late 18th century wage earners,[13] but he could not manage his wealth. His mother wrote, "When Wolfgang makes new acquaintances, he immediately wants to give his life and property to them." His impulsive largesse and spending often had him asking for loans. Many of his begging letters survive, but they are evidence not so much of poverty as of his habit of spending more than he earned. He was not buried in a "mass grave" for paupers but in a regular communal grave according to the 1784 laws in Austria.Template:Fact

Though the original grave in the St. Marx cemetery was lost, memorial gravestones (or cenotaphs) have been placed there and in the Zentralfriedhof. In 2005 new DNA testing was performed by Austria's University of Innsbruck and the US Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, to determine if a skull in an Austrian Museum was actually his, using DNA samples from the marked graves of his grandmother and Mozart's niece. Test results were inconclusive.

In 1809 Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (1761–1826). Being a fanatical admirer of Mozart, he and possibly Constanze, edited vulgar passages out of many of the composer's letters and wrote a Mozart biography. Nissen did not live to see his biography printed, and Constanze had it finished.

Works, musical style, and innovationsEdit



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Mozart's legacy to subsequent generations of composers (in all genres) is immense.



In addition, Mozart received outstanding praise from several fellow composers including Frédéric Chopin, Franz Schubert, Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, and many more.[17]

Mozart has remained an influence in popular contemporary music in varying genres ranging from Jazz to modern Rock and even as far afield as death metal (death metal pioneers Morbid Angel have classical tracks on their albums, stated in the lyric booklets as being heavily influenced by Mozart). An example of this influence is the jazz pianist Chick Corea, who has performed piano concertos of Mozart and was inspired by them to write a concerto of his own.

Köchel catalogueEdit


In the decades after Mozart's death there were several attempts to catalogue his compositions, but it was not until 1862 that Ludwig von Köchel succeeded in this enterprise. Many of his famous works are referred to by their Köchel catalogue number; for example, the Piano Concerto in A major (Piano Concerto No. 23) is often referred to simply as "K. 488" or "KV. 488". The catalogue has undergone six revisions, labeling the works from K. 1 to K. 626.

Rumours and controversiesEdit

Mozart is unusual among composers for being the subject of an abundance of misconceptions, partly because none of his early biographers knew him personally. Many rumours began soon after Mozart died, but few have any basis in fact; biographers often resorted to fiction in order to produce a work. An example is the story that Mozart composed his Requiem with the belief it was for himself. Sorting out fabrications from real events is a vexing and continuous task for Mozart scholars, mainly because of the prevalence of story in scholarship. Dramatists and screenwriters, free from responsibilities of scholarship, have found excellent material among these rumours.

An especially popular case is the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, and, in some versions, the tale that it was poison received from the latter that caused Mozart's death; this is the subject of Aleksandr Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart and Salieri, and Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. The last of these has been made into a feature-length film of the same name. Shaffer's play attracted criticism for portraying Mozart as vulgar and loutish, a characterization felt by many to be unfairly exaggerated, but in fact frequently confirmed by the composer's letters and other memorabilia. For example, Mozart wrote canons on the words "Leck mich im Arsch" ("Lick me in the arse") and "Leck mich im Arsch recht fein schön sauber" ("Lick me in the arse nice and clean") as party pieces for his friends.Template:Fact The Köchel numbers of these canons are 231 and 233.

Another debate involves Mozart's alleged status as a kind of superhuman prodigy, from childhood right up until his death. While some have criticized his earlier works as simplistic or forgettable, others revere even Mozart's juvenilia. In any case, several of his early compositions remain very popular. The motet Exultate, jubilate (K. 165), for example, composed when Mozart was seventeen years old, is among the most frequently recorded of his vocal compositions.

Benjamin Simkin, a medical doctor, argues in his book Medical and Musical Byways of Mozartiana[18] that Mozart had Tourette syndrome. However, no Tourette syndrome expert, organization, psychiatrist or neurologist has stated that there is credible evidence that Mozart had this syndrome, and several have stated that they do not believe there is enough evidence to substantiate the claim.[19]

Amadeus (1984)Edit

Milos Forman’s 1984 motion picture Amadeus, based on the play by Peter Shaffer (itself based on the poetic short drama "Mozart and Salieri" by the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin), won eight Academy Awards and was one of the year’s most popular films. It was criticized for a number of historical inaccuracies related to the reality of the relationship between Mozart and Salieri. Salieri frequently lent Mozart musical scores from the court library with which he was charged, that he often chose compositions by Mozart for performance at state occasions, and Salieri taught Mozart's son, Franz Xaver.[20] The idea that Mozart never revised his compositions, dramatised in the film, is not supported by the autograph manuscripts, which contain many corrections.[21]

In response to the criticism, Shaffer states on the DVD release of the film that the dramatic narrative was inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel – one brother loved by God, and the other scorned. However, why these characters or these events in particular were chosen is not explained.

Shaffer and Forman go into greater detail on this topic during the "Commentary" audio track of the 2001 director's cut of the film. Shaffer repeatedly asserts that in each scene he "began with a kernel of truth", and then added, condensed and fictionalized facts for dramatic purpose. Forman avers that, while they veered so far from historical fact, they did capture the "spirit" of Mozart's story.


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