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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart) (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) is among the most significant and enduringly popular composers of European classical music. His enormous output includes works that are widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Many of his works are part of the standard concert repertory and are widely recognized as masterpieces of the classical style.

Life

Family and early childhood years

Mozart was born in the city of Salzburg, the capital of the independent archbishopric of Salzburg, which today is part of Austria, to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart. He was baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus (Gottlieb) Mozart. Of these names, the first two were saint's names not employed in everyday life and the fourth was variously translated in Mozart's lifetime form as Amadeus (Latin), Gottlieb (German), and Amadé (French); Mozart himself preferred the third (see Mozart's name).

Mozart's musical ability became apparent when he was about three years old. His father Leopold was one of Europe's leading musical pedagogues, whose influential textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule ("Essay on the fundamentals of violin playing") was published in 1756, the year of Mozart's birth. Mozart received intensive musical training from his father, including instruction in clavier, violin, and organ.

The years of travel

Leopold realized that he could earn a substantial income by showcasing his son as a Wunderkind in the courts of Europe. Mozart soon gained fame as a musical prodigy capable of such feats as playing blindfolded or competently improvising at length on difficult passages. His older sister Maria Anna (Nannerl) was a talented pianist and accompanied her brother on the earlier tours. Mozart wrote a number of piano pieces, in particular duets and duos, to play with her. On one occasion when Mozart became very ill, Leopold expressed more concern over the loss of income than over his son's well-being.

During his formative years, Mozart completed several journeys throughout Europe, 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. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking him with his father to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. They went to Vienna again in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.

Mozart's birthplace at Getreidegasse 9, Salzburg, Austria

After one year in Salzburg, three trips to Italy followed: from December 1769 to March 1771, from August to December 1771, and from October 1772 to March 1773. During the first of these trips, Mozart met Andrea Luchesi in Venice and G.B. Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. A highlight of the Italian journey, now an almost legendary tale, occurred when he heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere once in performance in the Sistine Chapel then wrote it out in its entirety from memory, only returning to correct minor errors; he thus produced the first illegal copy of this closely-guarded property of the Vatican [source documents].

On July 3, 1778, accompanied by his mother, Mozart began a tour of Europe that included Munich, Mannheim, and Paris, where his mother died.

During his trips, 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 befriended Mozart in London in 1764–65. Bach's work is often taken to be an inspiration for the distinctive surface texture of Mozart's music, though not its architecture or drama.

Even non-musicians caught Mozart's attention. He was so taken by the sound created by Benjamin Franklin's glass harmonica that he composed several pieces of music for it.

Mozart in Vienna

In 1781 Mozart visited Vienna in the company of his employer, the harsh Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, and soon fell out with him. According to Mozart's own testimony, he was dismissed - literally - "with a kick in the seat of the pants." Mozart chose to settle and develop his 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 (1762-1842) (also spelled "Costanze"), a cousin of Carl Maria von Weber. Although they had six children, only two survived infancy. Neither of these two, Karl Thomas (1784–1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791-1844; later a minor composer himself), married or had children.

The year 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 conductor and soloist.

During 1782–83, Mozart became closely acquainted with the work of J.S. Bach and Georg Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of works by the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these works led first to a number of works imitating Baroque style and later had a powerful influence on his own personal musical language, for example the fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute") and the Symphony No. 41.

In 1783, Wolfgang and Constanze visited Leopold in Salzburg, but the visit was not a success, as his father did not take to Constanze. However, the visit saw the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C Minor, which was premiered in Salzburg, and is presently one of his best known works.

In his early Vienna years, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn date from 1782–85, and are often judged to be his response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn was soon in awe of Mozart, and when he first heard the last three of Mozart's series he told Leopold, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste, and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition."

During the years 1782-1785, Mozart put on a series of concerts in which he appeared as soloist in his piano concertos, widely considered among his greatest works. These concerts were financially successful. After 1785 Mozart performed far less and wrote only a few concertos. Maynard Solomon conjectures that he may have suffered from hand injuries; another possibility is that the fickle public ceased to attend the concerts in the same numbers.

Mozart was influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment as an adult, and became a Freemason (1784). His lodge was a specifically Catholic rather than a deistic one and he worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before the latter's death in 1787. His last opera, Die Zauberflöte, includes Masonic themes and allegory. He was in the same Masonic Lodge as Haydn.

Mozart's life was fraught with financial difficulty and illness. Often, he received no payment for his work, and what sums he did receive were quickly consumed by his extravagant lifestyle.

Mozart spent 1786 in Vienna in an apartment (in the "Mozarthaus") which may be visited today at Domgasse 5 behind St Stephen's Cathedral; it was here that Mozart composed Le nozze di Figaro. He followed this in 1787 with one of his greatest works, Don Giovanni.

Mozart and Prague

Mozart had a special relationship with Prague and the people of Prague. The audience here celebrated their Figaro with the much deserved reverence he was missing in his hometown Vienna. His quote "My Praguers understand me" (Meine Prager verstehen mich) became very famous in the Bohemian lands. Many tourists follow his tracks in Prague and visit the Mozart Museum of the Villa Bertramka where they can enjoy a chamber concert. In Prague, Don Giovanni premiered on October 29, 1787 at the Theatre of the Estates. In the later years of his life, Prague provided Mozart many financial resources from commissions. German poet Eduard Mörike's well-known novella Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag ("Mozart on the way to Prague") is a fantasy about the composer's trip to that city in order to present Don Giovanni (the story, however, relates episodes that happen along the way, not in Prague itself).

Final illness and death

Mozart's final illness and death are difficult topics of scholarship, obscured by romantic legends and replete with conflicting theories. Scholars disagree about the course of decline in Mozart's health—particularly at what point 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 contemporary scholarship points 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 military fever"), 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, mercury poisoning, and rheumatic fever. The contemporary practice of bleeding medical patients is also cited as a contributing cause.

Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna, while he was working on his final composition, the Requiem. A younger composer, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, was engaged by Constanze to complete the Requiem. He was not the only composer asked to complete the Requiem but is associated with it over others due to his significant contribution.

According to popular legend, Mozart was penniless and forgotten when he died, and was buried in a pauper's grave. In fact, though he was no longer as fashionable in Vienna as before, he continued to have a well-paid job at court and receive substantial commissions from more distant parts of Europe, Prague in particular. 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" but in a regular communal grave according to the 1784 laws. Though the original grave in the St. Marx cemetery was lost, memorial gravestones (or cenotaphs) have been placed there and in the Zentralfriedhof.

In 1809, Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (1761-1826). Being a fanatical admirer of Mozart, he edited vulgar passages out of many of the composer's letters and wrote a Mozart biography.

Works, musical style, and innovations

Style

Mozart, along with Haydn and Beethoven, was a central representative of the classical style. His works spanned the period during which that style transformed from a predominantly simple musical language, as exemplified by the stile galant of his contemporaries such as Sammartini and Johann Stamitz, to a mature style which began to incorporate some of the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque, complexities against which the galant style was a reaction. Mozart's own stylistic development closely paralleled the maturing of the classical style as a whole. In addition, he was a prolific composer and wrote in almost every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintets, and the keyboard sonata. While none of these genres were new, the piano concerto was almost single-handedly developed and popularized by Mozart. Mozart also wrote a great deal of religious music including masses. He also composed many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.

The central traits of the classical style can all be identified in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, transparency, and uncomplicated harmonic language are his hallmark, although in his later works he explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time. Mozart is commonly named along with Schubert as having a gift for pure, simple, and memorable melody, and to many listeners this is his most definitive characteristic.

From his earliest life Mozart had a gift for imitating the music he heard; since he travelled widely, he acquired a rare collection of experiences from which to create his unique compositional language. When he went to London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music; when he went to Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna, he heard the work of composers active there, as well as the spectacular Mannheim orchestra; when he went to Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and the opera buffa, both of which were to be hugely influential on his development. Both in London and Italy, the galant style was all the rage: simple, light music, with a mania for cadencing, an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other chords, symmetrical phrases, and clearly articulated structures. This style, out of which the classical style evolved, was a reaction against the complexity of late Baroque music. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are essentially Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are "homotonal" (each movement in the same key, with the slow movement in the tonic minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple, rounded binary forms commonly being written by composers in Vienna.

As Mozart matured, he began to incorporate some features of the abandoned Baroque styles into his music. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201, uses a contrapuntal main theme; in addition, in it he began to experiment with irregular phrase lengths, something a galant composer such as Sammartini never did. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had just published his opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in German literature, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era to come, is evident in some of the music of both composers at that time.

In Mozart's hands, sonata form transformed from the binary models of the Baroque into the fully mature form of his later works, with a multiple-theme exposition, extended, chromatic and contrapuntal development, recapitulation of all themes in the tonic key, and coda.

Throughout his life Mozart switched his focus from writing instrumental music to writing operas, and back again. He wrote operas in each style current in Europe: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro or Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo or Don Giovanni; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is probably the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he developed the use of subtle and slight changes of instrumentation, orchestration, and tone colour to express or highlight psychological or emotional states and dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted upon one another. The increasing sophistication of his use of the orchestra in his symphonies and concerti served as a resource in his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.

Influence

Many important composers since Mozart's time have worshipped or at least been in awe of Mozart. Rossini averred, "He is the only musician who had as much knowledge as genius, and as much genius as knowledge." Beethoven's admiration for Mozart is clear: Beethoven used Mozart as a model a number of times: Beethoven's A-major Quartet from Op. 18 makes careful use of Mozart's Quartet in A K. 464. Beethoven even copied out most of the Mozart quartet before he wrote his own A-major quartet, just to figure out how Mozart put the music together. A plausible story--not corroborated--has one of Beethoven's students looking through a pile of music in Beethoven's apartment. The student pulls out the Mozart A-major Quartet, Beethoven notices, and says, "Ah, that piece. That's Mozart saying 'here's what I could do, if only you had ears to hear!'"; Beethoven's own Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor is an obvious tribute to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, and yet another plausible--if unconfirmed--story has Beethoven at a concert with his sometime-student Ries. They're listening to Mozart's C-minor concerto Piano Concerto No. 24. The coda of the last movement is quite unusual, for various reasons, and when it arrives, Beethoven supposedly says to Ries "We'll never think of anything like that"! Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds is another obvious tribute to Mozart, similar to Mozart's own Quintet of the same kind. Beethoven also paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on several of his themes: for example, the two sets of variations for cello and piano on themes from Mozart's Magic Flute, and cadenzas to several of Mozart's piano concertos, most notably the Piano Concerto No. 20, K466 (see below for this system and an explanation). After the only meeting between the two composers, Mozart noted that Beethoven would "give the world something to talk about." As well, Tchaikovsky wrote his Mozartiana in praise of him; and Mahler died with the name "Mozart" on his lips. The variations theme of the opening movement of the A major piano sonata (K331) was used by Max Reger for his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, written in 1914 and among his best-known works in turn.

The Köchel catalogue

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.

Myths and controversies

Mozart is unusual among composers for being the subject of an abundance of legend, much due to the problem that none of his early biographers knew him personally. They often resorted to fiction in order to produce a work. Many myths began soon after Mozart died, but few have any basis in fact. 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 legend in scholarship. Dramatists and screenwriters, free from responsibilities of scholarship, have found excellent material among these legends.

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, which won eight Oscars. Shaffer's play attracted criticism for portraying Mozart as vulgar and loutish, a characterization felt by many to be unfairly exaggerated.

According to an essay by A. Peter Brown, "the Mozart mania of the 1980s was initiated by Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. It and the subsequent film directed by Milos Forman did more for Mozart's case than anything else in the two hundred years since the composer's death." The same could be said of the popular myths currently surrounding Mozart, many of which are firmly rooted in the film.

However, Shaffer and Forman have never claimed that Amadeus was based in fact, as pointed out by Shaffer himself: "From the start we agreed on one thing: we were not making an objective Life of Wolfgang Mozart. This cannot be stressed too strongly. Obviously Amadeus on stage was never intended to be a documentary biography of the composer, and the film is even less of one."

Shaffer and Forman are equally quick to defend elements of the film which they believe are accurate but are disputed by Mozart historians. Shaffer has detailed in many interviews, including one featured as an extra on the DVD release of the film, how the dramatic narrative was inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel - one brother loved by God, and the other scorned. Transcribed as creative rivalry between Mozart and Salieri, the notion of divine blessing and murderous jealousy provides the basic premise for Amadeus, although there is no historical evidence of any rivalry between the two composers. Conversely, it is well documented that Salieri frequently lent Mozart musical scores from the court library, and Mozart selected Salieri to teach his son, Franz Xaver. One of the more detailed essays on the "dramatic licenses" present in Amadeus is written by Gregory Allen Robbins, titled "Mozart & Salieri, Cain & Abel: A Cinematic Transformation of Genesis 4".

Another area of debate involves Mozart's prodigy as a composer from childhood until his death. While some have criticised many of his earlier works as simplistic or forgettable, others revere even Mozart's juvenilia. The image of Mozart as the divinely inspired effortless creator, popularized by the film Amadeus, is generally believed to be an exaggeration. Quite the contrary, Mozart was a studiously hard worker, and by his own admission his extensive knowledge and abilities developed out of many years' close study of the European musical tradition.

It has been speculated that Mozart suffered from Tourette syndrome. Letters he wrote to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla ("Bäsle") between 1777 and 1781 contain scatological language and he wrote canons titled Leck mich im Arsch ("Lick my ass") or variations thereof (including the pseudo-Latin Difficile lectu mihi mars).

Since 1902, the Mozarteum in Salzburg has preserved a controversial "Mozart's skull". Genetic analysis revealed in January 2006 that this skull was unrelated to the bones of Mozart's family members buried at St. Sebastian Cemetery. However, those bones were also shown to be unrelated to each other, so the mystery remains. [1]

Media

External links

A Profile of Amadeus Mozart from Aaron Green, guide to Classical Music at About.com.
Works by Mozart at Project Gutenberg
Mozart's Thematic Catalogue - turn the pages of Mozart's musical diary online (requires Shockwave plugin)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Life and Works
gallica.bnf.fr, picture of Mozart, his mother, his father, his wife, and his familly (bnf = French National Library).
Mozartones.com - compact biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart Melody Index at Tunespotting.com
WAMozartFan.com The Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Educational Fanpage - resource for students, teachers and music lovers.
The Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Historic information on Salzburg and Mozart's birth and living place
"The last (and best) portrait of Mozart", a biometrical statistical confirmation that the recently identified painting by Edlinger from ca 1790 indeed shows Mozart
Free recordings of Vesperae de Dominica by the MIT choir
Mozart's Piano sonatas (midi)
Mozart and pauses
The Mozart Project – the life, times and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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Mozart's Scores by Mutopia Project
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from Classical Music Pages
The "Jenamy Concerto" The proper name of Mozart's piano concerto K. 271 revealed
Free Mozart piano sheet music in PDF format.
Mozart Forum Exploring the world of Classical-Era Music (1770-1827), encompassing the music, personalities and accomplishments of Mozart and his contemporaries.
Mozart Archive
Can you tell Mozart from Salieri?A quiz.
[5], Wilhelm Otto Deutsch, Mozart und die Religion (2005)
Mozart at Piano Society - Biography and various free recordings in MP3 format.
Born between Salzburg and Braunau am Inn
The "Mozart Catalogue" digitised by the British Library - Go to "Turning the Pages"
The second best portrait of the adult W.A. Mozart (in quality of painting):discovered in 2004 and identified in 2005.

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