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He was
the son of Leopold Mozart, Kapellmeister to the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and
much the reason behind’s Wolfgang’s education. By the age of three he could play the
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
piano, and he was composing by the time he was five. Mozart's elder sister Maria Anna
was also a gifted keyboard player, and in 1762 their father took the two prodigies on a
short performing tour, of the courts at Vienna and Munich.
Encouraged by their reception, they embarked the next year on a longer tour,
including two weeks at Versailles, where the children enchanted Louis XV. In 1764 they
arrived in London. Here Mozart wrote his first three symphonies, under the influence of
Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian, who lived in the city. After
their return to Salzburg there followed three trips to Italy between 1769 and 1773. In
Rome, Mozart heard a performance of Allegri's Misere; the score of this work was
closely guarded, but Mozart managed to transcribe the music almost perfectly from
memory.
In 1769 Mozart was appointed concertmaster to the archbishop of Salzburg, and
later in the same year, at La Scala, he was made a chevalier of the Order of the Golden
Spur by the pope. He also composed his first German operetta, Bastien und Bastienne, in
the same year. At the age of 14 he was commissioned to write a serious opera. This work,
Mitridate, rè di Ponto, produced under his direction at Milan, completely established an
already phenomenal reputation. The Mozarts returned to Salzburg in 1771. Hieronymus,
count von Colloredo, the successor to the archbishop of Salzburg, who had died while the
Mozarts were touring Italy, cared little for music. Mozart's appointment at Salzburg,
Gloss 2
however, proved to be largely honorary; it allowed ample time for a prodigious musical
output during his next six years, but afforded little financial security. In 1777 Mozart
obtained a leave of absence for a concert tour and left with his mother for Munich. The
courts of Europe ignored the 21-year-old composer in his search for a more congenial and
rewarding appointment. He traveled to Mannheim, then the musical center of Europe
because of its famous orchestra, in hopes of a post, and there fell in love with Aloysia
Weber. Leopold promptly ordered his son and wife to Paris. His mother's death in Paris
in July 1778, his rejection by Weber, and the neglect he suffered from the aristocrats
whom he courted made the two years from Mozart's arrival in Paris a painful one.
While at home Mozart composed two masses and a number of sonatas,
symphonies, and concertos; these works reveal for the first time a distinctive style and a
completely mature understanding of musical media. In 1781, Mozart's first great stage
work, the opera Idomeneo, was produced in Munich, where Mozart also wrote his
Serenade for 13 wind instruments, K361.
On his return from Munich, however, the hostility brewing between him
and the Archbishop came to a head, and Mozart resigned. On delivering his resignation
he was verbally abused and eventually, physically ejected from the archbishop's
residence. Without patronage, Mozart was forced to confront the perils of a freelance
existence. Initially his efforts met with some success. He took up residence in Vienna and
in 1782 his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The abdication from the Seraglio) was
produced in the city and rapturously received. The same year in Vienna's St Stephen's
Gloss 3
Cathedral, Mozart married Constanze Weber. Soon afterwards he initiated a series of
subscription concerts at which he performed his piano concertos and improvised at the
keyboard. Most of Mozart's great piano concertos were written for these concerts,
including those in C, K467, A, K488 and C minor, K491. In these concertos Mozart
brought to the genre a unity and diversity it had not had before, combining bold
symphonic richness with passages of subtle delicacy. In 1758 Mozart dedicated to Haydn
the six string quartets that now bear Haydn's name. Including in this group are the
quartets known as the Hunt, which make use of hunting calls, and the Dissonance, which
opens with an eerie succession of dissonant chords. Overwhelmed by their quality, Haydn
confessed to Leopold Mozart, '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.' The pieces are
matched in excellence in Mozart's chamber music output only by his String Quintets,
outstanding among which are those in C, K515, G minor, K516 and D, K593.
Wolfgang’s father died in Salzburg on May 28, 1787, at the age of 67. Wolfgang
had news of his father's illness in April, at which time Constanze was ailing as well. This
turn of events left him greatly depressed, and his own health took a turn for the worse.
His music from the preceding decade was only sporadically popular, and he eventually
fell back on his teaching jobs and on the charity of friends to make ends meet. The
Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, with librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte, while
successful in Prague, were partial failures in Vienna. From 1787 until the production of
Così fan tutte.
Gloss 4
Mozart received no commissions for operas. For the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in
1791 he wrote the opera seria La clemenza di Tito. His three great symphonies of 1788-
no. 39 in E-flat, no. 40 in G Minor, and no. 41 in C-were never performed under his
direction. While Mozart was working on the singspiel The Magic Flute, an emissary of a
Count Walsegg mysteriously requested a requiem mass.
This work, uncompleted at Mozart's death, proved to be his last musical effort. In 1788
he stopped performing in public, preferring to compose. He died, presumably
of typhoid fever, in Vienna on December 5, 1791.
After Mozart's death, Constanze met and evetually married Nikolaus von Nissen,
an official in the Danish Embassy, and it was he who raised Mozart's sons. Nikolaus Von
Nissen died in 1826, and Constanze in 1842. The two boys led fairly uneventful lives.
Gloss 5
The elder, Karl Thomas, ended up as a minor official on the staff of the viceroy
of Naples in Milan. He died in 1858. The younger, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, inherited his
father's musical inclinations, if not all of his talent. He composed and conducted
extensively throught Europe, but perhaps the last word on this 'Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart the Younger' was best spoken by George Bernard Shaw in a letter he wrote in
1897. 'Do you remember the obscurity of Mozart's son? An amiable man, a clever
musician, an excellent player, but hopelessly extinguished by his father's reputation. How
could any man do what was expected from Mozart's son? Not Mozart himself even.'
Wolfgang and his father, Leopold had never regained the closeness they had shared in
earlier days, but they reached a peace with each other, and maintained a steady
corresponence.
Mozart had an unsuccessful career and died young, but he ranks as one of the
great geniuses of Western civilization. His large output shows that even as a child he
possessed a thorough command of the technical resources of musical composition as well
as an original imagination. His instrumental works include symphonies, divertimentos,
sonatas, chamber music for a number of instrumental combinations, and concertos;
his vocal works consist mainly of church music and operas.
Mozart's creative method was extraordinary, for his manuscripts show that,
although he made an occasional preliminary sketch of a difficult passage, he almost
invariably thought out a complete work before committing it to paper. His music
combines an Italian taste for clear and graceful melody with a German taste for formal
and contrapuntal ingenuity. Mozart thus epitomizes the classical style of the 18th century,
the goal of which was to be succinct, clear, and well balanced while at the same time
developing ideas to a point of emotionally satisfying fullness. These qualities are perhaps
best expressed in his concertos, with their dramatic contrasts between a solo instrument
and the orchestra, and in his operas, with their profound contrasts between different
personalities reacting to changing situations. His operas achieved a new unity of vocal
and instrumental writing; they are marked by subtle characterization and an unusual use
of classic symphonic style in large-scale ensembles.
A master of every form in which he worked, he set standards of excellence that
have inspired generations of composers.
In 1787 Prague´s National Theatre saw the premiere of Don Giovanni, a
moralizing version of the Don Juan legend in which the licentious nobleman receives his
comeuppance and descends into the fiery regions of hell. The third and last da Ponte
opera was Cosí fan tutte (Women are all the same), commissioned by Emperor Joseph II
and produced at Vienna's Burgtheater in 1790. Its cynical treatment of the theme of
sexual infidelity may have been responsible for its relative lack of success with the
Viennese, who responded with such enthusiasm to the comedy of Figaro. Mozart wrote
two more operas: the opera seria La clemenza di Tito (The Mercy of Tito) and Die
Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). The latter was commissioned by actor-manager Emanuel
Schikaneder to his own libretto. Its plot, a fairy tale combined with strong Masonic
elements (Mozart was a devoted Freemason), is bizarre, but drew from Mozart some of
his greatest music. When produced in 1791, two months before Mozart's death, the opera
survived an initially cool reception and gradually won audiences over. The year 1788 saw
the composition of Mozart's two finest symphonies. Symphony No.40, in the tragic key of G minor, contrasts strikingly with the affirmatory Symphony No.41 Jupiter. Neither helped alleviate his financial plight, however, which after 1789 became critical. An extensive concert tour of Europe failed to earn significant sums. A new emperor came to the Austrian throne but Mozart was unsuccessful in his bid to become Kapellmeister. He was deeply in debt when in July 1791 he received an anonymous commission to write a Requiem. (The author of the commission was in fact Count Franz von Walsegg, who wished to pass off the work as his own.) Mozart did not live to finish the Requiem. He became ill in autumn 1791 and died on December 5; his burial the next day was attended only by a gravedigger. Rumours that Mozart had been poisoned abounded in Vienna after his death, many suggesting that rival composer Antonio Salieri was responsible. Many now believe a heart weakened by bouts of rheumatic fever caused his death.
Word Count: 1758
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