Biography
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in Austria, the son of Leopold,
Kapellmeister to the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. By the age of three he
could play the piano, and he was composing by the time he was five; minuets
from this period show remarkable understanding of form. Mozart's elder sister
Maria Anna (best known as Nannerl) 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. On Mozart's first visit to Milan, his
opera Mitridate, ré di Ponto was successfully produced, followed on a
subsequent visit by Lucia Silla. The latter showed signs of the rich, full
orchestration that characterizes his later operas.
A trip to Vienna in 1773 failed to produce the court appointment that both
Mozart and his father wished for him, but did introduce Mozart to the influence
of Haydn, whose Sturm und Drang string quartets (Opus 20) had recently been
published. The influence is clear in Mozart's six string quartets, K168-173,
and in his Symphony in G minor, K183. Another trip in search of patronage
ended less happily. Accompanied by his mother, Mozart left Salzburg in 1777,
travelling through Mannheim to Paris. But in July 1778 his mother died. Nor
was the trip a professional success: no longer able to pass for a prodigy,
Mozart's reception there was muted and hopes of a job came nothing.
Back in Salzburg Mozart worked for two years as a church organist for the new
archbishop. His employer was less kindly disposed to the Mozart family than
his predecessor had been, but the composer nonetheless produced some of his
earliest masterpieces. The famous Sinfonia concertante for violin, violo and
orchestra was written in 1780, and the following year 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 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.
Also in 178 Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte collaborated on the first of a series
of operatic masterpieces. Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) was begun
that year and performed in 1786 to an enthusiastic audience in Vienna and even
greater acclaim later in Prague. 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.
Mozart's legacy is incestimalbe. A master of every form in which he worked, he set standards of excellence that have inspired generations of composers.