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First Name

 Wolfgang

Middle Name

 Amadeus

Last Name

 Mozart

Birth Year

 0

Death Year

 0000

Biography

 (b Salzburg, 1756 ; d Vienna, 1791 ). Austrian composer, keyboard‐player, violinist, violist, and conductor. Son of Leopold Mozart , Vice‐Kapellmeister to Prince‐Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart showed exceptional musical precocity, playing the klavier at 3 and composing at 5. His elder sister Maria Anna ( 1751 – 1829 ) was also a brilliant kbd. player and in 1762 Leopold decided to present his children's talents at various European courts. They first visited Munich and Vienna in 1762 . Wolfgang was now able to play the vn. without having had formal teaching. In 1763 a longer journey began, from Munich, Augsburg, Frankfurt, and other cities to Cologne, Brussels, and Paris. They spent a fortnight at Louis XV's court at Versailles. In Apr. 1764 they arrived in London and were received by George III . While in London, Wolfgang studied with Abel , comp. with J. C. Bach , and singing with the castrato Manzuoli . He wrote his first 3 syms. in London. After visits to Holland and Switzerland, the Mozart family returned to Salzburg in Nov. 1766 . Further visits to Vienna were made in 1767 and 1768 and Mozart comp. 2 operas, La finta semplice and Bastien und Bastienne. In Dec. 1769 , Leopold took Mozart to It. where the boy's genius was everywhere acclaimed. He was taught by Martini and met Nardini, Jommelli , and Burney. In Rome he heard Allegri's Miserere and wrote it out from memory. His opera Mitridate, Rè di Ponto was successfully prod. in Milan in Dec. 1770 . Two further visits to It. speedily followed, but the new prince‐archbishop of Salzburg was less well‐disposed towards the Mozarts and in 1777 Mozart left on a tour with his mother, Leopold not being well enough to go. They visited Munich, Augsburg, Mannheim (where he heard the famous orch.) and arrived in Paris in 1778 . Mozart's mother died there in July of that year. No longer a Wunderkind, Mozart had less appeal for the Parisians, who were engrossed in the Gluck‐Piccinni controversy. Unable to obtain a court post, Mozart returned to Salzburg where he spent the next 2 yeawhichrs as court and cath. org. amid growing hostility to the archbishop. In 1780 the Elector of Bavaria commissioned an opera from Mozart (Idomeneo), prod. in Munich, Jan. 1781 . On Mozart's return to Salzburg he had a final confrontation with the archbishop and resigned. He went to Vienna, where he married Constanze Weber in Aug. 1782 , a few days after the first perf. of his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The last 9 years of his life were a juxtaposition of financial troubles with an astonishing outpouring of masterpieces in almost every genre. In 1785 he frequently played the va. in str. qts. with Dittersdorf and Haydn. To the latter, who regarded Mozart as the greatest composer he knew, Mozart dedicated 6 str. qts. in the autumn of 1785 , when he also began work on Le nozze di Figaro. He frequently appeared as soloist in his own kbd. concs. Although Figaro was rapturously received in Vienna in 1786 , it was taken off after 9 perfs., but was the rage of Prague when prod. there in 1787 . During his visit to the Bohemian capital, Mozart's Sym. in D (K504, No.38) received its f.p., thereafter being known as the ‘Prague Sym’. He was subsequently commissioned to write an opera for Prague for the following autumn. The result was Don Giovanni, written in a few months while the 2 str. quintets in C major and G minor and Eine kleine Nachtmusik were also composed. In the same year Leopold Mozart died at Salzburg. The new opera was a success in Prague, but initially failed in Vienna, where it was prod. with some extra numbers in May 1788 . A month later Mozart began to compose the first of his 3 last syms., completing them between 26 June and 10 Aug. In 1789 , under severe financial pressure, he played a conc. in Dresden on the way to Berlin. He visited Leipzig, playing Bach's org. at St Thomas's. In Berlin King Friedrich Wilhelm II , a cellist, commissioned 6 str. qts. of which only 3 were written. In the autumn Emperor Joseph II of Austria commissioned a new comic opera, Così fan tutte, was prod. early in 1790 . Joseph died shortly afterwards, but Mozart's hope of being appointed by Leopold II Kapellmeister in place of Salieri was not fulfilled. In 1791 he was approached by the actor‐manager Schikaneder with a view to composing a fairy‐tale opera on a lib. concocted by Schikaneder. Die Zauberflöte was almost completed by July, the month in which Mozart received a commission to compose a Requiem for an anonymous patron (Count F. von Walsegg who wished to pass it off as his own). Mozart deferred work on it to compose an adaptation of Metastasio's La clemenza di Tito for Leopold II's coronation as King of Bohemia in Prague in Sept. This prod. was supervised by Mozart, who returned to Vienna, wrote the cl. conc., cond. the f.p. of Die Zauberflöte, and then resumed work on the Requiem. But his health, which had been deteriorating for some time, now became critical and he died on 5 Dec. , leaving the Requiem to be completed by his pupil Süssmayr. He was buried in accordance with the Emperor Joseph II's regulations, with others who had died at the same time, and the location of his grave remains unknown. The circumstances of Mozart's death have given rise to many sensational theoríes, none proved, and there is much medical speculation on the cause of death. The extent and range of Mozart's genius are so vast and so bewildering that any concise summing‐up of his achievement must risk being trite. He took the mus. small‐change of his day, learned from childhood in the courts of Europe, and transformed it into a mint of gold. His sense of form and symmetry seems to have been innate and was allied to an infallible craftsmanship which was partly learnt and partly instinctive. In his operas he not only displayed hitherto unequalled dramatic feeling, but widened the boundaries of the singer's art through contact with some of the greatest vv. of his day and, with his amazing insight into human nature, at once perceptive and detached, he created characters on the stage who may be claimed in their context as the equal of Shakespeare's. His music was supranational, combining It., Fr., Austrian, and Ger. elements. Not by revolutionary deliberation but by the natural superiority of the mus. he wrote, he changed the course of the sym., the pf. conc., the str. qt., the sonata, and much more besides. Perhaps the only element missing from his mus. is the worship of Nature which Beethoven and later 19th‐cent. composers were to supply. There are brilliance and gaiety on the surface of Mozart's mus., but underneath a dark vein of melancholy which gives his works (Così fan tutte in particular) an ambivalence which is continually fascinating and provocative. ‘Mozart is music’, a critic said, and most composers since 1791 have agreed. Bibliography "Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus." In The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed. rev., edited by Michael Kennedy. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t237/e7029 (accessed September 24, 2009).