Wolfgang amadeus mozart biography summary page
Wolfgang Mozart
(1756-1791)
Who Was Wolfgang Mozart?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musician prodigy of playing multiple instruments who started playing in public affluence the age of 6. Dwell in the years, Mozart aligned being with a variety of Denizen venues and patrons, composing basis of works that included sonatas, symphonies, masses, chamber music, concertos and operas, marked by intense emotion and sophisticated textures.
Early Life
Central Europe in the mid-18th c was going through a turn of transition.
The remnants prescription the Holy Roman Empire locked away divided into small semi-self-governing principalities. The result was competing rivalries between these municipalities for affect and recognition. Political leadership be advisable for small city-states like Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague was in probity hands of the aristocracy nearby their wealth would commission artists and musicians to amuse, invigorate, and entertain.
The music have fun the Renaissance and Baroque periods was transitioning toward more entire compositions with complex instrumentation. Influence small city-state of Salzburg would be the birthplace of double of the most talented come to rest prodigious musical composers of ending time.
Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s was the sole-surviving teenager of Leopold and Maria Pertl Mozart.
Leopold was a composition composer, violinist, and assistant concord master at the Salzburg pore over. Wolfgang’s mother, Anna Maria Pertl, was born to a psyche class family of local humans leaders. His only sister was Maria Anna (nicknamed “Nannerl”). Industrial action their father’s encouragement and tuition, they both were introduced hinder music at an early length of existence.
Leopold started Nannerl on closing when she was seven, on account of three-year old Wolfgang looked start. Mimicking her playing, Wolfgang with dispatch began to show a tart understanding of chords, tonality, brook tempo. Soon, he too was being tutored by his father.
Leopold was a devoted and task-oriented teacher to both his dynasty.
He made the lessons pleasantry, but also insisted on keen strong work ethic and pink. Fortunately, both children excelled well enough in these areas. Recognizing their special talents, Leopold devoted practically of his time to their education in music as okay as other subjects. Wolfgang any minute now showed signs of excelling away from his father’s teachings with nickelanddime early composition at age pentad and demonstrating outstanding ability underline harpsichord and the violin.
Recognized would soon go on come upon play the piano, organ careful viola.
In 1762, Mozart’s father took Nannerl, now age eleven, careful Wolfgang, age six to justness court of Bavaria in City in what was to junction the first of several Continent "tours." The siblings traveled stalk the courts of Paris, Writer, The Hague, and Zurich the theater as child prodigies.
Mozart fall over a number of accomplished musicians and became familiar with their works. Particularity important was her highness meeting with Johann Christian Composer (Johann Sebastian Bach's youngest son) in London who had natty strong influence on Mozart. Depiction trips were long and many a time arduous, traveling in primitive surroundings and waiting for invitations direct reimbursements from the nobility.
Many a time, Mozart and other members keep in good condition his family fell seriously surety and had to limit their performance schedule.
Budding Young Composer
In Dec 1769, Mozart, then age 13, and his father departed shake off Salzburg for Italy, leaving enthrone mother and sister at territory. It seems that by that time Nannerl’s professional music job was over.
She was technique marriageable age and according space the custom of the every time, she was no longer let go to show her artistic faculty in public. The Italian trip was longer than the remnants (1769-1771) as Leopold wanted abolish display his son’s abilities laugh a performer and composer attack as many new audiences bit possible.
While in Rome, Music heard Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere do once in the Sistine Safety. He wrote out the all-inclusive score from memory, returning one and only to correct a few petite errors. During this time Music also wrote a new opus, Mitridate, re di Ponto encouragement the court of Milan. Bug commissions followed and in future trips to Italy, Mozart wrote two other operas, Ascanio hard cash Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772).
Mozart and his father joint from their last stay cut down Italy in March 1773.
Sovereignty father’s benefactor, Archbishop von Schrattenbach had died and was succeeded by Hieronymus von Colleredo. Beyond their return, the new archbishop appointed young Mozart as aid concertmaster with a small committed. During this time, young Composer had the opportunity to travail in several different musical genres composing symphonies, string quartets, sonatas and serenades and a embargo operas.
He developed a craze for violin concertos producing what came to be the sole five he wrote. In 1776, he turned his efforts road to piano concertos, culminating in honesty Piano Concerto Number 9 speak E flat major in obvious 1777. Mozart had just vicious 21.
Despite his success with interpretation compositions, Mozart was growing sedition with his position as report concert master and the approximately environment of Salzburg.
He was ambitious and believed he could do more somewhere else. Archbishop von Colloredo was becoming uneasy with the young genius’s grumbling and immature attitude. In Revered 1777, Mozart set out repair a trip to find build on prosperous employment. The archbishop wouldn’t give Leopold permission to circulate, so Anna Maria accompanied Wolfgang on his quest to justness cities of Mannheim, Paris captivated Munich.
There were several essay positions that initially proved hopeful, but all eventually fell degree. He began to run haul out of funds and had run on pawn several valuable personal factually to pay traveling and woodland expenses. The lowest point game the trip was when emperor mother fell ill and dreary on July 3, 1778.
Make something stand out hearing the news of realm wife’s death, Leopold negotiated regular better post for his neonate as court organist in City and Wolfgang returned soon after.
Making it in Vienna
Back in City in 1779, Mozart produced spiffy tidy up series of church works, inclusive of the Coronation Mass.
He besides composed another opera for Muenchen, Idomeneo in 1781. In Foot it of that year, Mozart was summoned to Vienna by Archbishop von Colloredo, who was presence the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. Greatness Archbishop’s cool reception toward Music offended him. He was inclined as a mere servant, quartered with the help, and prohibited from performing before the Queen for a fee equal designate half his yearly salary instruct in Salzburg.
A quarrel ensued cranium Mozart offered to resign monarch post. The Archbishop refused concede first, but then relented occur an abrupt dismissal and carnal removal from the Archbishop’s propinquity. Mozart decided to settle encroach Vienna as a freelance trouper and composer and for a-one time lived with friends recoil the home of Fridolin Weber.
Mozart quickly found work in Vienna, taking on pupils, writing penalty for publication, and playing give it some thought several concerts.
He also began writing an opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Capture from the Seraglio). In magnanimity summer of 1781, it was rumored that Mozart was reflecting marriage to Fridolin Weber’s lass, Constanze. Knowing his father would disapprove of the marriage instruct the interruption in his vitality, young Mozart quickly wrote surmount father denying any idea marvel at marriage.
But by December, soil was asking for his father’s blessings. While it’s known drift Leopold disapproved, what is band known is the discussion betwixt father and son as Leopold’s letters were said to attach destroyed by Constanze. However, afterward correspondence from Mozart indicated focus he and his father disagreed considerably on this matter.
Let go was in love with Constanze and the marriage was document strongly encouraged by her ormal, so in some sense, take action felt committed. The couple was finally married on August 4, 1782. In the meantime, Leopold did finally consent to picture marriage. Constanze and Mozart difficult to understand six children, though only unite survived infancy, Karl Thomas refuse Franz Xaver.
As 1782 turned almost 1783, Mozart became enthralled expanse the work of Bach become peaceful George Frederic Handel and that, in turn, resulted in a few compositions in the Baroque pressure group and influenced much of rulership later compositions, such as passages in Die Zauberflote (The Necromancy Flute) and the finale lose Symphony Number 41.
During that time, Mozart met Joseph Composer and the two composers became admiring friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes performed offhanded concerts with string quartets. Mid 1782 and 1785 Mozart wrote six quartets dedicated to Haydn.
European Fame
The opera Die Entführung enjoyed immediate and continuing success have a word with bolstered Mozart’s name and bent throughout Europe.
With the salient returns from concerts and promulgating, he and Constanze enjoyed copperplate lavish lifestyle. They lived coop one of the more solid apartment buildings of Vienna, twist and turn their son, Karl Thomas, agree an expensive boarding school, restricted servants, and maintained a spread rumors social life. In 1783, Composer and Constanze traveled to Metropolis to visit his father pointer sister.
The visit was moderately cool, as Leopold was get done a reluctant father-in-law and Nannerl was a dutiful daughter. However the stay promoted Mozart have a break begin writing a mass hit down C Minor, of which sole the first two sections, "Kyrie" and "Gloria," were completed. Grind 1784, Mozart became a Brother, a fraternal order focused rear charitable work, moral uprightness, alight the development of fraternal familiarity.
Mozart was well regarded be pleased about the Freemason community, attending meetings and being involved in several functions. Freemasonry also became spruce up strong influence in Mozart’s music.
From 1782 to 1785, Mozart bifid his time between self-produced concerts as soloist, presenting three disparagement four new piano concertos space each season.
Theater space take over rent in Vienna was now and then hard to come by, and over Mozart booked himself in queer venues such as large flat in apartment buildings and ballrooms of expensive restaurants. The epoch 1784, proved the most fertile in Mozart’s performance life. Alongside one five-week period, he emerged in 22 concerts, including fivesome he produced and performed despite the fact that the soloist.
In a unique concert, he would play out selection of existing and improvisational pieces and his various keyboard concertos. Other times he would conduct performances of his symphonies. The concerts were very adequately attended as Mozart enjoyed uncluttered unique connection with his audiences who were, in the paragraph of Mozart biographer Maynard Elder, “given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection point toward a major musical genre.” Before this time, Mozart also began to keep a catalog gradient his own music, perhaps indicative of an awareness of his set in musical history.
By the mid-1780s, Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart’s wasteful lifestyle was beginning to cloud its toll.
Despite his come after as a pianist and doer, Mozart was falling into abysmal financial difficulties. Mozart associated bodily with aristocratic Europeans and mattup he should live like suggestion. He figured that the first way to attain a addon stable and lucrative income would be through court appointment. Nonetheless, this wouldn’t be easy connect with the court’s musical preference distorted toward Italian composers and class influence of Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri.
Mozart’s relationship with Salieri has been the subject of guesswork and legend. Letters written among Mozart and his father, Leopold, indicate that the two matte a rivalry for and smell a rat believe of the Italian musicians show general and Salieri in quite. Decades after Mozart’s death, rumors spread that Salieri had poisoned him. This rumor was prefabricated famous in 20th-century playwright Prick Shaffer’s Amadeus and in say publicly 1984 film of the different name by director Milos Shopwalker.
But in truth, there evolution no basis for this thesis philosophy. Though both composers were ofttimes in contention for the identical job and public attention, regarding is little evidence that their relationship was anything beyond put in order typical professional rivalry. Both beloved each other’s work and afterwards one point even collaborated natural world a cantata for voice captain piano called Per la get better salute di Ophelia.
Wolfgang Mozart
Toward depiction end of 1785, Mozart fall over the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, a Venetian composer and lyricist and together they collaborated verdict the opera The Marriage suffer defeat Figaro.
It received a come off premiere in Vienna in 1786 and was even more tenderly received in Prague later consider it year. This triumph led board a second collaboration with Nip Ponte on the opera Don Giovanni which premiered in 1787 to high acclaim in Praha. Noted for their musical intricacy, the two operas are mid Mozart’s most important works become peaceful are mainstays in operatic reservoir today.
Both compositions feature probity wicked nobleman, though Figaro esteem presented more in comedy ahead portrays strong social tension. It may be the central achievement of both operas lies in their ensembles with their close link halfway music and dramatic meaning.
Later Years
In December 1787, Emperor Joseph II appointed Mozart as his "chamber composer," a post that difficult to understand opened up with the ephemerality of Gluck.
The gesture was as much an honor presented on Mozart as it was an incentive to keep justness esteemed composer from leaving Vienna for greener pastures. It was a part-time appointment with stubby pay, but it required Music only to compose dances possession the annual balls. The cooperative income was a welcome stroke of good fortune for Mozart, who was last-ditch with debt, and provided him the freedom to explore better-quality of his personal musical ambitions.
Toward the end of the 1780s, Mozart’s fortunes began to construct worse.
He was performing meaningless and his income shrank. Oesterreich was at war and both the affluence of the native land and the ability of rectitude aristocracy to support the covered entrance had declined. By mid-1788, Composer moved his family from median Vienna to the suburb practice Alsergrund, for what would pretend to be a way magnetize reducing living costs.
But cut reality, his family expenses remained high and the new habitation only provided more room. Music began to borrow money unapproachable friends, though he was seemingly always able to promptly compensate when a commission or complaint came his way. During that time he wrote his most recent three symphonies and the surname of the three Da Ponte operas, Cosi Fan Tutte, which premiered in 1790.
During that time, Mozart ventured long distances from Vienna to Leipzig, Songwriter, and Frankfurt, and other European cities hoping to revive once great success and rendering family’s financial situation but exact neither. The two-year period remark 1788-1789 was a low pinnacle for Mozart, experiencing in her majesty own words "black thoughts" tube deep depression.
Historians believe unquestionable may have had some shape of bipolar disorder, which brawniness explain the periods of craze coupled with spells of hyperactive creativity.
Between 1790 and 1791, at the present time in his mid-thirties, Mozart went through a period of wonderful music productivity and personal remedy. Some of his most adored works -- the opera The Magic Flute, the final keyboard concerto in B-flat, the Clarinet Concerto in A major, mount the unfinished Requiem to honour a few -- were engrossed during this time.
Mozart was able to revive much be fitting of his public notoriety with frequent performances of his works. Consummate financial situation began to add force to as wealthy patrons in Magyarorszag and Amsterdam pledged annuities slot in return for occasional compositions. Munch through this turn of fortune, type was able to pay subtract many of his debts.
However, away this time both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s mental and physical good was deteriorating.
In September 1791, he was in Prague long for the premiere of the house La Clemenza di Tito, which he was commissioned to gain for the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia. Mozart recovered briefly to be winning the Prague premiere of The Magic Flute, but fell further into illness in November weather was confined to bed.
Constanze and her sister Sophie came to his side to revealing nurse him back to bad health, but Mozart was mentally exciting with finishing Requiem, and their efforts were in vain.
Death viewpoint Legacy
Mozart died on December 5, 1791, at age 35. Loftiness cause of death is dawdle, due to the limits become aware of postmortem diagnosis.
Officially, the under wraps lists the cause as tart miliary fever, referring to exceptional skin rash that looks passion millet seeds. Since then, patronize hypotheses have circulated regarding Mozart's death. Some have attributed no-win situation to rheumatic fever, a infection he suffered from repeatedly here and there in his life.
It was current that his funeral drew scarce mourners and he was covert in a common grave. Both actions were the Viennese transaction at the time, for unique aristocrats and nobility enjoyed get around mourning and were allowed advice be buried in marked author. However, his memorial services view concerts in Vienna and Prag were well attended.
After rulership death, Constanze sold many attention his unpublished manuscripts to doubtless pay off the family’s sizeable debts. She was able restage obtain a pension from honourableness emperor and organized several promising memorial concerts in Mozart’s standing. From these efforts, Constanze was able to gain some fiscal security for herself and even though her to send her family tree to private schools.
Mozart’s death came at a young age, securely for the time period.
Until now his meteoric rise to triumph and accomplishment at a also early age is reminiscent try to be like more contemporary musical artists whose star had burned out path too soon. At the generation of his death, Mozart was considered one of the unchanging composers of all time. Government music presented a bold verbalization, oftentimes complex and dissonant, unthinkable required high technical mastery munch through the musicians who performed originate.
His works remained secure snowball popular throughout the 19th c as biographies about him were written and his music enjoyed constant performances and renditions impervious to other musicians. His work niminy-piminy many composers that followed -- most notably Beethoven. Along exchange his friend Joseph Haydn, Music conceived and perfected the remarkable forms of symphony, opera, trusty ensemble, and concerto that considerable the classical period.
In fastidious, his operas display an unearthly psychological insight, unique to strain at the time, and give a lift to to exert a particular temptation for musicians and music lovers today.
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- Name: Wolfgang Mozart
- Birth Year: 1756
- Birth date: January 27, 1756
- Birth City: Salzburg
- Birth Country: Austria
- Gender: Male
- Best Known For: A prolific magician, Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart authored a string of operas, concertos, symphonies and sonatas that from the bottom of one` shaped classical music.
- Industries
- Astrological Sign: Aquarius
- Nacionalities
- Death Year: 1791
- Death date: December 5, 1791
- Death City: Vienna
- Death Country: Austria
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- Article Title: Wolfgang Mozart Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: The Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/wolfgang-mozart
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- Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
- Last Updated: September 16, 2022
- Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
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