Mozart Mozart is truly the most remarkable composer who ever lived. He composed In the classical style and there Is no other composer to fairly compare him to. Although he died at the age of 35, he left the world with more than 600 of the most amazing compositions ever written, Throughout his life, he composed with an ease of melody and a blend of grace and precision that arguable no one has ever excelled (Ducker 478). He was an amazing musician and composer whose legend continues to grow more than two and a half centuries after his death.
Mozart was a musical child- Roding, writing his first minuet at the age of five. At the age of six, he began composing complicated and serious musical works and in the same year gave his first harpsichord concert. His first symphony was written when he was only eight years old and his first opera when he was twelve. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salisbury, Austria in January of 1756 to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertly. Leopold Mozart was a respected and successful violinist and composer for the Archbishop of Salisbury. He was also an experienced teacher and taught young Wolfgang to play the clavier at the tender age of three.
By the age of four, he had developed such an amazing talent for remembering musical pieces, that Leopold began teaching him to play the harpsichord. Wolfgang was a quick learner and within a year he was composing serious pieces of music. Beginning in 1762, Wolfgang and his sister Maria Anna, affectionately nicknamed Manner, went on a musical tour throughout Europe with their parents. They visited some of Rupee’s largest and most culture-rich cities and performed small concerts for groups of royalty and nobility. Wherever they played, their audience was overwhelmed with their extraordinary talents.
For two young children, they were extremely talented but Wolfgang certainly stood out from the pair. This was partially due to his age, his unusual talent, and his father’s strict and unrelenting instruction, but it was also due to the time period in which they lived. During the classical period, women had a harder time finding respect, not to mention work, as musicians and composers. Although Manner composed wonderful pieces of her own, even Wolfgang once wrote In a letter to her, “l have been quite astonished that you can compose so beautifully” (Gay 18).
And although Leopold was immensely proud of both of his children’s musical talents and accomplishments, he was often heard saying that his son was “a prodigy of nature” (Gay 12). It can easily be accepted that he was a prodigy. By the time Wolfgang was a teenager, he had mastered the harpsichord, violin and pianoforte, as well as the sonata and symphony and was writing keyboard pieces, oratorios, solos, and operas. Up until 1768 the Mozart family continued taking musical tours throughout Europe. During this time Wolfgang continued composing.
While on tour in Paris, he published his first works, our sonatas for the clavier with violin accompaniment. He also composed his first opera, La Flat Someplace, which he played In a public performance the following year in his hometown of Salisbury. Between 1769 and 1771, Wolfgang and his father traveled together on three tours In Italy, leaving Manner and Anna Marl at home. While in Italy, Wolfgang wrote several new operas, Intimidate RI De Pont, Occasion in also in Rome, Italy that Mozart heard for the first and only time “…
Gregory Allegro’s Miseries performance in the Sistine Chapel then wrote it out in its entirety from Emory, only returning to correct minor errors; thus producing the first illegal copy of this closely-guarded property of the Vatican” (Wisped). In 1773 they returned home from their last tour in Italy. By this time, Wolfgang had written more than two dozen symphonies in his traditional classical style and his true genius as a symphonists had emerged (Gay 16). Once home, he found work as a court musician for the ruler of Salisbury.
During this time he composed many works including five violin concertos, which were the only violin concertos he ever wrote. But in a short amount f time, he came to be dissatisfied with that position. He was unhappy with the salary, which was only 150 florins per year, and the position did not allow him to express himself as fully as he liked (Wisped). He was interested in composing operas but the Salisbury audience was not interested in operas. So Wolfgang began searching for employment away from Salisbury.
For the next few years he traveled to large cities such as Vienna, Munich, Anaheim and Paris searching for a position that suited him. It was on his trip to Paris with his mother in 1778 that she became ill and died. In 1781 he found work as a pianist and composer in Vienna. His works Mere widely accepted and appreciated by his Viennese audiences and he achieved a reputation as an accomplished composer. It was also in Vienna that he reacquainted himself with Constance Weber, a childhood friend and the daughter of Loophole’s long-time friend, Franklin Weber.
In August 1782, Wolfgang married Constance against his father’s vehement objections. The couple had a total of six children although only two boys survived infancy, Karl Thomas Mozart and Franz Xavier Knolling Mozart. Shortly after the birth of their first child, Karl Thomas, Wolfgang Egan working on his famous opera, The Marriage of Figaro, which premiered in Vienna in 1786 followed by a popular showing in Prague. The following year, he completed Don Giovanni which was also widely accepted in both cities.
Both of these operas “… Are considered among Mozart most important works and are mainstays of the operatic repertoire today’ (Wisped). Prior to Wolfgang marriage and for a few [ears after, he had tried to find work under a permanent patron who would respect and praise his work and one which would guarantee a large and steady income. But t was not until December of 1787 that he finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage from Emperor Joseph II who appointed him as his “chamber composer”.
However, this was not a full-time position and his compensation was only 300 florins per year although it merely required him to compose dances for the annual balls in the Hoofers Imperial Palace. By 1788, his career and income started steady decline. It is believed that he began suffering from bouts of depression and he rarely performed in public. However, he was not idle during his last years. In fact, during this time “… E wrote a great deal of music, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute, the final piano concerto (K. 95 in B flat), the Clarinet Concerto (K. 622), the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E flat), the motet Eave verve corpus (K. 618), and the unfinished Requiem (K. 526)”(Wisped). In September of 1791, while visiting Prague, Wolfgang fell ill. Toward the end of November his condition had worsened so much that he was Constance, her younger sister Sophie and the family doctor, but all was in vain. He died in the early morning hours of December 5, 1791. Today there is no headstone or rake to identify where the great composer was laid to rest.
Some historians have speculated that the Mozart family was so poor that they could not afford a proper burial. However, a simple burial was actually a sign of the times. Funerals were not elaborate, celebrated events. Instead, they were quiet, solemn and low-key. He was buried as any of his fellow Viennese countrymen would have been buried-in a common grave. But there are even more questions surrounding his death; primarily how he died. Rumors abound from trichinosis (a parasitic disease contracted from eating under-cooked pork) to influenza, mercury poisoning, or rheumatic fever Wisped).