Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756

and lived to the year of 1791. In Mozarts early childhood

when he was six years old he had become an accomplished performer

on the clavier, violin, and organ and was highly skilled in

sight-reading and improvision. Mozart had composed five short

piano pieces when he was six, which are still played to this day.

At the age of 14, Mozart was payed to write a serious opera.

This work, mitridate, re di Ponto

(Mithridates, King of Pontos, 1770), produced under his direction

at Milan, completely established an already big reputation.

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 Mozart 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, fell in love with

Aloysia Weber. Leopold then ordered his son and wife to Paris.

His mother died in Paris in July of 1778, his rejection by Weber,

and the neglect he suffered from the aristocrats whom he courted

made the two years Mozart's arrival in Paris until his return to

Salzburg in 1779 one of the most difficult periods in his life.

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. Mozart had a success on the Italian opera seria

Idomeneo, re di Creta (Idomeneo, King of Crete).

A series of court intrigues and his exploitation at the hands

of the court soon forced Mozart to leave. In a house in Vienna

rented for him by his friends, he hoped to sustain himself by

being a teacher. During this period Mozart composed a singspiel

called The Abduction from the Seraglio, which was requested by

Emperor Joseph the 2nd in 1782. In that same year Mozart had

married Constanze Weber, Aloysia's younger sister. Not ending

poverty and illness harassed the family until Mozarts death in

1791. Mozart had had an unsuccessful career and died young

but he ranks as one of the geniuses of Western civilization.

His large output which is more than 600 works, shows that even

as a child he had had a thorough command of the technical

resources of musical composition as well as an original imagination.

His 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.

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