Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)



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, r' 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 Entf'hrung 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 Cos' 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 ...