The son of Leopold
Mozart, he showed musical gifts at a very early
age, composing when he was five and when he was
six playing before the Bavarian elector and the
Austrian empress. Leopold felt that it was
proper, and might also be profitable, to
exhibit his children's God-given genius (Maria
Anna, 'Nannerl', 1751-1829, was a gifted
keyboard player): so in mid-1763 the family set
out on a tour that took them to Paris and
London, visiting numerous courts en route.
Mozart astonished his audiences with his
precocious skills; he played to the French and
English royal families, had his first music
published and wrote his earliest symphonies.
The family arrived home late in 1766; nine
months later they were off again, to Vienna,
where hopes of having an opera by Mozart
performed were frustrated by intrigues.
They spent 1769 in
Salzburg; 1770-73 saw three visits to Italy,
where Mozart wrote two operas
(Mitridate, Lucio Silla) and
a serenata for performance in Milan, and
acquainted himself with Italian styles. Summer
1773 saw a further visit to Vienna, probably in
the hope of securing a post; there Mozart wrote
a set of string quartets and, on his return,
wrote a group of symphonies including his two
earliest, nos.25 in g Minor and 29 in A, in the
regular repertory. Apart from a joumey to
Munich for the premiere of his opera La
finta giardiniera early in 1775, the
period from 1774 to mid-1777 was spent in
Salzburg, where Mozart worked as Konzertmeister
at the Prince- Archbishop's court; his works of
these years include masses, symphonies, all his
violin concertos, six piano sonatas, several
serenades and divertimentos and his first great
piano concerto, K271.
In 1777 the Mozarts,
seeing limited opportunity in Salzburg for a
composer so hugely gifted, resolved to seek a
post elsewhere for Wolfgang. He was sent, with
his mother, to Munich and to Mannheim, but was
offered no position (though he stayed over four
months at Mannheim, composing for piano and
flute and falling in love with Aloysia Weber).
His father then dispatched him to Paris: there
he had minor successes, notably with his Paris
Symphony, no.31, deftly designed for the local
taste. But prospects there were poor and
Leopold ordered him home, where a superior post
had been arranged at the court. He returned
slowly and alone; his mother had died in Paris.
The years 1779-80 were spent in Salzburg,
playing in the cathedral and at court,
composing sacred works, symphonies, concertos,
serenades and dramatic music. But opera
remained at the centre of his ambitions, and an
opportunity came with a commission for a
serious opera for Munich. He went there to
compose it late in 1780; his correspondence
with Leopold (through whom he communicated with
the librettist, in Salzburg) is richly
informative about his approach to musical
drama. The work, Idomeneo, was a
success. In it Mozart depicted serious, heroic
emotion with a richness unparalleled elsewhere
in his works, with vivid orchestral writing and
an abundance of profoundly expressive
orchestral recitative.
Mozart was then summoned
from Munich to Vienna, where the Salzburg court
was in residence on the accession of a new
emperor. Fresh from his success, he found
himself placed between the valets and the
cooks; his resentment towards his employer,
exacerbated by the Prince-Archbishop's refusal
to let him perform at events the emperor was
attending, soon led to conflict, and in May
1781 he resigned, or was kicked out of, his
job. He wanted a post at the Imperial court in
Vienna, but was content to do freelance work in
a city that apparently offered golden
opportunities. He made his living over the
ensuing years by teaching, by publishing his
music, by playing at patrons' houses or in
public, by composing to commission
(particularly operas); in 1787 he obtained a
minor court post as Kammermusicus,
which gave him a reasonable salary and required
nothing beyond the writing of dance music for
court balls. He always earned, by musicians'
standards, a good income, and had a carriage
and servants; through lavish spending and poor
management he suffered times of financial
difficulty and had to borrow. In 1782 he
married Constanze Weber, Aloysia's younger
sister.
In his early years in
Vienna, Mozart built up his reputation by
publishing (sonatas for piano, some with
violin), by playing the piano and, in 1782, by
having an opera performed: Die
Entführung aus dem Serail, a German
Singspiel which went far beyond the usual
limits of the tradition with its long,
elaborately written songs (hence Emperor Joseph
II's famous observation, 'Too many notes, my
dear Mozart'). The work was successful and was
taken into the repertories of many provincial
companies (for which Mozart was not however
paid). In these years, too, he wrote six string
quartets which he dedicated to the master of
the form, Haydn: they are marked not only by
their variety of expression but by their
complex textures, conceived as four-part
discourse, with the musical ideas linked to
this freshly integrated treatment of the
medium. Haydn told Mozart's father that Mozart
was 'the greatest composer known to me in
person or by name; he has taste and, what is
more, the greatest knowledge of
composition'.
In 1782 Mozart embarked
on the composition of piano concertos, so that
he could appear both as composer and soloist.
He wrote 15 before the end of 1786, with early
1784 as the peak of activity. They represent
one of his greatest achievements, with their
formal mastery, their subtle relationships
between piano and orchestra (the wind
instruments especially) and their combination
of brilliance, lyricism and symphonic growth.
In 1786 he wrote the first of his three comic
operas with Lorenzo da Ponte as librettist,
Le nozze di Figaro: here and in
Don Giovanni (given in Prague, 1787)
Mozart treats the interplay of social and
sexual tensions with keen insight into human
character that - as again in the more
artificial sexual comedy of Cosi fan
tutte (1790) - transcends the comic
framework, just as Die
Zauberflöte (1791) transcends, with
its elements of ritual and allegory about human
harmony and enlightenment, the world of the
Viennese popular theatre from which it
springs.
Mozart lived in Vienna
for the rest of his life. He undertook a number
of joumeys: to Salzburg in 1783, to introduce
his wife to his family; to Prague three times,
for concerts and operas; to Berlin in 1789,
where he had hopes of a post; to Frankfurt in
1790, to play at coronation celebrations. The
last Prague journey was for the premiere of
La clemenza di Tito (1791), a
traditional serious opera written for
coronation celebrations, but composed with a
finesse and economy characteristic of Mozart's
late music. Instrumental works of these years
include some piano sonatas, three string
quartets written for the King of Prussia, some
string quintets, which include one of his most
deeply felt works (K516 in g Minor) and one of
his most nobly spacious (K515 in C), and his
last four symphonies - one (no.38 in D)
composed for Prague in 1786, the others written
in 1788 and forming, with the lyricism of no.39
in E-flat, the tragic suggestiveness of no.40
in g Minor and the grandeur of no.41 in C, a
climax to his orchestral music. His final works
include the Clarinet Concerto and some pieces
for masonic lodges (he had been a freemason
since 1784; masonic teachings no doubt affected
his thinking, and his compositions, in his last
years). At his death from a feverish illness
whose precise nature has given rise to much
speculation (he was not poisoned), he left
unfinished the Requiem, his first
large-scale work for the church since the c
Minor Mass of 1783, also unfinished; a
completion by his pupil Süssmayr was long
accepted as the standard one but there have
been recent attempts to improve on it. Mozart
was buried in a Vienna suburb, with little
ceremony and in an unmarked grave, in
accordance with prevailing custom.
Biography by: Honey Fox
Submitted On : 08.25.00
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