Wolfgang Wazart
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, ré 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 Entführung 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.
