Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91,) fully Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was an Austrian composer who wrote in all the musical genera of his day and excelled in every one. His mastery of the whole range of contemporary instrumental and vocal forms—including the symphony, concerto, chamber music, and especially the opera—was unsurpassed in his own time and maybe in any other.
Born in Salzburg, Mozart was a child prodigy. He displayed early musical gifts, playing the keyboard confidently at the age of four, composing his first pieces for it at five, and soon mastering the violin. His father, the composer and conductor Leopold Mozart, undertook a series of tours of the European courts 1762–65 to showcase Wolfgang and his sister Maria Anna. Amadeus composed his first symphonies during the trip.
In the 1770s, Mozart worked at the Prince Archbishop’s court in Salzburg and wrote masses, symphonies, and his first major piano concerto. In the 1780s, he moved to Vienna and became court composer to the Austrian Emperor in 1787. In this decade, he composed and performed his greatest symphonies, piano concertos, and string quartets, as well as operas, including The Marriage of Figaro (1786,) Don Giovanni (1787,) Così fan tutte (1790,) and The Magic Flute (1791.) Altogether, he composed more than 600 works, sharpening the classical style and foreshadowing Romanticism.
Of the many general biographies, Mozart: His Character, His Work by Allred Einstein (English edition 1946) is still considered the best. Eduard Miirike’s novella Mozart auf seiner Reise nach Prag (1855, ‘Mozart’s Journey to Prague’) is a fictional romance based on Mozart’s visit to Prague for the first production there of Don Giovanni.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Topics: Death, Dying
I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Topics: Attention
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Topics: Genius, Love
My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Topics: Conversation, Brevity
Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Topics: Charm
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