Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Born: January 27, 1756, Salzburg Austria Died: December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria - Biography - Musical Examples - Works - Links - Classical Composer Index

In his own words....

"People make a mistake who think that my art has come easily to me. Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not studied over and over."

Austrian composer. One of the leading composers of the Classical era, and a master in all genres.

Our picture of Mozart depends upon where we focus. Was he a brilliant, successful composer or a child prodigy who never grew up? Was he a facile composer who created nothing original or a composer of great emotional depth? He was all of these and more. For many of us, our focus is guided by our exposure to Mozart's personality in the film Amadeus, but is that an accurate picture? (For more on this, see the links below.)

Mozart's life remains a complicated puzzle. As a child, he seemed gifted beyond all measure, playing at age six before the empress, and composing at an even earlier age. By twelve he had written an opera, and his talents seemed to know no bounds. From this auspicious beginning, one would have predicted a future filled with prestigious royal appointments, the brilliant composers and performer constantly sought out by emperors and kings. But his career, which ended tragically with his death at age 35, was a constant disappointment. When once asked about a meager court appointment he held, Mozart replied: "I get paid far too much for what I do, and far too little for what I could do." His music did not always please those in power: "Too many notes," Emperor Joseph II was reported to have said. And Mozart himself, who always felt that his talents were never adequately recognized, was often difficult.

The difficulties of Mozart the man, however, are eclipsed by the enormous power of Mozart the musician. His music was often joyous and almost raucous, and yet he could also wrote melodies of simple and haunting beauty. Like Haydn and Beethoven, Mozart was just as comfortable writing simple, direct melodies as he was writing complicated contrapuntal works. There seems to have been no genre in which he was not comfortable, and we can rightly point to his best work in any of them as the epitome of that genre.

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Musical Examples:

• Concerto No. 3 for Horn, K.447
• Piano Concerto No. 21 (Elvira Madigan)
• Requiem, K. 626—Kyrie, Confutatis, and Tuba mirum
• Overture to The Magic Flute—Introduction and Allegro theme
• Symphony No. 40, K.550, IV: Allegro assai
• Symphony No. 41 Jupiter, K. 551, I: Allegro
• Aria: "Ah che mi dice mai" from Don Giovanni K. 527.

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Works:

• Orchestral music, including some 40 symphonies (late symphonies: No. 35, Haffner, 1782; No. 36, Linz, 1783; No. 38, Prague, 1786; Nos. 39, 40, and 41, Jupiter, all from 1788); cassations, divertimentos, serenades, marches, and dances
• Concertos, including 27 for piano, 5 for violin; concertos for clarinet, oboe, French horn, bassoon, flute, and flute and harp
• Operas, including Idomeneo (1781), The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 1782), The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro, 1786), Don Giovanni (1787),
  Women Are Like That (Cosí fan tutte, 1790), and The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte, 1791)
• Choral music, including 18 Masses, the Requiem, K. 626 (incomplete, 1791), and other liturgical music
• Chamber music, including 23 string quartets, string quintets, clarinet quintet, oboe quartet, flute quartet, piano trios and quartets, sonatas for violin and piano, and divertimentos and serenades (Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525, 1787)
• Keyboard music, including 17 piano sonatas and
  Fantasia in C minor (K. 475, 1785)

Secular vocal music
A Note: Mozart composed more than 600 works during his short life. In concert programs and recordings each work is identified by a number preceded by the letter "K." This stands for Ludwig Köchel, who cataloged them in chronological order (so that a low "K number" indicates an early work. For a complete listing, go to: http://www.classical.net/music/composer/works/mozart/index.html

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Links:

• A Basic Biography
  Extracted from the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music. Links to other information, including a number of paintings of Mozart and his family.
• Classical Insites Mozart Page
  Brief biography with recommended recordings of selected pieces.
• The Mozart Project
  A wide-ranging site that provides information about the composer and his works. Includes a great deal of biographical information, along with many illustrations and musical examples (in RealAudio format). Also features essays by noted scholars, including one that discusses the real Mozart and the one depicted in the film Amadeus.
• Mozart's Musical Dice Game
  During Mozart's time, there was something of a fad for composing pieces by using dice to choose individual measures to create a musical work. This must have been time-consuming (rolling the dice, consulting a table and recording the results). Fortunately, the computer has made this a much simpler task, and you can use this site to compose your own minuets. They won't be as good as Mozart's, but they will sound oddly like his.
• The Mozart Project
  A wide-ranging site that provides information about the composer and his works. Includes a great deal of biographical information, along with many illustrations and musical examples (in RealAudio format). Also features essays by noted scholars, including one that discusses the real Mozart and the one depicted in the film Amadeus.
• Mozart's Musical Dice Game
  During Mozart's time, there was something of a fad for composing pieces by using dice to choose individual measures to create a musical work. This must have been time-consuming (rolling the dice, consulting a table and recording the results). Fortunately, the computer has made this a much simpler task, and you can use this site to compose your own minuets. They won't be as good as Mozart's, but they may sound oddly like his.

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