Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Written by ChrisRick on Thursday 21 February 2008
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg (now in Austria) on 27 January 1756. At the age of 5 he was already composing short works including Allegro in C and Andante. While young he and his sister ‘Nannerl’ toured through Europe as musical prodigies, his sister being a gifted musician on clavier, harpsichord and piano.
He illegally copied, from memory, the entire Miserere by Gregorio Allegri, which he heard at the Sistine Chapel around 1770 on a trip to Italy. Later, he wrote the opera Mitridate Re di Ponto in Milan (1770), Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772). Upon his return from Italy in 1773 Mozart was hired on as the court musician for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. At times he was so prolific that he would write entire series of pieces in one year beginning with 5 violin concertos in 1775 and several piano concertos in 1777.
In 1781 Mozart he moved to Vienna. The following years were some of his most successful, beginning with his opera The Abduction of the Seraglio (1782). That year he married Constanze Weber whom he later had six children with, though only two survived. Also that year he began giving seasonal piano concerto performances that he wrote himself and continued until 1785. The concerts were extremely successful and raised the quality of life for him and his family. Partly due to this success he became a mason in 1784 which played a major role in his later life. For the next several years he focused on opera writing The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovani (1787) and Cosi Fan Tutte (1790). He died on 5 December 1791 due to a serious, unknown illness but it was to be one of his finest years as he composed The Magic Flute (opera), piano concerto K. 595 in B flat, Ave Verum corpus K. 618 and his unfinished work Requiem K. 626 among others.
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