Mozart - History's Greatest Child Prodigy Documentary

The man known to history as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on the 27th of January 1756 in the city of Salzburg in Austria. His full birth name was Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart, but from as early as 1770 when he was 14 years old he preferred to go by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus being derived from the Latin version of the Greek origin name Theophilus. His father Leopold Mozart was originally from Augsburg in Bavaria in southern Germany, but moved to Salzburg as a teenager and became a violinist and composer at the court of the Prince-Archbishop of

Salzburg. His mother Anna Maria Pertl was from a poor rural family and married Leopold Mozart in November 1747 at the age of twenty-seven. They had seven children together, though only two survived infancy: daughter Maria Anna, known as Nannerl, born in 1751, and son Wolfgang, the youngest of the seven. Mozart’s native Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg was one of the hundreds of states that formed the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which primarily included modern-day Germany and Austria, the latter being part of the personal domain of the Holy Roman Emperor, who despite officially being elected was typically

a member of the House of Habsburg. The Habsburg lands also extended beyond Austria to Hungary and Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. As Salzburg was both an archbishopric and a principality, the Catholic Prince-Archbishop exercised spiritual and political power over his domains. Fortunately for the Mozarts, the incumbent officeholder at the time of Wolfgang’s birth was Siegmund Schrattenbach, a music lover who sought to transform his city into a major musical centre. The Mozart family lived in a third-floor apartment at No. 9 Getreidegasse in the old town on the southern bank of the Salzach River, near the

foot of the hill that leads up to the medieval Hohensalzburg Fortress that dominates the city’s skyline. The apartment was filled with music as Leopold often invited his friends to play together while making some money on the side as a violin tutor. In the year of Wolfgang’s birth, Leopold published a textbook that soon became an influential instruction manual for young violinists, and in 1763 he would be promoted to deputy kapellmeister, or deputy music director, at Archbishop Siegmund’s court. In around 1759, upon noticing his seven-year-old daughter’s interest in music, Leopold began teaching Nannerl to play the clavier,

a term used to describe various keyboard instruments, the most popular at the time being the harpsichord. The three-year-old Wolfgang looked on intently, and when Leopold wrote a book of keyboard exercises for Nannerl, the boy started playing from his sister’s book. Leopold soon started paying attention and noticed that his son was unusually talented for his age and began to teach him the organ and the violin at the age of four. When Wolfgang was just six years old, two of Leopold’s friends called on the apartment to play some new string trios, and the boy begged his father

to play the second violin part. After Leopold initially refused, second violinist Johann Andreas Schachtner invited the boy to follow his lead. Schachtner soon realised that Wolfgang could do fine on his own reading by sight. Wolfgang was then allowed to play his father’s part of first violin, and despite having to use an unorthodox technique due to his small hands, managed to play all six trios without serious blemishes. On another occasion, the two men came across Wolfgang making a mess on a piece of paper with an ink pen in hand. Wolfgang informed the adults that he was

writing the first movement of a clavier concerto. After examining the manuscript more closely, the amazed Leopold remarked on how well it was written, but commented that it was too difficult. The boy replied, “You must practice very hard to be able to play it,” and proceeded to give a demonstration on the clavier. Mozart’s compositions are usually identified with a ‘K’ number with reference to a catalogue of his music compiled by Ludwig von Köchel in 1862. These earliest compositions are known as K. 1a, 1b, and 1c. In January 1762, on the eve of Wolfgang’s sixth birthday, Leopold

took his talented children to visit Munich. There Nannerl and Wolfgang impressed Elector Maximilian III and were invited to perform in the city’s salons. Following this initial success, Leopold planned to take his children to Vienna, the capital of the Archduchy of Austria where Empress Maria Theresa held court. He prevailed on Archbishop Siegmund to grant him paid leave and to cover part of his expenses. With this secured, on the 18th of September 1762 the entire family left Salzburg and arrived in Vienna three weeks later. On the way, Wolfgang and Nannerl gave their first public concert in the

city of Linz. The Viennese aristocrats in the audience that day spread the word to the imperial palace, and on the 13th of October the Mozarts were invited to the Schönbrunn Palace to the west of the city. Leopold’s account of the occasion has entered into legend. After impressing the imperial couple with his talent at the clavier, Wolfgang ran to Maria Theresa, jumped on her lap, and kissed the empress repeatedly. The Mozarts were the talk of the town, and the Viennese nobility jumped at the opportunity to hear the six-year-old prodigy play. However, when the Mozarts were invited

to Schönbrunn for a second time, Wolfgang was seriously ill, possibly with smallpox or scarlet fever, and the empress expressed concern that Leopold was putting too much pressure on his son. Wolfgang soon recovered from his illness, and with the continent at peace following the end of the Seven Years’ War in February 1763, Leopold decided to take his family on a Grand Tour of Europe, financed by the Archbishop and others. In June, the Mozarts left for Munich, where both Wolfgang and Nannerl impressed the elector once again. After ten days, they went to Leopold’s hometown of Augsburg, where

he bought a small travelling clavier for the children. After unsuccessfully trying to get hold of Duke Karl Eugen of Wurttemberg in Stuttgart, the family travelled up the Rhineland. On the 18th of August, the Mozarts gave a concert in Frankfurt that was so well received that they gave four more. One of Wolfgang’s favourite party tricks was to play the keyboard blind, with the keys covered under a cloth. Among the attendees of the final concert of the series was the teenage Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who would become one of the great intellectuals of the age. In late

September the Mozarts crossed into the Austrian Netherlands, modern-day Belgium, where Emperor Franz’s younger brother Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine was imperial governor. After performing in Brussels in early November they headed for Paris, where they performed before King Louis XV and Queen Marie at the Palace of Versailles. Wolfgang suitably impressed the royal couple as well as the King’s influential mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Before leaving Paris on the 10th of April 1764, some of Wolfgang’s compositions were published for the first time, two pairs of keyboard and violin sonatas, K. 6-7, and K. 8-9. Then it was on

to London, a city which had developed a great culture of concert performances during the long residence there from 1712 until his death in 1759 of George Frideric Handel, one of the greatest European composers of the first half of the eighteenth century. King George III and Queen Charlotte received the Mozarts warmly on the 27th of April 1764 at Buckingham House. On the 5th of June, the two children gave a public concert attended by many of Britain’s leading aristocrats and statesmen. By now Wolfgang was writing regularly and it was while in England that he composed six sonatas

for piano and violin, one of which he dedicated to Queen Charlotte. In July 1765, after more than fifteen months in England, the Mozarts left London. Leopold was keen to head back to Salzburg, but the Dutch ambassador persuaded him to take his family to The Hague so that his countrymen could have an opportunity to hear the child prodigies they had heard so much about. Days before the scheduled concert on the 30th of September, Nannerl fell seriously ill, leaving Wolfgang to perform alone. Just as she was recovering, Wolfgang was bedridden with similar symptoms and took much longer

to recover. It was only on the 22nd of January 1766 that the children were well enough to perform together, where Wolfgang may have premiered his Symphony No. 4 in D major, composed in London, and Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, written at The Hague. After journeying through the Low Countries, they arrived in Paris in May to pick up some of the luggage they had left behind before the crossing to England. By July they were off to Switzerland, returning to Salzburg via southern Germany in November 1766. The Mozart children had been abroad for more than three

years, something which had severely interrupted any form of normal schooling beyond their musical training. To compensate Leopold home-schooled Wolfgang and Nannerl, informing them as best he could about mathematics, languages, philosophy, history and geography. Nannerl was fifteen, and of an age where her being wed was already under consideration, while Wolfgang was just shy of his eleventh birthday, and already a musician of international renown. While the young Mozart’s keyboard-playing was undisputed, rumours spread that Leopold was exaggerating his son’s skills as a composer by writing pieces himself and passing them off under Wolfgang’s name. Archbishop Siegmund decided to

put the child to the test by giving him the libretto for a sacred drama and locking him in a room for a week. Wolfgang had been writing choral music at the end of the tour and responded to the challenge by writing eighteen arias and recitatives, forming the first part of Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots or The Obligation of the First Commandment. Later that year, he wrote his first opera, the three-act Apollo et Hyacinthus. This was based on a mythical tale found in the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid. In the autumn of 1767 the Mozarts

headed once again for Vienna, where Maria Theresa’s daughter, Archduchess Maria Josepha, was set to marry King Ferdinand IV of Naples. During the preparations at the Viennese court, Maria Josepha died of smallpox in October and within weeks the disease was spreading throughout the city. The Mozarts attempted to escape the epidemic by leaving the city, but both children caught the disease nevertheless. Wolfgang’s case was severe. An account written by his father indicates that the young prodigy was so afflicted by pox marks on his skin that even his eyelids were covered and he was left temporarily blind for

nine days as he could not open his eyes. It was a lucky escape though. Mozart made a full recovery, whereas one in four who contracted the illness at this time died from it and many were left badly scarred when the pox marks receded. By July 1768, the Mozarts were back in Vienna and soon met the imperial family. Maria Theresa’s son, Joseph, who was now co-ruling with his mother as Emperor, gave Wolfgang the opportunity to compose and direct an opera. During the first half of 1769 he produced this in three acts. The work was entitled La

finta semplice, “The Fake Innocent.” Feathers were ruffled though when some of the musicians in Vienna took umbrage at being conducted by a child and many continued to believe that Leopold was actually composing his son’s work. Back in Salzburg, Leopold quickly began making preparations to take Wolfgang to Italy. For the first time, Leopold only took Wolfgang with him when they headed off in December 1769. Northern Italy was part of the Habsburg Empire, and its centre of power was in Milan, governed by the Emperor’s brother Archduke Ferdinand Karl. After crossing the Alps in winter, the two Mozarts

arrived in Milan on the 23rd of January 1770. Wolfgang was soon patronised by Count Karl Joseph von Firmian, a senior figure in the Milanese government. After Wolfgang gave a concert at the count’s palace in early March, Count Firmian commissioned him to write an opera for 100 ducats. In addition to securing a lucrative commission, the fourteen-year-old Wolfgang began commenting on the girls he saw at the ballet in a letter to Nannerl, an early indication of his future reputation as a ladies’ man. On his way to Florence, Wolfgang wrote his first string quartet, given the serial number

K. 80 in the published collections of his work, in Lodi. During the first week of April, the Mozarts stayed in Florence, where Wolfgang befriended the promising English violinist Thomas Linley, a boy three months his junior who would enjoy considerable success as a composer and performer before his untimely death at the age of twenty-two in a boating accident. Thereafter they headed for Rome in the spring of 1770, where they saw Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and had an audience with Pope Clement XIV, who bestowed the Order of the Golden Spur, a high-ranking papal honour, on Mozart. The Italian

tour continued with Wolfgang and his father heading further south to Naples, where they were invited to stay at the residence of the British ambassador, Sir William Hamilton. By the end of June the Mozarts were heading back north via Rome and Rimini, reaching Bologna on the 20th of July. Here Mozart worked on the libretto for the opera Wolfgang had been commissioned to write while in Milan in January. This was to be entitled as Mitridate, re di Ponto, meaning Mithridates, King of Pontus. It was based on a tragic play by the French dramatist, Jean Racine, which explored

the demise of King Mithridates VI of Pontus, one of the Roman Republic’s most formidable enemies. The opera was finally performed in Milan when it premiered at the Teatro Regio Ducal there on the 26th of December 1770, with Wolfgang directing from the harpsichord. It was an instant hit, playing to full houses across twenty-two performances. Thus it was that Mozart and his father headed for Venice for a relatively relaxed end to what had otherwise been a very successful tour of Italy. The Mozarts headed for home in the spring of 1771. During this last leg of their trip,

they received news that Empress Maria Theresa wished to commission Wolfgang to write an opera for the Milanese royal theatre to celebrate the marriage of her son Archduke Ferdinand Karl to an Italian princess in October. The subject of the opera would be Ascanio in Alba, following a storyline in which the goddess Venus sets up the marriage of Ascanius, son of the classical hero Aeneas, the Trojan prince who settled in Italy and became the mythical ancestor of the Romans. Keen to return home as soon as possible so Wolfgang could get to work on this, the Mozarts arrived

in Salzburg on the 28th of March 1771. By August, they were heading back to Milan, where they received the libretto, and Mozart had the two-act Ascanio, ready to rehearse by late September. The premiere on the 17th of October 1771 met with an enthusiastic reception from the newlyweds and theirs guests. Either prompted by Leopold or on his own initiative, Archduke Ferdinand Karl sought permission from his mother to hire Wolfgang as his court musician. Despite her earlier favour to the Mozarts, Maria Theresa wrote back “I do not know, nor do I believe, that you would need a

composer.” Perhaps she was simply trying to reduce expenditure in Milan, with the Habsburg state mired in a financial crisis after a series of long and costly wars between 1701 and 1763. Frustrated that no offer was forthcoming from the Archduke, the Mozarts left Milan on the 5th of December 1771. Within a day of their arrival in Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Siegmund died unexpectedly. The popular archbishop had been a supporter of young Wolfgang’s musical career since its beginning and his successor, Count Hieronymus Colloredo, the son of the imperial vice-chancellor, continued the tradition. In July 1772, Colloredo appointed Wolfgang as

konzertmeister, leading the court orchestra from the first violins, the young man’s first paid appointment at 150 florins a year. Before leaving for a third trip to Italy, Wolfgang wrote eight symphonies over the course of the year. Upon their arrival in Milan in October, Wolfgang wrote the music for the opera Lucio Silla, whose title character was the Roman Republican general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Once again Wolfgang only had a few weeks to complete the opera before its premiere on the 26th of December. Lucio Silla was given an extended run of twenty-six performances. It is worth

reminding ourselves at this point that Mozart was still just fifteen years of age at this time. Leopold Mozart once again awaited a court appointment for his son that would pay more than the allowance they were receiving in Salzburg, but left Milan disappointed. They were not long back in Salzburg before they set off again for Vienna. Leopold had received word that the kapellmeister of the imperial court was seriously ill and now Leopold sought to position Wolfgang as his successor. Yet, not only was he rebuffed by Maria Theresa, but more worryingly, Wolfgang was not invited to perform

in any aristocratic salons while in the Austrian capital, an indication perhaps that he was no longer in such demand as his status as a child prodigy was coming to an end. After two fruitless months in the capital, the Mozarts returned to Salzburg and soon moved into a larger apartment on the northern side of the river, giving Wolfgang a dedicated space to compose. In 1773 he wrote seven more symphonies, including Symphony No. 25 in G minor. One of only two Mozart symphonies in a minor key, it is characterised by melodic leaps and off-beat syncopation and is

one of his most popular symphonies. That same year, Wolfgang wrote a set of six string quartets inspired by Joseph Haydn, one of the leading Austrian composers of the age. In the summer of 1774, the Elector of Bavaria commissioned Wolfgang to write a comic opera, La finta gardiniera, meaning “The pretend garden girl.” Enticed by the prospect of Wolfgang obtaining a position at the Bavarian court, Leopold and Wolfgang went to Munich in early December, but the opera was poorly received on its premiere on the 13th of January 1775, Wolfgang’s first flop as an operatic composer. This began

one of the most difficult periods in both Wolfgang and his family’s life. Returning to Salzburg he continued to write and perform, yet there were no calls from the great courts of Europe for him to visit them over the next two years and no offers of more attractive employment. Yet they were also formative years in some respects. Up until that point Mozart had produced his earliest piano concertos by rearranging piano sonatas by other composers for piano and full orchestra. The mid-1770s saw him striking out to compose his own original piano concertos. This became the normal method

for him in the second half of the 1770s as he entered his twenties. Disaster followed, though, in 1777 when Wolfgang was essentially relieved of their positions in Salzburg as the Archbishop attempted to make budgetary cuts there. With this setback, Mozart had no option but to travel again to make money. On this occasion Leopold would have to remain in Salzburg, and the twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang had to make his own travel arrangements for the first time. His mother Anna Maria would accompany him. Leaving Salzburg on the 23rd of September, their first port of call was Munich, where the

Mozarts still retained hope for employment at Maximilian Joseph’s court. While Wolfgang was glad to be liberated from his domineering father, Leopold continued to send instructions to his wife to ensure that his son did not get side-tracked by the usual distractions that might come the way of a young man. On the 30th of September, Wolfgang intercepted Maximilian at the electoral residence to plead his case. The young composer listed his accomplishments, including three successful operas in Milan, but, despite the Mozarts knowing in advance that the elector was looking for a court composer, Maximilian Joseph simply told him

“There just isn’t any vacancy.” As a consolation prize, ten of Mozart’s wealthy admirers in Munich offered to pay sixty florins a year each, quadrupling what his konzertmeister’s salary in Salzburg had been. Nevertheless, Leopold questioned whether the ten could be trusted to keep their word and instructed his son to move on to Augsburg. Although Augsburg was intended as a stop-off on the way to the court of Elector Karl Theodor of the Palatinate in Mannheim, Mozart’s time in his father’s hometown was a memorable one. Wolfgang and his mother stayed near the household of Leopold’s brother, Franz Alois,

where he met his nineteen-year-old cousin, Maria Anna Thekla. Wolfgang’s letters to his cousin after his departure are full of bawdy rhymes and innuendos. Mozart’s biographers are split on what these might indicate about his feelings towards his cousin. While Leopold had high hopes that Karl Theodor’s renowned musical establishment would have a place for his son, they were not realised. As winter approached, Leopold urged his son to make his onward journey to Paris, but the young man was in no hurry to leave. He had fallen in love with a sixteen-year-old soprano, Aloysia Weber, the second daughter of

Fridolin Weber, a bass singer at the court theatre. Leopold was aghast when Wolfgang suggested going on tour to Italy with Herr Weber and two of his daughters. Wolfgang and his mother did not leave Mannheim until March 1778. Since Anna Maria had no desire to go to Paris, Wolfgang suggested that she should return home to Salzburg and he would continue the journey to France alone. Having been informed of this Leopold wrote back from Salzburg that it was not acceptable, being convinced that if his wife left Wolfgang alone he intended to elope to Italy with the Webers.

Instead he instructed his wife to stay with their son and they headed for Paris. Their visit to the French capital was disastrous, with little interest being displayed by the nobles there in patronizing Mozart. More seriously, their lodgings were poor and damp and Wolfgang’s mother’s health deteriorated dramatically while in the city. She eventually died on the evening of the 3rd of July 1778 at the age of fifty-seven. Wolfgang immediately wrote to Leopold claiming that she was still alive, albeit seriously ill, and it was only on the 9th, with his mother buried in a Parisian cemetery, that

he told the truth. He soon received a response from Leopold blaming him for failing to take action until it was too late and in another letter Leopold suggested that Anna Maria would still be alive if Wolfgang had not harboured ambitions to travel to Italy with the Webers. Despite blaming him for his wife’s death, on the 31st of August Leopold informed Wolfgang that he had prevailed upon Colloredo to reappoint him as konzertmeister at 500 florins a year. Wolfgang accepted, on the condition that he would be allowed to travel every two years. Mozart took his time to

return to Salzburg, stopping off in Munich in December 1778. Much had changed since his last visit. The childless Elector Maximilian III had died the previous December and was succeeded by his cousin, Karl Theodor, Elector Palatine, who took his musical establishment to Bavaria. Aloysia Weber was quickly establishing herself as a singer at the Bavarian court and Mozart was keen to see her again, perhaps even to propose marriage. After his arrival in Munich, he proceeded to write a letter full of innuendo asking his cousin Maria Anna to join him. When Mozart called on the Webers, he had

with him a new aria he had written for Aloysia, but she claimed that she didn’t know who he was. According to Aloysia’s sister Constanze, following the rejection Mozart walked over to the piano and sang, quote, “Let the wench who doesn’t want me kiss my ass,” before showing himself out. Despite this display of nonchalance, Mozart admitted to his father in a letter that he was heartbroken and unable to write any good music, but that at least he had his cousin around to comfort him. On the 15th of January 1779, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart returned home to Salzburg,

just shy of his twenty-third birthday. His youthful fame as a child prodigy in Vienna and across Europe was far behind him, as was any thought of returning to Italy. During this latest absence from home, he had not only lost his mother and been rejected by his love interest, but failed utterly in achieving the original goal of the trip. Instead of gaining a highly paid position at one of Europe’s leading courts, he would recommence his position as konzertmeister for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. To add insult to injury, the salary would be 450 florins, not even the

500 florins promised to his father the previous summer. His better-known compositions over the next two years included his Coronation Mass in C major, so-called because the music was later frequently performed at imperial coronations in the Habsburg Empire, while Sinfonia concertante in E flat major for Violin and Viola, was the closest any renowned composer has got to writing a solo concerto for the viola, Mozart’s favourite instrument, combining the melodiousness of the violin and the richness of the cello. In 1780, Mozart received a commission from Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria to write the opera Idomeneo, re de

Creta, set in the court of King Idomeneus of Crete after the fabled Trojan War. Delighted to have the opportunity to leave Salzburg, Mozart arrived in Munich in early November and spent the next few weeks writing music and leading rehearsals. On the 29th of January 1781, Idomeneo premiered at the court theatre in Munich, with Leopold and Nannerl in attendance. Unlike the last time he wrote an opera for Munich, Idomeneo was a great success, and is the earliest of Mozart’s operas to be included in the modern-day operatic repertoire. Mozart was soon on the move again, this time

to Vienna. Empress Maria Theresa had died in late 1780, and Archbishop Colloredo was preparing to go to the capital to attend to the full accession of her son, Emperor Joseph. On the 16th of March 1781, Mozart arrived in Vienna, where he would spend the next decade. It would be the greatest decade of his life and career. It would also be the last. Upon his arrival in Vienna, Mozart resented the fact that he was living in the same building as Colloredo and that he had to sit below the valets at lunch. When he wrote to his

father complaining about how the archbishop was treating him, Leopold urged his son to refrain from badmouthing their employer. Mozart took no notice and instead called to dine at various aristocratic houses without permission. During an ill-tempered meeting on the 9th of May, Mozart informed Colloredo that he would resign his position as konzertmeister of Salzburg. When Leopold learned of this he expressed outrage. In Vienna itself, in an attempt to dissuade Mozart from quitting, Count Karl von Arco, the archbishop’s steward, told Mozart that his position at the Habsburg court would not last and that, quote, “after a few

months the Viennese will want something new.” When Mozart stood his ground and went to present his letter of resignation to the archbishop in early June, Count Arco refused to admit him and instead dismissed the troublesome composer. After being thrown out of the archbishop’s residence, Mozart went straight to stay with the Webers, into whose good graces Mozart had returned now that he was in fashion again at the Habsburg court. Herr Fridolin Weber had died suddenly, and his family moved to Vienna where Aloysia became a renowned soprano and married the actor Joseph Lange. With Aloysia taken, Mozart

turned his attention towards her younger sister Constanze, then nineteen years old. He soon received a commission from the imperial court to write an opera for the anticipated visit of Grand Duke Paul of Russia, the son and heir of Empress Catherine the Great. The opera’s title was to be Die Entführung aus dem Serail, “The Abduction for Seraglio,” in which the hero tenor seeks to rescue his beloved soprano from the harem of a Turkish pasha. As the Russian grand duke’s visit was postponed, the opera was not staged until the 16th of July 1782 at the Imperial Burgtheater.

The opera established Mozart’s reputation as a composer throughout Europe and enabled him to pocket a handy 1,200 florins. Mozart had a harder job persuading his father to allow him to marry Constanze. The man appointed to look after the Webers’ financial interests also had his concerns and forced Mozart to sign a pre-nuptial contract promising to pay 300 florins if he reneged on the engagement. Leopold had found out about this and was outraged, but Wolfgang claimed that Constanze tore up the agreement in a demonstration of her trust. In fact, the engagement was broken off on several occasions

but the couple reconciled. During the summer of 1782, after her mother withdrew her consent, Constanze went to stay with a friend. When Frau Weber threatened to call the police to get her daughter to return home, the desperate couple decided to get married on the 4th of August at St Stephen’s Cathedral in the city centre. Although Leopold accepted the inevitable, he continued to believe that Constanze had married his son for money. Wolfgang responded by defending his and his wife’s reputation and promised to visit Salzburg and bring Constanze along to meet her father-in-law. In the months following

his marriage, Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 35 in D major. The composition was based on a serenade hastily written that summer for the Haffner family, one of the most prominent in Salzburg. One of his most accomplished symphonies, with a fiery opening movement, the “Haffner” premiered at the Burgtheater on the 23rd of March with Mozart conducting. At the same concert, Mozart played his Piano Concerto No. 13, the latest in a series of three piano concertos he had written during the winter. Mozart realised that he attracted larger audiences if he gave concerts by playing his piano concertos

and conducting his orchestral works. Despite his promise to visit his father in Salzburg, Mozart was in no hurry to leave Vienna and offered a series of increasingly ludicrous excuses. Constanze was pregnant, winter was soon upon them, he was very busy, and finally, the fear that he would be arrested by Archbishop Colloredo upon setting foot in his native city. On the 17th of June 1783, Constanze gave birth to a son named Raimund Leopold. In his letters to Leopold, Mozart continued to express his fears about being arrested in Salzburg until he eventually gave in. Leaving their newborn

child with a foster mother, the couple left Vienna and arrived in Salzburg on the 29th of July. Neither Leopold nor Nannerl had given their blessing to the marriage, and Constanze was hurt that she was unable to obtain the acceptance of her in-laws. Less than a month after their arrival, the family received the news that the baby Raimund Leopold died on the 19th of August, but even this tragedy failed to bring the family together. A musical highlight of Mozart’s visit to his hometown was the premiere of his Great Mass in C minor, on the 26th of

October 1783, with Constanze singing the first soprano part. Although Mozart did not have the time to finish the mass, which remained incomplete upon his death, the four complete movements stunned the audience. The following day, Wolfgang and Constanze left Salzburg to return to Vienna. During their return journey, they stopped off in Linz, where Mozart was scheduled to give a concert on the 4th of November. Having forgotten to bring a symphony with him, he decided to write a new one in the four days before the concert. The lively Symphony No. 36 in C major, known as the

“Linz,” remains a firm favourite to this day. In early 1784, Mozart and Constanze moved into the Trattnerhof, a large apartment building on the Graben Square which happened to boast a large concert hall. Rather than rent out one of the imperial theatres, which could be prohibitively expensive, Mozart decided that he would give concerts at the Trattnerhof. To maintain the novelty factor, he decided to write a new piano concerto for each performance. As a result, between 1784 and 1786, he composed piano concertos Nos. 14 to 25, a set of twelve works that remain highly acclaimed. In particular,

his Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, with a majestic and expansive opening movement that bears similarities to his yet-to-be-written Symphony No. 41, is considered one of the greatest ever written. This was, along with Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, the greatest of Mozart’s works from the mid-1780s. In contrast to the anxiety and tragedy of the previous year, 1784 was becoming one of the most successful years in Mozart’s career, and he was now making 4,000 florins a year. That September, Constanze gave birth to a second son, Karl Thomas, who would survive into adulthood. Soon

afterwards, the family moved into a large apartment near St Stephen’s Cathedral, now the Vienna Mozarthaus museum. Despite his increased income, the rent of 460 florins a month, coupled with the desire to keep up with the latest aristocratic fashions, drove Mozart into debt. To further his aristocratic networking, he joined the Freemasons, a typical pursuit for socially ambitious men of the eighteenth century, and was admitted to the “Beneficence” Lodge in late 1784 and quickly made it to the rank of Master Mason. Mozart was keen for his father to see how he was living in Vienna and that

he had finally lived up to his potential. Therefore he extended frequent invitations to Leopold to visit him and Constanze in Vienna. Although Leopold refused to do so on several occasions, after Nannerl married and left Salzburg in August 1784, the lonely father decided to accept the invitation in February 1785. While Leopold complained that the schedule was too busy and he had little time to rest, Constanze ensured that her mother and sister treated him comfortably and fed him well, and Leopold was also delighted to spend time with his grandson Karl. With Leopold and Constanze soon on good

terms, Mozart was also keen to show his father the extent of his professional success. Leopold wrote to Nannerl about being overwhelmed when great aristocrats came to him after concerts to congratulate him on his son’s success, and that Emperor Joseph himself had once called out “Bravo, Mozart!” During Leopold’s stay in Vienna, Joseph Haydn called at Mozart’s apartment. The fifty-three-year-old Haydn was regarded as the greatest composer of the age, famed for his symphonies and string quartets. As kapellmeister at the court of the Hungarian Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, he spent much of his time at the Schloss Eszterháza in

Hungary around 90 kilometres from Vienna. Although the Haydn family were no strangers to the Mozarts as Joseph’s younger brother, Michael Haydn, was the long-serving kapellmeister in Salzburg since 1762, Mozart and Joseph Haydn seem to have only first met around 1784. The older man was impressed with Mozart’s abilities as a composer and a musician and visited Mozart’s apartment to play string quartets with friends. In late 1781, Haydn wrote a set of six string quartets, Opus 33, for the visit of Grand Duke Paul of Russia. Between 1782 and 1785, Mozart wrote six string quartets, Nos. 14-19, which

appear to be influenced by Haydn’s set and were later dedicated to him. After Leopold heard Mozart and Haydn play the last three of these quartets, the latter told Leopold “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.” By the time Leopold bid farewell to his son and daughter-in-law on the 25th of April, he could be proud that Wolfgang had married well and was finally gaining the success which his position as a child prodigy had once augured. Soon after Leopold

departed from Vienna, Mozart was introduced to Lorenzo da Ponte, an Italian in his mid-thirties who had lived a colourful life in Venice as a priest and frequenter of brothels before being banished from the city for his lewd conduct. He arrived in Vienna in 1784 and soon began to write librettos for Antonio Salieri, a fellow Venetian and composer. This partnership was not a success and da Ponte soon invited Mozart to work with him. The relationship between a composer and a librettist at the time was that the librettist would write the text and lyrics for an extended

opera, while the composer, Mozart in this case, wrote the musical compositions. Early on in their collaboration Mozart asked Da Ponte if he could write a libretto based on Pierre de Beaumarchais’ 1784 comedy The Marriage of Figaro. Set in the palace of Count Almaviva in Spain, the opera takes place on the wedding day of Figaro, the Count’s head servant, and Susanna, Countess Rosina’s maid. In Act 1, after learning of the Count’s desire to exercise his droit de seigneur, to spend the first night of the marriage with Susanna, an indignant Figaro resolves to make a fool of

the count in the aria “Se vuol ballare, Signor Contino” (“If you would like to dance, Sir Count”). In the meantime, learning of her husband’s plans, the Countess laments “Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro,” (“Grant, love, some comfort,”) and joins Figaro and Susanna in devising various schemes to subvert the Count’s intentions. The plot succeeds after Susanna and the Countess change into each other’s clothes at night, forcing the Count to plead for forgiveness. This initial ruse does not end the Count’s scheming and efforts to get Susanna for himself in some way. As the opera goes on, in his attempt

to delay Figaro and Susanna’s wedding, the Count seizes upon information provided by Dr Bartolo of Seville and his housekeeper Marcellina that Figaro had earlier promised to marry Marcellina. The Count thus plots to make Figaro honour his promise. Following a legal ruling that he must marry Marcellina, Figaro says he cannot get married without permission from his parents, and he doesn’t know who his parents are because he was abducted as a child. After Figaro offers more details, Marcellina comes to the realisation that he is actually her son whom she knew as Rafaello in his youth before he

was abducted. Susanna arrives on the scene only to see Figaro embracing Marcellina as his mother. Now, with the threat that Figaro will be forced to marry Marcellina having abated, the last obstacle to Figaro marrying Susanna is lifted and the Count’s plans are foiled completely. The Marriage of Figaro was first performed at the Burgtheater on the 1st of May 1786. Despite the subversive plot, with its thinly veiled criticisms of the aristocracy, da Ponte prevailed upon the emperor to allow the performance to go ahead. Whether they knew they were being mocked or not, the great and the

good of Vienna loved the comedy, which was performed on almost forty occasions over the next five years. Figaro was also enthusiastically received in Prague, where Mozart went in early 1787 for the premiere of his Symphony No. 38, K. 504, also known as his “Prague” Symphony. It is one of Mozart’s masterpieces and is often considered one of, if not the greatest operas of all time. With the success of Figaro, the Estates Theatre in Prague duly commissioned Mozart and da Ponte to write another opera. This time, da Ponte chose the subject of Don Giovanni and his amorous

conquests. Although categorised as a comic opera, the two-act spectacle is a particularly dark comedy. Early in the opera, Giovanni attempts to seduce Donna Anna, in the garden of her father, the Commendatore. When the Commendatore intervenes, Giovanni kills him. Escaping from the scene of the crime, he runs into a former lover, Donna Elvira, who curses him for leaving her. Giovanni’s servant Leporello tells Elvira that his master is a scoundrel and not worth her time, and in a crowd-pleasing aria invites her to read the list of conquests his master has made all over Europe: 640 in Italy,

231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey, but in Spain… one – thousand – and – three! Thereafter Giovanni continues his philandering. In Act 2, as Giovanni and Leporello walk past the statue of the Commendatore, the statue comes to life and warns Giovanni that he would not survive the day. Undeterred, Giovanni invites him to dinner. That evening, with Leporello cowering in fear, Giovanni opens the door to the ghostly figure of the Commendatore. Giovanni is struck down but still refuses to repent for his sins, upon which he is dragged down into Hell. Don Giovanni opened

in Prague on the 29th of October 1787. Although Mozart had written the overture with minutes to spare and the orchestra had to play it by sight without having rehearsed, it was another magnificent triumph for Mozart and da Ponte. However, when it was performed in Vienna in April 1788 the critics praised the music but complained that the arias were too difficult to sing and that the opera was too heavy. Nevertheless, Giovanni seems to have made Mozart more money than Figaro. Don Giovanni’s premiere in Prague was just one of several highlights of the year 1787 for Mozart.

In April, the sixteen-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven arrived in Vienna hoping to study under Mozart. It is not clear if Mozart met the young Beethoven and heard him play, but the latter’s trip was cut short after two weeks to return home to his ailing mother. During the summer, Mozart wrote his Serenade for Strings No. 13, a three-movement piece better known as Eine kleine Nachtmusik or “A little night music,” perhaps his best-known composition. In December, following the death of imperial kapellmeister Christoph Willibald von Gluck, Mozart was appointed imperial composer, a part-time job requiring him to compose no

more than a few dances a year for 800 florins. However, the year was also marred by the death of Leopold Mozart in May at the age of sixty-seven. This must have aroused conflicting emotions in Wolfgang. Like any child prodigy taught by a father, Leopold had played a major part in making Wolfgang into the composer he became, yet their relationship was not an easy one over the years and it had left Wolfgang with many psychological scars. The sorrow of Leopold’s passing was compounded in the middle of 1788 when Wolfgang and Constanze lost another child, this time

a daughter who was only six months old. Casting his personal distress aside, Mozart wrote a set of three symphonies, Nos. 39-41, his greatest and final contributions to the symphonic form. Symphony No. 40 in G minor, sometimes called his Great G minor symphony to distinguish it from No. 25 in the same key, opens with one of the catchiest themes in the history of classical music, its popularity both enhanced and debased by its use as a mobile phone ringtone in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Symphony No. 41 is a far grander affair, the most ambitious symphony

written to date, and its scale earned it the nickname “Jupiter.” Mozart composed these symphonies soon after Austria joined Russia’s war against the Ottomans in the Balkans in February 1788, which led to a decline in earnings as Austrian aristocrats went off to serve as officers in the army. Increasingly indebted, in the spring of 1789 Mozart planned a tour to Berlin, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig, leaving the again pregnant Constanze behind. When Mozart returned to Vienna on the 4th of June 1789 with little to show for his efforts in terms of money, Constanze was seriously ill and had

to seek treatment at the spa in nearby Baden, where she would return on several occasions. When Constanze gave birth in November, it was to a daughter who lived for less than one hour. In late 1789 Mozart was working on his third and final collaboration with da Ponte, Così fan tutte, literally meaning “So do they all.” It premiered in January 1790. Less well-regarded than Giovanni or Figaro, it nevertheless proved popular at the time, but its run was cut short by the death of Emperor Joseph II on the 20th of February 1790. Later that year, in an

effort to maintain his imperial patronage, Mozart travelled to Frankfurt for the coronation of the new emperor, Leopold II. Although Mozart performed his Piano Concerto No. 26, known as the “Coronation” Concerto in October, he was not successful in retaining his position at court. During his absence, Constanze went a long way to improving the family finances by negotiating a new loan at 5% interest and moving to a smaller apartment. Around this time, Mozart and Haydn were invited to tour together in London. While Haydn accepted, Mozart decided to stay behind as Constanze was pregnant yet again. He would

never see Haydn again. On a slightly sounder financial footing, Mozart began 1791 by writing his Piano Concerto No. 27, which he premiered in March. On the 9th of May he was appointed as assistant kapellmeister at St Stephen’s Cathedral, with the promise that he would become kapellmeister on a salary of 2,000 florins a year upon the incumbent’s death. Mozart’s acquaintance and fellow Freemason, Emanuel Schikaneder, also asked him around this time to write the music for a fantastical opera based on Masonic ideals to a German libretto he wrote under the title Die Zauberflöte, or The Magic Flute.

While working on the opera, Mozart was visited by a masked stranger who brought a commission for a Requiem Mass without any further details. Mozart soon realised that the man who commissioned him must have been Count Franz Walsegg, a fellow Mason who was known in musical circles to commission works by talented composers and pass them off as his own. Walsegg’s wife had died in February, and the Mass would be sung in her memory. Knowing that Walsegg paid generously for these ghost-written compositions, Mozart was happy to accept the commission, despite the duplicity. With two major projects underway,

Mozart received a third in July, this time from Prague. He was to write an opera for the installation of Emperor Leopold as King of Bohemia in September. The opera was to be called La Clemenza di Tito, with a plot revolving around the Roman Emperor Titus’ magnanimity towards the enemies who attempted to overthrow him. While Mozart was busily juggling three projects, Constanze returned home and gave birth to a sixth child on the 26th of July, Franz Xaver Wolfgang. When Mozart went to Prague to oversee the completion of his coronation opera, Constanze decided to accompany him. La

Clemenza di Tito, was performed in Prague on the 6th of September, the same day as Leopold’s coronation, with the emperor and empress as guests of honour. Although it subsequently gained in popularity, La Clemenza was not an instant success. The mystical Magic Flute, staged for the first time in Vienna on the 30th of September, played to full houses for weeks and remains one of Mozart’s most popular works. The Magic Flute would be one of Mozart’s last works of any kind. His intense work schedule throughout the 1780s had left him exhausted and ill. During the autumn of

1791, as his health declined even further, he even became suspicious that he was being poisoned, such was his declining health, making reference to Aqua Tofana, a fabled poison that was allegedly used by a ring of female assassins in Italy in the mid-seventeenth century and which contained ingredients like arsenic and belladonna. These statements of Mozart’s later inspired the rumour that he had been poisoned by the composer, Antonio Salieri, a rival for patronage at the Habsburg court. It would later form the basis of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin’s drama Mozart and Salieri, which in turn inspired Peter

Schaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus, adapted for the silver screen in 1984. In November Mozart’s condition deteriorated rapidly and he was confined to bed, where he continued to try and work by dictating musical notation to his assistant. By early December his condition was critical and an hour past midnight, on the 5th of December 1791, two months shy of his thirty-sixth birthday, Mozart died. He was buried two days later at St Marx’s Cemetery in Vienna in a very limited ceremony. Exactly what he died from has been widely debated, with some studies suggesting that he had a number of

health issues, notably bouts of tonsillitis throughout his life, ones which eventually led to a potential combination of renal failure, cerebral haemorrhage and pneumonia. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is universally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the Western classical tradition. Tutored from infancy by his father Leopold, Mozart had shown great promise from a young age, touring Europe as a child prodigy, but the road to stardom was by no means a straightforward one. Despite some well-received early operas in Italy, he failed on numerous occasions to obtain employment and had to resort to accepting a position in his

hated native Salzburg. It was only after Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781 that he established himself as the greatest musician of the day, though the composition of works such as the Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute, as well as a number of immensely well-received piano concertos and symphonies. As a result of all of these he is often regarded as second only to Beethoven in the canon of classical music. And yet there was a tragic element to his life, losing most of his children in infancy and struggling to find recognition and success as an adult

composer, although some of his financial woes were clearly self-inflicted through his overly grand lifestyle when the money was coming in. Ultimately he died far too young and no doubt left many great works unwritten when we consider that he was only entering the prime of his work as a composer in the 1780s and early 1790s before his death. What do you think of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Was he the greatest composer in history, or does his music lack the emotional depth of later composers such as Beethoven? Would he have eclipsed Beethoven if he had lived a much

longer life? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.