Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
(27 January 1756, Salzburg, Austria – 5 December 1791, Vienna, Austria)
Nationality: Austria
Category: Art Creators
Occupation: Composers
Specification: Classical music, Chamber music
Unique distinction: Mozart was one of the greatest composers of all time. At once Mozart’s music and his unique compositional language was not radical innovative, but graceful, natural, charming, and can express humour, light joy and enjoyment of the game.
Quotes:
1. Music is my life and my life is music.
2. 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.
3. The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.
4. When I am ….. completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.
5. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream.
6. My subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and define, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statute, at a glance.
7. I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
8. It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.
Video: Requiem
Achievements and contributions:
Social and professional position: One of the great figures in the history of music. He is considered a musical genius, one of the most significant and influential of all classical composers.
The main contribution to (best known for): He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music.
He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. His work influenced many composers that followed most notably Beethoven.
Contributions: Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre: chamber music, symphonies, operas, Masses. He mainly wrote Operas, Church Music, Vocal and Choral Music, Orchestral Music, Chamber Music, Piano Music and Organ Music, concert arias and scenes.
Creative style: Mozart had a unique and universal creative style, that formed on the basis of his ability to incorporate many musical elements and styles and absorb, adapt valuable features of others’ music Including the Baroque. Mozart possessed a powerful musical memory, excellent ability to improvise, holistic perception and playful attitude towards the world.
Major works: He was also a very prolific composer and composed over 600 works including 21 stages and opera works, 15 Masses, over 50 symphonies, 30 keyboard, 25 piano and 12 violin concertos, dances and sets of dances. His major works are the operas Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786), Don Giovanni, 1787 and Die Zauberflöte, (The Magic Flute, 1791); comic masterpiece the short work for orchestra Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music, 1787) and his last three church pieces: Ave Verum Corpus, 1791, Mass in C Minor, and Requiem (Both remain unfinished).
Career and personal life:
Family background: His mother – Anna Maria Pertl, and his father Leopold Mozart, who was a composer, concertmaster and an experienced teacher.
Education: Mozart Together with his older sister, Maria Anna, nicknamed “Nannerl”, received intensive musical training from his father.
Influenced by: Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, George Frideric Handel.
Career highlights: A child prodigy, Mozart at the age of three learned compositions from his father and started to play the keyboard, at age four perfected ballads, at age five he composed his first minutes, had his first piece published when he was eight and wrote his first opera when he was twelve.
Mozart mainly lived in Salzburg and Vienna and during his short life of only 35 years completed several long concert tours throughout Europe, which included stays in Paris, London, Milan, Rome and Prague. At the beginning of his musical career, he played with his father and sister for Louis XV at Versailles and George III in London.
During his trips, he met such great composers as J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel, and Joseph Haydn. He taught and gave piano lessons to make ends meet. He enjoyed dancing, joking and playing billiard. Mozart died on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35.
Personal life: On August 4, 1782, he married Constanze Weber against his father’s wishes and they had 6 children, but only two (sons) survived.
Some have speculated that Mozart was poisoned by rival composer Antonio Salieri, but no proof exists to support that theory. Mozart probably died of rheumatic fever.
