Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a Classical composer and musician. He completed more than 800 works in his life—including outstanding examples of most of the genres of his time: symphonies, concertos, chamber music, opera, and choral music—and is regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
Born in Salzburg, Mozart quickly emerged as a child prodigy under the training of his father Leopold, a skilled pedagogue. At the age of five he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and had performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17 he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. A fruitless journey in search of employment (1777–1779) led him to Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and eventually back to Salzburg. During this time he wrote his five violin concertos, the Sinfonia Concertante, various masses, and the opera Idomeneo.
While he was visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart's quarrels with his Salzburg employers came to a head and he was dismissed. He chose to remain in Vienna, where he stayed for the rest of his life, achieving fame and some financial success, but no long-term security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna he produced several notable works, such as the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the Great Mass in C minor, the "Haydn" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years Mozart composed more than a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements.
In the final years of his life, he wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the Jupiter, the serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik, his Clarinet Concerto, the operas Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte, the Piano Concerto No. 27 and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at the age of 35.
Life and career
The sources
Modern scholars rely on various source materials in writing Mozart's biography. First, there are about 1500 pages of family letters, often vivid and entertaining, mostly written when travel separated Mozart from his kin. There are also early biographies, written with input from Mozart's sister Nannerl, his wife Constanze, and others who knew him well. Old documents, such as newspaper stories and government records, have been located in libraries and archives, annotated, and published. Lastly, the composer's surviving manuscripts shed light on the history and dating of his compositions: there are sketches, drafts, dated autographs of completed works, and Mozart's personal catalog.
Mozart biographers all work from these same sources, but they often disagree on crucial points. The disagreements arise in part from the need to judge how much to believe a source who had strong motivation to diverge from the truth. A source once widely used but now judged untruthful is the publisher Friedrich Rochlitz, who sought to increase posthumous sales of Mozart's works by publishing false, vivid stories about him. A trend across time, noted in Stafford (2003), is for biographers to be less credulous (e.g., in believing Rochlitz), less sentimental, and more sensitive to information about Mozart's own society and times.
Early life
Family and childhood
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, née Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastical principality within the Holy Roman Empire, located in what is now Austria. He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed "Nannerl". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart" as an adult, but his name had many variants.
Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a successful violin textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.
When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:
He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. ... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier. ... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. ... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.
These early pieces, K. 1–5, were recorded in the Nannerl Notenbuch.
Leopold was their only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. While Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught: his first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his own initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident. Leopold dubbed Wolfgang "the miracle whom God allowed to be born in Salzburg."
1762–1773: Travel
While Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, and again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by Leopold.
The family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767, where both Wolfgang and Nannerl caught smallpox during an outbreak, though they quickly recovered. They remained there until December 1768.
After one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Mysliveček and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. According to a letter Leopold wrote home to Salzburg, while in Rome Wolfgang heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. He subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the "first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican". The details of this account are, however, disputed.
In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August–December 1771; October 1772 – March 1773) for the composition and premieres of Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ "useless people", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised.
Most of the music Mozart wrote at this early stage of his career is little known today, but there is one exception: toward the end of the last Italian journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet Exsultate, jubilate, K.165 for the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini; this work is a favourite for performance by sopranos today.
1773–1777: Employment at the Salzburg court
After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, concertos, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas.
An important part of Mozart's output at this time was violin concertos: he wrote one in 1773 and four more in 1775. These are the only violin concertos he ever wrote, and through the series they increase in their musical sophistication. The last three—K. 216, K. 218, K. 219—are staples of the modern repertoire.
In 1776 he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E♭ concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.
Despite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.
Two long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6 December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera La finta giardiniera.
1777–1778: Journey to Paris
In August 1777 Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, this time accompanied by his mother, with visits to Munich, Augsburg, Mannheim, and Paris.
The first stop, in Munich, proved to offer Mozart no sort of permanent position, and the mother and son moved on to Augsburg on 11 October. This was the city where Leopold had grown up, and still living there was Mozart's uncle Franz Aloys Mozart and his daughter, Mozart's first cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart. She and Mozart engaged in what Abert calls a "charming and innocent flirtation" and Solomon treats as a more serious and more sexual encounter. After Mozart departed Augsburg, the two exchanged letters, of which Mozart's have survived. These are mostly devoid of news and consistently silly. They contain some veiled sexual references, but mostly are scatological, with frequent mentions of what is translated in English as "muck". The letters have astonished, and sometimes dismayed, modern readers. While some scholars suggest some sort of mental disorder on the basis of Mozart's letters, others have noted the greater prevalence of scatological humour in Mozart's place and time, including among his own family members; see Mozart and scatology.
Mozart and his mother reached Mannheim on 30 October. There, Mozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3 July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor—probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'Épinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin.
While Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.
Among the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the Piano Sonata No. 8, K. 310/300d, the Symphony No. 31 (Paris), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.
In February 2026, a 44-page manuscript by Mozart was discovered at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the institution with the second-largest collection of Mozart's mmanuscripts. The manuscript contains composition exercises and seven pieces for flute and harp, probably in relation to Mozart's lessons to Marie-Louise-Philippine (1759–1796), daughter of Adrien-Louis de Bonnières. The pieces were premiered on 21 June and excerpts were broadcast the next day.
Vienna
1781: Departure
In January 1781 Mozart's opera Idomeneo premiered with "considerable success" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:
My main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.
Mozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.
In the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the Tonkünstler-Societät, a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.
Colloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.
The quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally "with a kick in the arse", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.
The quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to reconcile with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a "revolutionary step" that significantly altered the course of his life.
Early years
Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe", and established Mozart's reputation as a composer.
Marriage and children
Near the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet. Mozart had previously wooed the second daughter of the family, Aloysia Weber, who was now a successful singer in Vienna, married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange. Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter, Constanze. As his interest became clear, Constanze's mother Cäcilia insisted that Mozart move out in the interest of propriety.
Mozart's courtship of Constanze did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that the couple briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy: Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game. Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father.
The marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. A letter from Mozart to Leopold from 31 July 1782 has been interpreted as suggesting that Constanze had moved in with him, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote, "All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question." Heartz relates, "Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment]." On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldstätten, asking, "Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today." The couple were finally married on 4 August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail.
The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:
Raimund Leopold (17 June – 19 August 1783)
Karl Thomas Mozart (21 September 1784 – 31 October 1858)
Johann Thomas Leopold (18 October – 15 November 1786)
Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friedericke Maria Anna (27 December 1787 – 29 June 1788)
Anna Maria (died soon after birth, 16 November 1789)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844)
Eisen judges that the marriage was basically happy, based in part on Mozart's letters to Constanze, which are generally very affectionate, often funny, and occasionally erotic. There is one letter that suggests the family's precarious finances may have been a source of matrimonial tension. In a letter she wrote in old age Constanze described her marriage to Mozart as having been "completely happy".
1782–1785
In 1782 and 1783 Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte.