Historical Figure
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
d. 1791
Composer (1756–1791)
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Biography
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a Classical composer and musician. In his brief life, he completed more than 800 works including outstanding examples of most of the genres of his time: symphonies, concertos, chamber music, opera, and choral music.
Timeline
The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, told in moments.
The Mozart family begins a grand tour of Europe. Wolfgang is seven. He performs for Louis XV at Versailles, George III in London, Maria Theresa in Vienna. His father advertises him as a prodigy, sometimes shaving a year off his age for effect.
Visits Rome during Holy Week and hears Allegri's Miserere in the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican forbids anyone from copying the score. Mozart walks out and writes the entire piece from memory. He is 14.
His mother Anna Maria dies in Paris while accompanying him on a job-hunting trip. He is 22 and alone in a foreign city. He writes his father a letter saying she is 'very ill' before working up the courage to tell the truth.
Breaks from his patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, after years of humiliation. The archbishop's steward literally kicks him out the door. Mozart stays in Vienna as a freelancer. No steady salary, no safety net. It's the most productive period of his life.
Joins the Freemasons in Vienna. Lodge Zur Wohlthatigkeit. Freemasonry influences The Magic Flute seven years later. Trials, enlightenment, the journey from darkness to light. The symbols are everywhere in the opera.
The Marriage of Figaro premieres in Vienna. A comedy about servants outsmarting their masters. The Viennese audience demands so many encores that the emperor issues an order limiting them. In Prague, the opera is a sensation. Mozart writes to his father: "Here they talk about nothing but Figaro."
Don Giovanni premieres in Prague. Mozart conducts. The overture, according to legend, is written the night before. His wife Constanze keeps him awake with punch and fairy tales while he composes it.
The Magic Flute premieres in Vienna. Mozart conducts from the keyboard. He is visibly ill. The opera is a popular triumph, but Mozart has less than ten weeks to live. He is simultaneously working on his Requiem, commissioned by a stranger who refuses to reveal who hired him.
Dies in Vienna shortly after midnight. He is 35. The cause is still debated: rheumatic fever, kidney disease, mercury poisoning, or trichinosis from undercooked pork chops. The Requiem is unfinished. His student Franz Xaver Sussmayr completes it. He is buried in a common grave at St. Marx Cemetery, as was customary for the Viennese middle class. The exact location is unknown.
Amadeus wins the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film depicts Mozart as a vulgar genius and Salieri as his jealous rival. The real Salieri was a respected colleague. The rivalry is mostly fiction. The movie makes Mozart a household name for a generation that doesn't read liner notes.
In Their Own Words (18)
A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place.
Letter to Leopold Mozart (11 September 1778), from Wolfgang Amadé Mozart by Georg Knepler (1991), trans. J. Bradford Robinson [Cambridge University Press, 1994, ], p. 12., 1991
All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.
Letter as published in The Letters of Mozart & His Family (1938) translated and edited by Emily Anderson, p. 1114., 1938
"Will mich Deutschland, mein geliebtes Vaterland, worauf ich (wie Sie wissen) stolz bin, nicht aufnehmen, so muß in Gottes Namen Frankreich oder England wieder um einen geschickten Deutschen mehr reich werden,- und das zur Schande der deutschen Nation."
If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German; — and to the shame of the German nation., 1906
It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.
Spoken in Prague, 1787, to conductor Kucharz, who led the rehearsals for Don Giovanni, from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)., 1906
My fatherland has always the first claim on me.
Letter to Leopold Mozart (24 November 1781), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)., 1906
Artifacts (15)
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