1.2 Mozart in Vienna

In 1781, Mozart visited Vienna in the company of his employer, the harsh Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, and had a falling out with the Archbishop. According to Mozart's own testimony, he was dismissed with a literal kick in the seat of the pants. Mozart, who had found that the aristocracy of Vienna took some interest in him, chose to settle in the city and attempt to make his career there.

On August 4, 1782, he married Constanze Weber , against his father's wishes. He and Constanze had six children, only two of whom survived infancy (neither child, Karl Thomas [1784 - 1858] or Franz Xaver Wolfgang [1791 - 1844], married or had children).

1782 was also an auspicious year for Mozart's career; his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio was a great success, and he also began the series of concerts at which he would premiere his greatest piano concertos, performing as soloist.

As an adult, Mozart became a Freemason and worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before his death, in 1787. His late opera The Magic Flute includes Masonic themes and meanings. He was in the same masonic lodge as Joseph Haydn.

Mozart had a difficult life. Often he received no payment for his work, and what sums he did receive were consumed by an extravagant lifestyle. Gradually, his health declined, until he finally died of what is presumed to have been mercury poisoning while being treated for syphilis. There is an alternate theory that he died from trichinosis brought on by a meal of poorly cooked pork. Mozart did not complete his last work, a requiem.

In popular legend, Mozart died penniless and forgotten, buried in a pauper's grave. In fact, although he was no longer as fashionable in Vienna as he had once been, he continued to receive substantial commissions from more distant parts of Europe, Prague in particular. Many of his begging letters survive, but they are evidence not of poverty but of his ability to always spend more than he earned. He was buried in a mass grave, not due to his family's inability to pay for a proper burial, but under orders of the Emperor to combat an outbreak of the bubonic plague.

Mozart spent his final years in Vienna, where one of the apartments he lived in is still to be visited at Domgasse 5 behind St. Stephen's Cathedral. In this house Mozart composed Le nozze di Figaro in 1786. Mozart lived just a little over half of Beethoven's life span, yet was amazingly prolific musically from early childhood until his death in 1791.

In 1809, Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (1761 - 1826). A Mozart fanatic, he edited vulgar passages out of many of the composer's letters, and wrote a Mozart biography.

2 Works, musical style and innovations

Main article: Musical works of Mozart

Mozart was prolific and wrote in many genres. Perhaps his best admired work is in opera, the piano concerto, the symphony, and in the string quartet and string quintet. Mozart also wrote much work for solo piano, other forms of chamber music, masses and other religious music, and endless dances, divertimenti, and other forms of light entertainment.

3 Estimation

Major composers since Mozart's time have worshipped or been in awe of Mozart. Beethoven told his pupil Ries that he (Beethoven) would never be able to think of a melody as great as that of the first movement of Mozart's 24th piano concerto, and did Mozart homage by writing variations on his themes (such as the two sets of Variations for Cello and Piano on themes from Mozart's Magic Flute) and cadenzas to several of the piano concerti, most notably the Concerto No. 20 (K. 466). (After their only meeting, Mozart noted that Beethoven would "give the world something to talk about.") Tchaikovsky wrote his Mozartiana in praise of him; and Mahler died with "Mozart" the last word on his lips. The music critic James Svejda, when filling out a job application that asked for his religion, entered "Mozart".

4 The Köchel catalog

In the decades following Mozart's death there were several attempts to inventory his compositions, but it was only in 1862 that Ludwig von Köchel, a Viennese botanist, mineralogist, and educator, succeeded in this enterprise. Köchel's stout book of 551 pages was entitled "Chronological-Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Musical Works of WOLFGANG AMADE MOZART". Köchel is the source of the ubiquitous "K" (or KV) prefix on the numbers given to Mozart's works instead of the more usual "Opus". This was, and still is, helpful to all musicians alike. For example, Mozart wrote two Piano Concertos in Minor. We can distinguish between the two, as one is K466, and one is K491.

5 Mozart as a fictional character

Mozart is unusual among composers for the number of stories of a legendary character that have sprung up around him, for example the tale that Mozart composed his Requiem believing it was for himself. Some of these stories are probably true, but sorting out the fabrications from the real events is a vexing (and continuing) task for Mozart scholars. Dramatists and screenwriters, free from responsibilities of scholarship, have found the Mozart legends to make excellent raw material.

For example, the claimed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri is the subject of Aleksandr Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri , Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart et Salieri and Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, later made into a film. In fact, Salieri admired Mozart. Shaffer's play attracted criticism for portraying Mozart as vulgar and loutish, a description felt by many to be unfairly exaggerated (see, for instance, this link).

6 Mozart and child development

In the late 20th Century, Mozart's music found an unusual application in the emerging field of accelerated learning , also known as SALT (Suggestive-Accelerative Learning and Teaching) techniques or Superlearning. Researchers in this work, led by Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov, have asserted that listening to such music promotes enhanced learning.

7 See also

• List of compositions by Mozart, which directly links to several Wikipedia articles about separate compositions by Mozart.
• Mozartkugel , a sweet named in his honor.

8 Further reading

• Aloys Greither: Wolfgang Amade' Mozart Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1962
• Robert W. Gutman: Mozart: A Cultural Biography. Random, 2001 BooksEnthsiast.com
• H. C. Robbins Landon: 1791: Mozart's Last Year. Thames & Hudson, 1988 BooksEnthsiast.com
• Massimo Mila: Lettura delle Nozze di Figaro, Einaudi, 1979, BooksEnthsiast.com
• Stanley Sadie, ed.: Mozart and His Operas. St. Martin's, 2000 BooksEnthsiast.com
• Maynard Solomon: Mozart: a life. Harper, 1996 BooksEnthsiast.com
• Hershel Jick: A Listener's Guide to Mozart's Music Vantage, 1997 BooksEnthsiast.com

9 External links

• A collection of quotations by Mozart, from Wikiquote
• Additional source material on Mozart from Wikisource
• Autobiographical texts by Mozart (amongst which a collection of his letters), published by Gutenberg, can be downloaded here: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=1368
• Free recordings of Vesperae de Dominica by the MIT choir
• Mozart and pauses
• The Mozart Projectthe life, times and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Mozart's Scores by Mutopia Project

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

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