Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (, English see fn.
, Wolfgang, and Nannerl. Watercolor by Carmontelle, ca. 1763
The quarrel with the archbishop went harder for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Leopold exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Wolfgang 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 his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a "revolutionary step", and it greatly altered the course of his life. He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved a huge success. The work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe", and fully established Mozart's reputation as a composer.
Near the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.
The couple had six children, of which 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, 25 December 1789)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844)
In the course of 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 Baroque style, and later influenced his personal musical language, for example in fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute") and the finale of Symphony No. 41.
With substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, he and Constanze adopted a rather plush lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school, Although it has been thought that Mozart reduced his rental expenses, recent research shows that by moving to the suburb Mozart had certainly not reduced his expenses (as claimed in his letter to Puchberg), but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg, and made a start on paying off his debts.
He experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably The Magic Flute (performed many times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death)
Appearance and character
Mozart's physical appearance was described by tenor
Michael Kelly, in his
Reminiscences: "a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain". As his early biographer Niemetschek wrote, "there was nothing special about [his] physique. [...] He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius." His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his
childhood case of smallpox. He loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: "[He] was on the stage with his crimson
pelisse and gold-laced
cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra." Of his voice Constanze later wrote that it "was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic".
Mozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's these are mostly not preserved, as Constanze sought to destroy them after his death. (See: Mozart's compositional method.) He was raised a Roman Catholic and remained a member of the Church throughout his life. (See Mozart and Roman Catholicism.)
Mozart lived at the center of the Viennese musical world, and knew a great number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with the Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his older colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a curious kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.
He enjoyed billiards and dancing (see Mozart and dance), and kept pets: a canary, a starling, a dog, and also a horse for recreational riding. He had a fondness for scatological humor, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, but also in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart even wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. See: Mozart and scatology.
Works, musical style, and innovations
Style
" (K. 626) in Mozart's own handwriting. It is located at the
Mozarthaus in Vienna.]]
Mozart's music, like
Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the
style galant, a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the
Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the
contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new
forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including
symphony,
opera, the solo
concerto, chamber music including
string quartet and
string quintet, and the piano
sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularized the Classical
piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of
religious music, including large-scale
masses, but also dances,
divertimenti,
serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.
The central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, and the opera Don Giovanni. Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:
It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.
Especially during his last decade, Mozart exploited
chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time, with remarkable assurance and to great artistic effect.
Mozart always had a gift for absorbing and adapting valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his own practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.
As Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor K. 183 is another excellent example.
Mozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone color, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.
Influence
Mozart's most famous pupil, whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child, was probably
Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between Classical and Romantic eras. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of the training of classical musicians.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn, and he traveled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study the older composer. Some of Beethoven's works have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote (WoO 58) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K. 466.
A number of composers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op. 66, WoO 28, WoO 40, WoO 46). Others include Frédéric Chopin's Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni (1827) and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K. 331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote his Orchestral Suite No. 4 in G, "Mozartiana" (1887), as a tribute to Mozart.
Köchel catalogue
For unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a
Köchel catalogue number is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation "K." followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by
Ludwig von Köchel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves our knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.
See also
The Complete Mozart Edition, 180 compact discs arranged into 45 themed volumes released by Philips Classics Records in 2000.
Mozart effect
Mozart family
Mozart in fiction
Mozartkugel
Mozarteum
Mozarthaus Vienna
Notes
References
Fradkin, Robert A. (1996) The well-tempered announcer: a pronunciation guide to classical music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 025321064X.
Further reading
External links
Mozarthaus Salzburg
Salzburg Tourist Office – Salzburg City Tourist Board website.
Digitized, scanned Material (Books, Sheet music)
"Mozart" Titles; Mozart as author from archive.org
"Mozart" Titles; Mozart as author from books.google.com
Digital Mozart Edition (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum)
"Mozart" titles from Gallica
From the British Library
*Mozart's Thematic Catalogue (view with "Turning the Pages")
*Mozart's Musical Diary
*Background information on Mozart and the Thematic Catalogue
Letters of Leopold Mozart und Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Badische Landesbibliothek)
Sheet music (Scores)
Complete sheetmusic (scores) from the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum)
"Mozart" Titles from the Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ)
"Mozart" Titles from the University of Rochester
Free typeset sheet music of Mozart's works from Cantorion.org
Mozart as author from archive.org
Mozart as author from books.google.com
*
Category:Classical era composers
Category:German composers
Category:Opera composers
Category:Organ improvisers
Category:Viennese composers
Category:Austrian classical pianists
Category:Child classical musicians
Category:People from Salzburg
Category:Austrian Roman Catholics
Category:Knights of the Golden Spur
Category:1756 births
Category:1791 deaths
