Biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Despite what many individuals know about Mozart today, he excelled in instruments other than just the piano. Due to his father’s persistent teaching and influence, Mozart was able to grasp the understandings of the viola and the organ ("Wolfgang Mozart."). However, without Mozart’s father’s persistency, Mozart may have not been able to reach his full potential as a child prodigy. From early on in Wolfgang’s life he was able to compose opera’s to be performed for the entertainment of the nobility ("Wolfgang Mozart"). In the towards the end of the 1770’s Mozart started to realize that he had far more potential and

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart lived from January 27, 1756 to December 5, 1791. Mozart was a very influential and prolific composer of more than 600 works, including symphonies, concertante, chamber, piano, opera, and choral music. Regarded as a child prodigy, Mozart composed and performed in the European courts from the age of five, and was engaged at the Salzburg court at 17. Mozart’s musical style can be classified as Classical, although he learned from many of his contemporaries throughout his musical career. In order to better understand Mozart’s genius it is best to begin looking at his earliest contributions to the musical world as a child. From there, an exploration of his

Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or Wolfgang Mozart for short, was born on January 27, 1756. He was an Austrian composer that today is known as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. Mozart wrote in multiple musical genres, excelling in each one. Because of his range of expression, it made him seem the most universal of all composers.

This paper discusses Mozart's life, his compositions and his importance to the world and the world of music. It explains how Mozart's music is still some of the most popular classical music played today and his life is still studied because his music is so well known and liked.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven are two of the greatest composers ever to write music. Both men lived in the early 18th and 19th century, but their music and influences are still felt today. The men faced similar experiences, yet they both lead very different lives. All together the pieces that these men composed amounts to over 300 published, and unpublished works of art. The people of their time period often had mixed feelings about these men, some “complained that Mozart’s music presented them with too many ideas and that his melodies moved from one to the next faster than audiences could follow, yet the ideas themselves seem effortless and natural, clear and

Wolfgang’s life was profoundly impacted by the history of his time, it allowed him to compose, play and direct music and eventually live freely, ultimately setting the stage for him to create some of the best music pieces to date.

Mozart was known for having an ear that would make any musician envious. From a young age he was able to listen to any piece of music and his mind would interpret all of that data with ease. While in Rome, he listened to a performance of Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere only twice at the Sistine Chapel and was able to write it down for memory when he got home (Abert 135).

Mozart was a virtuoso on the piano. A virtuoso refers to someone who is highly skilled on his or her instrument. Mozart played keyboard and violin while his sister only played the keyboard. At the early age of 3, Mozart was showing signs of being musically gifted and began composing shortly after. Both he and his sister received intense musical training which, in turn, allowed Mozart the opportunity to grow as a musician. It became certain that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy. This meant that he had a skill that was not learned. He had a natural gift for music. Their father, Leopold began teaching his children music at a young age. Because of this, both children were destined to get far in their musical careers. Over his short life, Mozart wrote several operas. His most famous operas include; The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito. Operas and plays that are entirely sung. Each of Mozart’s operas have a story behind it. For example, The Marriage of Figaro is a comedy about a couple trying to get married but, a series of obstacles interferes with it. Because Mozart showed a talent for music at the young age of six, his father took him and his sister to play in from of a court and they caught the attention of important individuals. This resulted in a tour.

At the age of eight, he wrote a symphony and at eleven, he wrote an oratorio. Then, at the age of twelve he wrote a great opera. Mozart's father was Leopold Mozart, who happened to be a court musician. Both Mozart and Beethoven had help from their fathers in many different ways. Mozart's father helped him travel around as a young musician and he traveled many places and he seen many well-known people and aristocrats. Because of Mozart's early successes many challenges had become part of his life. He had very high expectations from the community and from his father. Unlike, Beethoven, Mozart was spoiled as a youth and because of this he refused to be treated as a servant. He completely relied on his father’s help and refused to work with the archbishop. This would become a problem later when Mozart did not develop enough initiative. Because of that he could not make decisions on his own.

Mozart was subjected to write a lavish music and set the severe time limit on mass settings but he protested doing so but was letter on obliged to observe. At the end of the year, “he was commissioned to write an opera buffa, La finta giardiniera for the Munich carnival season in 1775 where it was success”. The commissioning was done by Maximilian III and it was the first comic opera of Mozart since his childhood. The language that was used in composing the opera was in Italian but in 1780, Mozart converted it to German Singspiel Die

     Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s style unlike anyone else. Mozart was a master of counterpoint, fugue, and the other traditional compositional points of his day. He is also considered the best melody writer the world has ever known. Wolfgang perfected the grand forms of symphony, opera string quartet, and concerto made the classical period. “Mozart’s music is characterized by lucid ease and distinction of style....”2 Wolfgang wrote over 600 works which consisted of 21 stage and opera works, 15 masses, over 50 symphonies, 25 piano concertos, 12 violin concertos,27 concert arias, 17 piano sonatas, 26 string quartets, and many more. His operas range from comic baubles to tragic pieces. In his Requiem it illustrates the supreme vocal sounds in any of his work.

Whether it was writing opera’s about prohibited information, or composing in german so lower class residents understand could understand the language, Mozart never conformed. Throughout his career, Mozart continued to build on the traditional music written before him. He improved on traditional music, including some of Salieri’s marches, he exposed the unmentionable, and he moved on to writing his own unique compositions. One scenario that displayed this innovation was

Mozart was a key piece of the social part of this period in the eighteenth century. He, as a musician, encouraged in his music, to break away from composing traditional religious music, and he composed concertos inspired on his life experiences and stories. He likewise cleared routes for different writers of this time, for example, Beethoven, who made his own particular style with pieces of Mozart's work. Beethoven was also a contemporary Wunderkind and just like Mozart, he started learning about music when he was very little, and although he was not as talented as Mozart, he still wrote great pieces of music that were also based on his life experiences during that time period and his emotions.

“A prolific artist, Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart created a string of operas, concertos, symphonies and sonatas that profoundly shaped classical music,” stated from http://www.biography.com/people/wolfgang-mozart-9417115. Mozart was very famous for his around 600 works of music that he created or composed before he died. After he had died his music was featured in over 300 films or movies. Here are some popular titles of movies that his music was played in and either children or adults enjoyed to watch The Incredibles, Batman Begins, Charlies angels, Mission Impossible. He wrote music in all generes and made them grow more than they were originally.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Austrian wunderkind, was an accomplished and magnificently gifted musician. He is attributed with the composition of 22 operas in his 35-year life, but his most successful theatre work was his last. Die Zauberflöte, completed in 1791, was written specifically for the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna. The theatre housed a troupe of actors led by Emmanuel Schikaneder, a versatile actor and writer who crafted the libretto of Zauberflöte and portrayed Papageno at its premiere. Zauberflöte was written in the singspiel operatic style; the libretto is in the vernacular – German – language, spoken dialogue is interspersed with recitative and aria, and there is a folk-like strophic style in the music. Schikaneder had