Mozart

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 and died December 5, 1791. (Solomon pg.1) He showed many musical talents at a very early age, composing when he was five and when he was six playing before the Bavarian elector and the Austrian empress. Mozart astonished his audiences with his precocious skills when he played to the French and English royal families. (www.Stringsinthemountains.org) The family arrived home late in 1766; nine months later they were off again, to Vienna, where hopes of having an opera by Mozart performed were frustrated by intrigues.
His family spent 1769 in Salzburg; 1770-73 saw three visits to Italy, where Mozart wrote two operas, Mitridate and Lucio Silla, and a serenata for performance in Milan. (Solomon pg.77) Summer 1773 he saw another visit to Vienna, probably in the hope of securing a position. When he was there Mozart wrote a set of string quartets and wrote a group of symphonies including his two earliest, nos.25 in g Minor and 29 in A. (Hutchings pg.41) The period from 1774 to mid-1777 was spent in Salzburg, where Mozart worked as Konzertmeister at the Prince- Archbishop's court; his works of these years include masses, symphonies, all his violin concertos, six piano sonatas, several serenades and divertimentos, and his first great piano concerto. (Hutchings pg.42)
In 1777 Mozart’s family, seeing limited opportunity in Salzburg for a composer so hugely gifted, resolved to seek another place for Wolfgang. He was sent, with his mother, to Munich and to Mannheim, but was offered no position, but he stayed over four months at Mannheim, composing for piano and flute and falling in love with Aloysia Weber. (Solomon pg.113) His father then dispatched him to Paris. While he was there he had minor successes, notably with his Paris Symphony, no.31, which he designed for the local taste. Prospects there were poor and his father made him come home, where a superior positi...