Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 08:09, 3 July 2006

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart; January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) was one of the greatest, most significant, and most enduringly popular composers of European classical music. He was born in Austria (See Also Austrian Musicians His enormous output includes works that are widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Many of his works are part of the standard concert repertory and are widely recognized as masterpieces of the classical style.

Life

Family and early years

Mozart was born in the back room of 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, the capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart. His only sibling who survived beyond infancy was an older sister: Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl. Mozart was baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangeus Theopheilus Mozart. Of these names, the first two refer to John Chrysostom, one of the Church Fathers, and they were names not employed in everyday life, while the fourth, meaning "beloved of God", was variously translated in Mozart's lifetime as Amadeus (Latin), Gottlieb (German), and Amadé (French). Mozart's father Leopold announced the birth of his son in a letter to the publisher Johann Jakob Lotter with the words "...the boy is called Joannes Chrysostomus, Wolfgang, Gottlieb". Mozart himself preferred the third name (see Mozart's name).

Mozart's father Leopold (1719–1787) was one of Europe's leading musical teachers. His influential textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, or "Essay on the fundamentals of violin playing", was published in 1756, the year of Mozart's birth. He was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, and a prolific and successful composer of instrumental music. Leopold gave up composing when his son's outstanding musical talents became evident. They first came to light when Wolfgang was about three years old, and Leopold, proud of Wolfgang's achievements, gave him intensive musical training, including instruction in clavier, violin, and organ. Leopold was Wolfgang's only teacher in his earliest years. A note by Leopold in Nannerl's music book – the Nannerl Notenbuch – records that little Wolfgang had learned several of the pieces at the age of four. Mozart's first compositions, a small Andante (K. 1a) and Allegro (K. 1b), were written in 1761, when he was aged five. At five or six years old, he could play the piano blindfolded and with his hands crossed over one another.

The years of travel

During his formative years, Mozart made several European journeys, beginning with an exhibition in 1762 at the Court of the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, then in the same year at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking him with his father to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London (where Wolfgang Amadeus played with the famous Italian cellist Giovanni Battista Cirri), The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip Mozart met a great number of musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other great composers. A particularly important influence was Johann Christian Bach, who befriended Mozart in London in 1764–65. Bach's work is often taken to be an inspiration for Mozart's music. They again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768. On this trip Mozart contracted smallpox, and his healing was considered by Leopold as a proof of God's intentions concerning this child.

After one year in Salzburg, three trips to Italy followed: from December 1769 to March 1771, from August to December 1771, and from October 1772 to March 1773. Mozart was commissioned to compose three operas: "Mitridate re di Ponto" (1770), "Ascanio in Alba" (1771), and "Lucio Silla" (1772), all three of which were performed in Milan. During the first of these trips, Mozart met Andrea Luchesi in Venice and G.B. Martini in Bologna, and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. A highlight of the Italian journey, now an almost legendary tale, occurred when he heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere once in performance in the Sistine Chapel then wrote it out in its entirety from memory, only returning to correct minor errors; thus producing the first illegal copy of this closely-guarded property of the Vatican.

On July 3, 1778, accompanied by his mother, Mozart began a tour of Europe that included Munich, Mannheim, and Paris. In Mannheim he became acquainted with members of the Mannheim orchestra, the best in Europe at the time. He fell in love with Aloysia Weber, who later broke up the relationship with him. He was to marry her sister Constanze some four years later In Vienna. During his unsuccessful visit to Paris, his mother died (1778).

Mozart in Vienna

In 1780, Idomeneo, widely regarded as Mozart's first great opera, premiered in Munich. The following year, he visited Vienna in the company of his employer, the harsh Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. When they returned to Salzburg, Mozart, who was then Konzertmeister, became increasingly rebellious, not wanting to follow the whims of the archbishop relating to musical affairs, and expressing these views, soon fell out of favor with him. According to Mozart's own testimony, he was dismissed – literally – "with a kick in the seat of the pants." Mozart chose to settle and develop his own freelance career in Vienna after its aristocracy began to take an interest in him.

On August 4, 1782, against his father's wishes, he married Constanze Weber (1763–1842; her name is also spelled "Costanze"); her father Fridolin was a half-brother of Carl Maria von Weber's father Franz Anton Weber. Although they had seven children, only two survived infancy. Neither of these two, Karl Thomas (1784–1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791–1844; later a minor composer himself), married or had children.

The year 1782 was an auspicious one for Mozart's career: his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio") was a great success and he began a series of concerts at which he premiered his own piano concertos as director of the ensemble and soloist.

During 1782–83, Mozart became closely acquainted with the work of J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel as a result of the influence of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of works by the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these works led first to a number of works imitating Baroque style and later had a powerful influence on his own personal musical language, for example the fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute") and in the Symphony No. 41.

In 1783, Wolfgang and Constanze visited Leopold in Salzburg, but the visit was not a success, as his father did not open his heart to Constanze. However, the visit sparked the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C Minor, which, though not completed, was premiered in Salzburg, and is now one of his best-known works. Wolfgang featured Constanze as the lead female solo voice at the premiere of the work, hoping to endear her to his father's affection.

In his early Vienna years, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn date from 1782–85, and are often judged to be his response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn was soon in awe of Mozart, and when he first heard the last three of Mozart's series he told Leopold, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste, and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition."

During the years 1782–1785, Mozart put on a series of concerts in which he appeared as soloist in his piano concertos, widely considered among his greatest works. These concerts were financially successful. After 1785 Mozart performed far less and wrote only a few concertos. Maynard Solomon conjectures that he may have suffered from hand injuries; another possibility is that the fickle public ceased to attend the concerts in the same numbers.

Mozart was influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment as an adult, and became a Freemason (1784). His lodge was a specifically Catholic, rather than a deistic one, and he worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before the latter's death in 1787. His last opera, Die Zauberflöte, includes Masonic themes and allegory. He was in the same Masonic Lodge as Haydn.

Mozart's life was occasionally fraught with financial difficulty. Though the extent of this difficulty has often been romanticized and exaggerated, he nonetheless did resort to borrowing money from close friends, some debts remaining unpaid even to his death. During the years 1784-1787 he lived in a lavish, seven-room apartment, which may be visited today at Domgasse 5, behind St Stephen's Cathedral; it was here, in 1786, that Mozart composed the opera Le nozze di Figaro.

Mozart and Prague

Mozart had a special relationship with Prague and its people. The audience here celebrated their Figaro with the much deserved reverence he was missing in his hometown Vienna. His quote "Meine Prager verstehen mich" (My Praguers understand me) became very famous in the Bohemian lands. Many tourists follow his tracks in Prague and visit the Mozart Museum of the Villa Bertramka where they can enjoy a chamber concert. In the later years of his life, Prague provided Mozart with many financial resources from commissions . In Prague, Don Giovanni premiered on October 29, 1787 at the Theatre of the Estates. Mozart wrote La clemenza di Tito for the festivities accompanying Leopold II's coronation in November 1790; Mozart obtained this commission after Antonio Salieri had allegedly rejected it.

Final illness and death

Mozart's final illness and death are difficult topics for scholarship, obscured by romantic legends and replete with conflicting theories. Scholars disagree about the course of decline in Mozart's health – particularly at what point Mozart became aware of his impending death and whether this awareness influenced his final works. The romantic view holds that Mozart declined gradually and that his outlook and compositions paralleled this decline. In opposition to this, some present-day scholarship points out correspondence from Mozart's final year indicating that he was in good cheer, as well as evidence that Mozart's death was sudden and a shock to his family and friends. Mozart's last words: "The taste of death is upon my lips...I feel something not of this earth". The actual cause of Mozart's death is also a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet-seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, mercury poisoning, and rheumatic fever. The practice, common at that time, of bleeding medical patients is also cited as a contributing cause.

Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. Some days earlier, with the onset of his illness, he had largely ceased work on his final composition, the Requiem. Legend has it that Mozart was thinking of his own impending death while writing this piece, and even that a messenger from the afterworld commissioned it. However, documentary evidence has established that the anonymous commission came from one Count Franz von Walsegg, and that most if not all of the music had been written while Mozart was still in good health. A younger composer, and Mozart's pupil at the time, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, was engaged by Constanze to complete the Requiem. However, he was not the first composer asked to finish the Requiem, as the widow had first approached another Mozart student, Joseph Eybler, who began work directly on the empty staves of Mozart's manuscript but then abandoned it.

Because he was buried in an unmarked grave, but not a mass grave, it has been popularly assumed that Mozart was penniless and forgotten when he died. In fact, though he was no longer as fashionable in Vienna as before, he continued to have a well-paid job at court and receive substantial commissions from more distant parts of Europe, Prague in particular . He earned about 10,000 florins per year, equivalent to at least 42,000 US dollars in 2006, which places him within the top 5 percent of late 18th century wage earners, but he could not manage his own wealth. His mother wrote, "When Wolfgang makes new acquaintances, he immediately wants to give his life and property to them." His impulsive largesse and spending often put him in the position of having to ask others for loans. Many of his begging letters survive but they are evidence not so much of poverty as of his habit of spending more than he earned. He was not buried in a "mass grave" but in a regular communal grave according to the 1784 laws.

Though the original grave in the St. Marx cemetery was lost, memorial gravestones (or cenotaphs) have been placed there and in the Zentralfriedhof. In 2005, new DNA testing was performed by Austria's University of Innsbruck and the US Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, to determine if a skull in an Austrian Museum was actually his, using DNA samples from the marked graves of his grandmother and Mozart's niece. However, test results were inconclusive, suggesting that none of the DNA samples were related to each other.

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

Works, musical style, and innovations

Style

Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetypal example of the Classical style. His works spanned the period during which that style transformed from one exemplified by the style galant to one that began to incorporate some of the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque, complexities against which the galant style had been a reaction. Mozart's own stylistic development closely paralleled the development of the classical style as a whole. In addition, he was a versatile composer and wrote in almost every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. While none of these genres were new, the piano concerto was almost single-handedly developed and popularized by Mozart. He also wrote a great deal of religious music, including masses; and he composed many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.

The central traits of the classical style can all be identified in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are hallmarks, though a simplistic notion of the delicacy of his music obscures for us the exceptional and even demonic power of some of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, the Symphony in G minor, K. 550, and the opera Don Giovanni. The famed writer on music Charles Rosen has written (in The Classical Style): "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 explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time. The slow introduction to the "Dissonant" Quartet, K. 465, a work that Haydn greatly admired, rapidly explodes a shallow understanding of Mozart's style as light and pleasant.

From his earliest years Mozart had a gift for imitating the music he heard; since he travelled widely, he acquired a rare collection of experiences from which to create his unique compositional language. When he went to London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music; when he went to Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna, he heard the work of composers active there, as well as the spectacular Mannheim orchestra; when he went to Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and the opera buffa, both of which were to be hugely influential on his development. Both in London and Italy, the galant style was all the rage: simple, light music, with a mania for cadencing, an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other chords, symmetrical phrases, and clearly articulated structures. This style, out of which the classical style evolved, was a reaction against the complexity of late Baroque music. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are "homotonal" (each movement in the same key, with the slow movement in the tonic minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms commonly being written by composers in Vienna.

As Mozart matured, he began to incorporate some features of Baroque styles into his music. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201 uses 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 just published his opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in German literature, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era to come, is evident in some of the music of both composers at that time.

Throughout his life Mozart switched his focus from writing instrumental music to writing operas, and back again. He wrote operas in each style current in Europe: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, or Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is probably the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he developed the use of subtle and slight changes of instrumentation, orchestration, and tone colour to express or highlight psychological or emotional states and dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted upon one another. The increasing sophistication of his use of the orchestra in his symphonies and concerti served as a resource in his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.

Influence

Many important composers since Mozart's time have expressed profound appreciation of Mozart. Rossini averred, "He is the only musician who had as much knowledge as genius, and as much genius as knowledge." Ludwig van Beethoven's admiration for Mozart is also quite clear. Beethoven used Mozart as a model a number of times: for example, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major demonstrates a debt to Mozart's Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503. A plausible story – not corroborated – regards one of Beethoven's students who looked through a pile of music in Beethoven's apartment. When the student pulled out Mozart's A major Quartet, K. 464, Beethoven exclaimed "Ah, that piece. That's Mozart saying 'here's what I could do, if only you had ears to hear!' "; Beethoven's own Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor is an obvious tribute to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, and yet another plausible – if unconfirmed – story concerns Beethoven at a concert with his sometime-student Ferdinand Ries. As they listened to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, the orchestra reached the quite unusual coda of the last movement, and Beethoven whispered to Ries: "We'll never think of anything like that!" Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds is another obvious tribute to Mozart, similar to Mozart's own quintet for the same ensemble. Beethoven also paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on several of his themes: for example, the two sets of variations for cello and piano on themes from Mozart's Magic Flute, and cadenzas to several of Mozart's piano concertos, most notably the Piano Concerto No. 20 K. 466. A famous legend asserts that, after the only meeting between the two composers, Mozart noted that Beethoven would "give the world something to talk about." However, it is not certain that the two ever met. Tchaikovsky wrote his Mozartiana in praise of Mozart; and Mahler died with the name "Mozart" on his lips . The theme of the opening movement of the Piano Sonata in A major K. 331 (itself a set of variations on that theme) was used by Max Reger for his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, written in 1914 and among Reger's best-known works.

Mozart has remained an influence in popular contemporary music in varying genres ranging from Jazz to modern Rock and Heavy metal. Some examples of this influence are : Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, mentions the character of 'Figaro'; the Famous jazz pianist Chick Corea has performed piano concertos of Mozart and they also inspired him to write a concerto of his own; Death metal guitarist and composer Trey Azagthoth of the band Morbid Angel cites Mozart as a definative influence to his music, as much of his work has a strong undertone of classical music not common in metal music at the time (time signature and tempo changes, for one)

The Köchel catalogue

In the decades after Mozart's death there were several attempts to catalogue his compositions, but it was not until 1862 that Ludwig von Köchel succeeded in this enterprise. Many of his famous works are referred to by their Köchel catalogue number; for example, the Piano Concerto in A major (Piano Concerto No. 23) is often referred to simply as "K. 488" or "KV. 488". The catalogue has undergone six revisions, labeling the works from K. 1 to K. 626.

Myths and controversies

Mozart is unusual among composers for being the subject of an abundance of legend, much due to the problem that none of his early biographers knew him personally. They often resorted to fiction in order to produce a work. Many myths began soon after Mozart died, but few have any basis in fact. An example is the story that Mozart composed his Requiem with the belief it was for himself. Sorting out fabrications from real events is a vexing and continuous task for Mozart scholars mainly because of the prevalence of legend in scholarship. Dramatists and screenwriters, free from responsibilities of scholarship, have found excellent material among these legends.

An especially popular case is the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, and, in some versions, the tale that it was poison received from the latter that caused Mozart's death; this is the subject of Aleksandr Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart and Salieri, and Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. The last of these has been made into a feature-length film of the same name. Shaffer's play attracted criticism for portraying Mozart as vulgar and loutish, a characterization felt by many to be unfairly exaggerated, but in fact frequently confirmed by the composer's letters and other memorabilia. For example, Mozart wrote canons on the words "Lick me in the ass" and "Lick me in the ass nice and clean" as party pieces for his friends. The Köchel numbers of these canons are 231 and 233 (their original German texts are "Leck mich im Arsch" and "Leck mich im Arsch recht fein schön sauber").

According to an essay by A. Peter Brown, "the Mozart mania of the 1980s was initiated by Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. It and the subsequent film directed by Miloš Forman did more for Mozart's case than anything else in the two hundred years since the composer's death." The same could be said of the popular myths currently surrounding Mozart, many of which are firmly rooted in the film.

However, Shaffer and Forman have never claimed that Amadeus was based in fact, as pointed out by Shaffer himself: "From the start we agreed on one thing: we were not making an objective Life of Wolfgang Mozart. This cannot be stressed too strongly. Obviously Amadeus on stage was never intended to be a documentary biography of the composer, and the film is even less of one."

Shaffer and Forman are equally quick to defend elements of the film which they believe are accurate but are disputed by Mozart historians. Shaffer has detailed in many interviews, including one featured as an extra on the DVD release of the film, how the dramatic narrative was inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel – one brother loved by God, and the other scorned. Transcribed as creative rivalry between Mozart and Salieri, the notion of divine blessing and murderous jealousy provides the basic premise for Amadeus, although there is no historical evidence of any rivalry between the two composers. Conversely, it is well documented that Salieri frequently lent Mozart musical scores from the court library, and Mozart selected Salieri to teach his son, Franz Xaver. One of the more detailed essays on the "dramatic licenses" present in Amadeus is written by Gregory Allen Robbins, titled "Mozart & Salieri, Cain & Abel: A Cinematic Transformation of Genesis 4".

Another area of debate involves Mozart's prodigy as a composer from childhood until his death. While some have criticised many of his earlier works as simplistic or forgettable, others revere even Mozart's juvenilia.

The image of Mozart as the divinely inspired effortless creator, popularized by the film Amadeus, is certainly an exaggeration. The idea that he never revised his compositions, unforgettably dramatized in the film, is easily exploded by even a cursory examination of Mozart's manuscripts, which contain many revisions. Mozart was a studiously hard worker, and by his own admission his extensive knowledge and abilities developed out of many years' close study of the European musical tradition.

Benjamin Simkin, a medical doctor, argues in his book Medical and Musical Byways of Mozartiana (PMID 1286388) that Mozart had Tourette syndrome. Simkin is an endocrinologist – not a psychiatrist or a neurologist, the medical fields which specialize in the neurological disorder. His claim was picked up by newspapers worldwide, causing an international sensation. Internet websites of dubious reliability have fueled the speculation. Letters he wrote to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla ("Bäsle") between 1777 and 1781 contain scatological language; and he wrote canons titled Leck mich am Arsch ("Lick my ass") or variations thereof (including the pseudo-Latin Difficile lectu mihi mars). This alone is not indicative of Tourette syndrome, and there are alternative explanations for his use of language. The noted neurologist and author Oliver Sacks published an editorial disputing Simkin's claim (PMID 1286364), and the Tourette Syndrome Association pointed out the speculative nature of this information. No Tourette syndrome expert, organization, psychiatrist or neurologist has yet to concur that there is credible evidence that Mozart had this syndrome, and several have stated now that they do not believe there is enough evidence to substantiate the claim.

It is somewhat humorous to note that, while the term "Leck mich am Arsch", when literally translated, conjures up images of vulgar sexual practices or a Tourette syndrome tendency, the more accurate English meaning of this phrase is simply "Kiss my ass". The fact that Mozart wrote these words and used them in the titles of canons speaks to his status as a "rock star" of his day. Used in this sense, it is an expression of flippant or playful arrogance. The additional phrase "... recht fein schön sauber", while colorful, is still only an emphasis: that is to say, "Kiss my ass real good!" .

Trivia

• It is well known that Mozart died at the young age of 35. In the spoken introduction to one of his songs ("Alma"), satirist Tom Lehrer remarked on how some people in the news "make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years!"
• In May of 2006, student-run Harvard University radio station WHRB broadcasted The Mozart Orgy, an 11-day continuous radio broadcast of every single work Mozart ever wrote, ordered chronologically, including works spuriously attributed to the composer and recordings of special historical performances.
• Recordings of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music have sold more copies than any other composer in history.
• Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, "Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven created his music, but the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it - that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed."
• In his travels, Mozart acquired some competence in many languages: as many as fifteen, by some reports.
• Mozart was much taken by the sound of Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica, and composed two works for it: an Adagio in C (K. 617a ) and an Adagio and Rondo for armonica, flute, oboe, viola, and cello (K. 617), both composed in 1791 after he heard the instrument played by the virtuoso Marianne Kirchgaessner. He started a third piece, of which only the first few bars were completed.
• Mozart has received outstanding praise from several fellow composers including Frédéric Chopin, Franz Schubert, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, and many more.
• 2006 marks the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. Worldwide celebrations included performances of all of Mozart's operas in Salzburg and Prague.

Media

Template:Multi-listen start

Orchestral

Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item

Vocal

Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item

Piano

Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end

See also

• List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Category:Compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Mozart's name
• Mozartkugel, a confectionery named in his honor.
• Mozart effect, a disputed theory that certain kinds of music enhance performance on certain mental tasks; the researchers who coined the term used a piece by Mozart in their first study.
• Rock Me Amadeus, a 1985 song by Falco, based on Forman's film

Notes

1. Cliff Eisen, Stanley Sadie, '(Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed )
2. Documents describing Mozart's transcription of the Allegri Miserere at Wikisource
3. Cliff Eisen, Stanley Sadie 'Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart', §6: The final years', Grove Music Online (Accessed 09 May 2006).
4. ^ Luke Harding. Mozart more of a prince than a pauper. The Guardian. April 5, 2006.
5. Did Mozart Have Tourette Syndrome? at Daniel Publishing
6. Did Mozart really have TS? at TSA
7. FAMOUS PEOPLE WITH TOURETTE'S SYNDROME AND/OR OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER, SchoolBehavior.com, May 20, 2006
8. ^ Mozart Festival, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, 2005

Further reading

• Braunbehrens, Volkmar: Mozart in Vienna: 1781-1791, Timothy Bell Trans, HarperPerennial, 1986 ISBN 0-06-0997405-2
• Deutsch, Otto Erich: Mozart: A Documentary Biography, Eric Blom et al. Trans, Stanford University Press, 1965
• Aloys Greither: Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1962
• Robert W. Gutman: Mozart: A Cultural Biography, Random, 2001 ISBN 015100482X
• H. C. Robbins Landon: 1791: Mozart's Last Year, Thames & Hudson, 1988 ISBN 0500281076
• Massimo Mila: Lettura delle Nozze di Figaro, Einaudi, 1979 ISBN 8806189379
• Mark Rayner: The Amadeus Net, ENC, 2005 ISBN 0975254014
• Stanley Sadie, ed.: Mozart and his Operas, St. Martin's, 2000 ISBN 031224410X
• Maynard Solomon: Mozart: a life, Harper, 1996 ISBN 0060926929
• Hershel Jick: A Listener's Guide to Mozart's Music, Vantage, 1997 ISBN 0553123089
• Marcia Davenport: Mozart, The Chautauqua Press, 1932
• Wilhelm Otto Deutsch, Mozart und die Religion (2005)
• Nicholas Till: Mozart and the Enlightenment,Faber,Norton, 1992 ISBN 0571161693
• Gregory Allen Robbins, Mozart & Salieri, Cain & Abel: A Cinematic Transformation of Genesis 4
• The Mozart Project
• Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe, Editors: The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, Cambridge University Press, 2006 ISBN 0521856590

External links

• General reference
  • The Mozart Project – the life, times and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Mozartones.com - compact biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • A Profile of Amadeus Mozart from Aaron Green, guide to Classical Music at About.com.
  • WAMozartFan.com The Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Educational Fanpage - resource for students, teachers and music lovers.
  • The Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from Classical Music Pages
  • Mozart Forum Exploring the world of Classical-Era Music (1770-1827), encompassing the music, personalities and accomplishments of Mozart and his contemporaries.
  • Mozart Archive
  • Année Mozart(French) blog about W.A. Mozart and his family
• Scores
  • IMSLP - International Music Score Library Project's Mozart page.
  • Free scores by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
  • Works by Mozart at Project Gutenberg
  • Template:IckingArchive
  • Mozart's Scores by Mutopia Project
  • Mozart Melody Index at Tunespotting.com
  • Mozart melodies at Musipedia
  • Free Mozart piano sheet music in PDF format.
• Recordings
  • Mozart at Piano Society - Biography and various free recordings in MP3 format.
  • Mozart cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
  • Mozart's Piano sonatas (midi)
• Specific topics
  • A free walking tour of Mozart in Prague via podcast
  • The "Mozart Catalogue" digitised by the British Library - Go to "Turning the Pages"
  • Cadenzas from the A Clarinet Concerto - Clariperu Many trancriptions from artists like Sabine Meyer, John McCaw, Charles Neidich, etc.
  • Mozart's Thematic Catalogue - turn the pages of Mozart's musical diary online (requires Shockwave plugin)
  • gallica.bnf.fr, picture of Mozart, his mother, his father, his wife, and his family (bnf = French National Library).
  • Mozart and pauses
  • The "Jenamy Concerto" The proper name of Mozart's piano concerto K. 271 revealed
  • Can you tell Mozart from Salieri? A quiz.
  • Mozart und die Religion (2005), Wilhelm Otto Deutsch
  • Born between Salzburg and Braunau am Inn
  • Information about Mozart, Salzburg and the city's musical heritage
  • Mozart's 250th Birthday, from NPR
  • The alleged last portrait painting of Mozart
  • Mozart and Freemasonry

Template:Link FA Template:Link FA Template:Link FA

• Austrian composers
• Classical era composers
• German composers
• Opera composers
• Viennese composers
• Austrian classical pianists
• People with absolute pitch
• Entertainers who died in their 30s
• Austrian Freemasons
• People buried in unmarked graves
• 1756 births
• 1791 deaths