Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Talent and Genius

The Mozart full name was Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was born on 27 January 1756 and died on 5 December 1791. Mozart was a prolific and influential Austrian composer of the Classical Era. He composed more than 600 compositions that include works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music, and he is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg into a musical family and at a very young age already showed indications of prodigious abilities. With only five years old, he could both read and write music and had precocious skills as a keyboard and violin player. Much of his childhood and adolescence was taken up with tours, which included performances before many of the royal courts of Europe. In 1773, with 17 years old, he accepted a post as court musician in Salzburg, but he was unhappy with his low payment and few opportunities. Over the next eight years, he composed abundantly and frequently traveled in search of a better position. This situation continued until his dismissal from Salzburg in 1781 by his employer, the Prince-Archbishop, and his subsequent departure for Vienna.

He spent the rest of his life in Vienna, where he achieved relative fame. However, his finances remained precarious, with periods of penury and prosperity. In 1782, he married with Constanze Weber against the his family's wishes. They had six children but only two survived infancy. Musically, this was the period of outstanding creativity which saw the production of many of his best known symphonic, concertante and operatic works, and his final, incomplete Requiem. Mozart died at the age of 35, The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized, but were most likely commonplace.

In his youth, Mozart had used his gifts of imitation and mimicry to learn from the works of others. From these lessons, in maturity, he fashioned a style that ranged in mood from the light and pleasant to the dark and violent, from a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute". His influence on all subsequent classical music has been profound. For example, Beethoven wrote much of his early music in Mozart's shadow. Joseph Haydn, sometime mentor and later friend and admirer, wrote, "Posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years". Others claim that, more than two centuries after his death, his talent remains unsurpassed.

 

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