Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, to Leopold Mozart, a respected court musician and composer, and his wife Anna Maria. From the earliest age, it was apparent that the child was no ordinary musical talent. By the age of three he could pick out thirds on a harpsichord; by four he was learning minuets; by five he was composing short pieces. His father, recognising the staggering potential before him, dedicated himself almost entirely to his son's education, soon taking the prodigy — along with his equally gifted elder sister Maria Anna, known as Nannerl — on a series of tours across Europe that would shape the young composer's musical imagination indelibly.

Between 1763 and 1773, the Mozart children performed before the crowned heads of Europe. They played for Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna, for King Louis XV at Versailles, and for King George III in London. In London, Mozart encountered Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose elegant, song-like style left a lasting impression on the boy's developing aesthetic. In Italy, he absorbed the warmth and vocal fluency of the operatic tradition. These years of ceaseless travel amounted to the most extraordinary musical education imaginable: a grand tour not merely of geography but of style, taste, and technique.

Returning to Salzburg, Mozart found himself increasingly chafed by the constraints of provincial court life and by his difficult relationship with his employer, the Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The Archbishop viewed music as functional entertainment, not art; Mozart viewed himself as an artist of the first rank deserving of a grander stage. After a humiliating dismissal in 1781 — reportedly accompanied by a literal kick to the seat of the trousers — Mozart moved to Vienna, determined to forge a freelance career in the imperial capital.

Vienna proved both triumphant and precarious. His marriage to Constanze Weber in 1782 was happy by most accounts, though financially turbulent. The early Viennese years brought genuine celebrity: successful operas, packed subscription concerts, admiring patrons, and the profound friendship of Joseph Haydn, who told Leopold Mozart that Wolfgang was "the greatest composer known to me." Yet by the late 1780s the picture had darkened. Shifts in Viennese taste, the disruptions of the Napoleonic wars, and Mozart's own disregard for financial prudence meant increasing poverty. He wrote begging letters to his friend Michael Puchberg; his health declined; commissions became harder to secure.

Mozart died on 5 December 1791, aged just thirty-five, leaving his final work — the Requiem in D minor — unfinished. The cause of death remains debated: rheumatic fever, kidney disease, and various other diagnoses have been proposed. He was buried in a common grave, in accordance with Viennese custom at the time, not as the sign of obscurity that myth has sometimes suggested. He left behind a catalogue of over six hundred works and a legacy that would define Western music for centuries.