Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer of the Classical period whose works are among the most performed and celebrated in the Western art-music canon. Born on 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, in the Archbishopric of Salzburg (present-day Austria), he died on 5 December 1791 in Vienna at the age of 35. Despite his short life, Mozart composed more than 600 works across virtually every genre of his era, leaving a legacy that shaped the course of Western classical music.

Early life and prodigious talent

Mozart was baptised Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. His father, Leopold Mozart, was a court musician and composer in Salzburg who recognised his son's extraordinary gifts at an exceptionally young age. By age three, Mozart was picking out chords on a keyboard; by five, he was composing short pieces; and by six, he was performing before European aristocracy.

Grand tours of Europe

Beginning in 1762, Leopold orchestrated a series of tours through the major courts and cities of Europe, including Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, and Italy. The young Mozart performed for Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna and for King George III in London. These journeys exposed him to a wide range of musical styles — French, Italian, and German — that he would later synthesise into his mature compositional voice.

Reception as a child prodigy

Contemporary accounts describe astonishment at Mozart's ability to sight-read difficult scores, improvise counterpoint, and identify pitches by ear alone. Scholars note that Leopold's careful documentation and promotion of his son's talents helped establish the modern concept of the child prodigy in European cultural life.

Career and works

Mozart served as a court musician in Salzburg under Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, a relationship that became increasingly strained. In 1781 he was effectively dismissed from Colloredo's service and relocated permanently to Vienna, where he spent the remainder of his life as a freelance composer and performer — an unusual and financially precarious path for the time.

Operas

Mozart's operatic output is considered central to the genre's development. His major operas include:

• The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro, 1786), a comic opera based on a play by Beaumarchais that satirised class relations
• Don Giovanni (1787), a dramma giocoso blending comedy and tragedy around the legend of Don Juan
• Così fan tutte (1790), a comedy exploring love and fidelity
• The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte, 1791), a German-language Singspiel rich in Masonic symbolism

These works established standards of dramatic characterisation through music that remain influential in opera to the present day.

Symphonies and concertos

Mozart composed 41 numbered symphonies, the last three — No. 39 in E-flat major, No. 40 in G minor, and No. 41 in C major (the Jupiter) — all written in the summer of 1788 and considered his greatest achievements in the form. His piano concertos, numbering 27, are widely viewed as among the finest in the repertoire, bridging the gap between soloist and orchestra with unprecedented subtlety. His violin, clarinet, and horn concertos are also standard repertoire works.

Chamber and piano music

Mozart's chamber music includes string quartets dedicated to Joseph Haydn, who praised them publicly. His piano sonatas and fantasies remain staples of the teaching and concert repertoire.

Sacred music

His sacred works include the Great Mass in C minor (K. 427) and the famous Requiem in D minor (K. 626), which was left unfinished at his death and completed by his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr. The circumstances of the Requiem's commission — from an anonymous patron later identified as Count Franz von Walsegg — gave rise to numerous legends during Mozart's lifetime and afterward.

Personal life

In 1782 Mozart married Constanze Weber in Vienna against his father's wishes. The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy: Karl Thomas Mozart and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, the latter of whom became a professional musician. Mozart was a Freemason, initiated into the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit (Beneficence) in Vienna in 1784; Masonic ideals are widely believed to have influenced The Magic Flute and several other late works.

Mozart enjoyed warm and well-documented friendships with Joseph Haydn and, in his youth, with Johann Christian Bach, both of whom influenced his stylistic development. His relationship with Antonio Salieri, a contemporaneous composer in Vienna, has been dramatically distorted by later fiction, most notably by Peter Shaffer's play and subsequent film Amadeus (1984). Historians find no credible evidence that Salieri harmed Mozart.

Death and legacy

Mozart died on 5 December 1791 in Vienna. The exact cause of death remains disputed; proposed diagnoses over the centuries have included rheumatic fever, kidney disease, and various other conditions. He was buried in a common grave at the St. Marx Cemetery in Vienna, in accordance with the burial customs of the time for his social rank — not, as legend sometimes holds, from poverty or neglect.

His influence on subsequent composers was immediate and profound. Ludwig van Beethoven, who briefly studied with him in Vienna in 1787 (though the encounter was cut short), cited Mozart as a formative inspiration. Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and countless later composers acknowledged a debt to Mozart's formal clarity, melodic invention, and dramatic instinct.

Mozart's works are catalogued using the Köchel catalogue (K. numbers), compiled by Ludwig von Köchel and published in 1862, providing a chronological listing of his compositions.

Frequently asked questions

Is Mozart considered the greatest composer of all time?

Mozart is consistently named among the greatest composers in the Western tradition, alongside figures such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. Assessments of greatest are inherently subjective, though surveys of musicians, scholars, and audiences frequently place Mozart at or near the top.

Is it true that Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave?

Mozart was buried in a communal grave rather than a marked individual plot, which was standard Viennese practice of the time for citizens of middle rank. This has often been mischaracterised as evidence of extreme poverty or abandonment, but historians largely reject that interpretation.

Is the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri historically accurate?

The intense, murderous rivalry depicted in the 1984 film Amadeus is a dramatic invention. While professional tension between the two men may have existed, there is no credible historical evidence that Salieri poisoned or deliberately harmed Mozart.

Is the Mozart Requiem entirely his own work?

The Requiem (K. 626) was unfinished at Mozart's death. His widow Constanze commissioned Franz Xaver Süssmayr to complete it. Scholars continue to debate which portions are entirely Mozart's, which are based on his sketches, and which Süssmayr composed independently.

Is 'Amadeus' Mozart's real middle name?

Mozart was baptised with the Latin name Theophilus, of which Amadeus is the Latin equivalent and Gottlieb the German. He used various forms during his lifetime, including Amadé in French contexts, but Amadeus became the standardised form in later historical usage.