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Mozart's early years
Mozart's talent for music was remarkable. At three he was picking out chords on the harpsichord, at four playing short
pieces, at five composing. There are anecdotes about his precise memory of pitch, about his scribbling a concerto at the age
of five, and about his gentleness and sensitivity. Just before he was six, his father took himand Nannerl, also highly talented,
to Munich to play at the Bavarian court, and a few months later they went to Vienna and were heard at the imperial court and
in noble houses.
1773
More symphonies and divertimentos, as well as a mass, followed during the summer of 1773. Then his father, doubtless seeking
again a better situation for his son than the Salzburg court was likely to offer, took him to Vienna. No position materialized,
but Mozart's contact with the newest Viennese music seems to have had a considerable effect on him. He produced a set of six
string quartets in the capital, showing in them his knowledge of Haydn's recent Opus 20 in his fuller textures and more intellectual
approach to the medium. Soon after his return he wrote a group of symphonies, including two that represent a new level of
achievement, the Little G Minor and the A Major.
Traveling
First they went to Munich, where the elector politely declined to offer Mozart a post. Next they visited Augsburg, staying
with relatives; there Mozart struck up a lively friendship with his cousin Maria Anna Thekla. At the end of October they arrived
at Mannheim, where the court of the Elector Palatine was musically one of the most famous and progressive in Europe. Mozart
stayed there for more than four months, although he soon learned that again no position was to be had. He became friendly
with the Mannheim musicians, undertook some teaching and playing, accepted and partly fulfilled a commission for flute music
from a German surgeon, and fell in love with Aloysia Weber, a soprano, the second of four daughters of a music copyist. He
also composed several piano sonatas, some with violin.
The Final Years
Mozart had been ill during the weeks in Prague, but to judge by his letters to Constanze in October he was in good spirits
and, with some cause, more optimistic about the future. He wrote a Masonic cantata for his lodge and directed a performance
of it on November 18. He was also working steadily on the commissioned requiem. Later in November he was ill and confined
to bed; some apparent improvement on December 3 was not sustained, and on December 5 he died.
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Vienna, 1767
Mozart wrote a one-act German singspiel, Bastien and Bastienne, which was given privately. Greater hopes were attached
to his prospect of having an Italian opera (The Feigned Simpleton) done at the court theater hopes thatwere, however, frustrated,
much to Leopold's indignation. But a substantial, festal mass setting was successfully given before the court at the dedication
of the Orphanage Church. The Feigned Simpleton was given the following year, 1769, in the archbishop's palace in Salzburg.
In October Mozart was appointed an honorary Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court.
1777
In 1777 he petitioned the archbishop for his release and, with his mother to watch over him, set out to find new opportunities.
The correspondence with his father over the 16 months he was away not only gives information as to what he was doing but also
casts a sharp light on their changing relationship; Mozart, now 21, increasingly felt the need to free himself from paternal
domination, while Leopold's anxieties about their future assumed almost pathological dimensions.
1791
In 1791 promised to be a better year. Music was flowing again: for a concert in March Mozart completed a piano concerto
begun some years before, reeled off numerous dances for the Redoutensaal, and wrote two new string quintets, the one in D
being a work of particular refinement and subtlety. In April he applied successfully for the role of unpaid assistant to the
elderly Kapellmeister of St. Stephen's Cathedral, Leopold Hofmann.
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