¿ WHO IS HE ?

Of all the classical composers who hold a special place in music history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is perhaps the most famous, and certainly one of the most accomplished. Today, his compositions have taken a firm hold in the world of classical music, and his pieces are often heard throughout concerts in the world. Although Mozart died at the young age of 35, he left behind a legacy of works that are now regarded as masterpieces. However, his accomplishments were not just the work of a musical genius; Mozart worked and studied hard throughout his lifetime, putting his heart and soul into the music he composed. It is for these reasons that Mozart is perhaps the most respected classical composer in history.

Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria on January 27, 1756. His father, a skilled violinist and music teacher himself, encouraged his young son to play many instruments from the tender age of three; instruments ranging from the violin to the organ and beyond. By the age of five, Mozart had started composing music for himself.

As a young man, Mozart travelled extensively throughout Europe, with his time spent in Vienna in the early 1770s being particularly rewarding; it was here that he composed two operas, ‘Mitridate’ and ‘Lucio Silla’. Later during this decade, Mozart’s first operas began to be performed in Germany, and he found employment from 1774 to 1777 at the court of the Prince Archbishop in his hometown of Salzburg. During this period, the classical composer completed his complete violin concertos, along with various symphonies and masses, and six piano sonatas amongst other pieces.

The next few years saw Mozart searching for further success as a classical composer, his travels taking him from Paris to Munich and back to Vienna. Mozart supplemented his music-composing income by teaching and playing either privately or in public. The composer married Constanze Weber in 1782 and decided to devote his time to writing piano concertos; he had created fifteen by the end of 1786.

The year 1786 saw Mozart team up with respected librettist Lorenzo da Ponte for the comic operas that were to become his most famous works; these included ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’. However, these years also saw a substantial decline in health for the classical composer, and he died on December 5^th, 1791. The attendant physician recorded Mozart’s death as fever, a somewhat vague notion that led to widespread speculation as to the real cause behind the composer’s demise; some attributed it to rheumatic fever, whilst others believed (and some still do believe) that Mozart had been poisoned.

Mozart’s status as an innovative classical composer stems from his ceaseless exploration and experimentation with musical genres. He developed his style throughout his lifetime and did not simply stick to the major trends of the Baroque period; in particular, he made the piano concerto his own, bringing it to popularity through sheer hard work. Mozart’s music can best be described as containing natural order and balance (a typical by-product of his Enlightenment, or rational, beliefs), and having a focus on harmony and uncomplicated-yet-unforgettable melody. His later works concentrate on expressing human emotion and psychology through music and to this end, he developed a degree of subtlety rarely found in any classical composer.

Influence

Mozart's most famous pupil, whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child, was probably Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between Classical and Romantic eras.^[78] More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of the training of classical musicians.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn,^[79] and he traveled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of Beethoven's works have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO 58) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K. 466.

A number of composers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op. 66, WoO 28, WoO 40, WoO 46). Others include Frédéric Chopin's Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni (1827) and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonataK. 331.^[80] Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote his Orchestral Suite No. 4 in G, "Mozartiana" (1887), as a tribute to Mozart.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, in what is now Austria but, at the time, was part of the Holy Roman Empire. His only sibling to survive infancy was his elder sister Maria Anna(1751–1829), 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 Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart"^[4] as an adult, but there were many variants.

His father (1719–1787) was from Augsburg. He was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, a minor composer, and an experienced teacher. In the year of Mozart's birth, his father published a violin textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, which achieved success.

When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father while her three-year-old brother would look on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:

He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was always striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. [...] In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier. [...] He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. [...] At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.^[5]

These early pieces, K. 1–5, were recorded in the Nannerl Notenbuch.

Biographer Maynard Solomon^[6] notes that, while Mozart's father was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his own initiative and came as a surprise to his father.^[7]Mozart's father eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.^[8] In his early years, Mozart's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he also taught his children languages and academic subjects.^[6]

Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the style galant, a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntalcomplexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularized the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, but also dances,divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQqfbH3rRCQ