Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over six hundred works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music; he is among the most enduring and popular of classical composers.
Read more about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart was not only one of the greatest composers of the Classical period, but one of the greatest of all time and his music represents an archetypal example of the Classical era. With a stylistic development that followed the development of the classical style as a whole, his best music has an effortless flow and irresistible appeal, and can express human emotion with both conviction and mastery. He was as versatile a composer as he was prolific and wrote in almost every major form, including concerto, symphony, and chamber works. His operas are vivid examples of high musical art, as are many of his piano concertos and later symphonies. Even his less substantial compositions and juvenile works feature much attractive and often masterful music.

A childhood genius, by the age of three he was playing the clavichord and by four had begun writing short compositions. In the years 1763 - 1766, Mozart, along with his father Leopold, and sister Nannerl, toured Europe, giving many successful concerts and performing before royalty. The Mozart family returned to Salzburg in November 1766 and the following year young Wolfgang composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus. Keyboard concertos and other major works were also completed at this time with astonishing speed. Between 1774 and 1777, he composed a huge and varied body of work that included all of his Violin concertos, as well as numerous Masses, symphonies, and chamber works. In the early and mid-1780s, Mozart composed many sonatas and quartets but many of his commissions were for operas now for which he presented a succession of masterful works Die Entführung 1782 Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Così fan tutte (1790) and Die Zauberflöte (1791). The final years in Vienna yielded many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, including one of his greatest masterpieces: the Requiem.

The details of his early death have been much mythologized. Mozart made a number of trips in his last years, and while his health had been fragile in previous times, he displayed no serious condition or illness until he developed a fever of unknown origin near the end of 1791 leaving behind a characterful body of work which has delighted, moved and engaged listeners and players ever since.
Close