Mozart at the Piano Buy this Giclee Print at AllPosters.com

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 - December 5, 1791) is one of the most popular composers of all time.

Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria. A child prodigy from a musical family, he began composing at the age of five. His father Leopold Mozart was also a composer, and some of the piano pieces of W.A. Mozart, especially the duets and pieces for two pianos, he wrote to play together with his sister Nannerl. Mozart lived much of his life in Salzburg but traveled Europe extensively and spent his final years in Vienna.

As a man, he became a Freemason, and worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before his death. The Magic Flute may well contain Masonic themes or meanings.

Beethoven, one of the best known classical composers, was greatly in Mozart's debt, and wrote cadenzas to some of Mozart's works that lacked them, most notably the Concerto No. 20 (K. 466). Mozart often composed only sketches for his own parts, so great was his musical memory. He could also write an entire work on the day of its first performance. Tchaikovsky greatly loved and admired Mozart, and expressed his love by writing Mozartiana, in the Mozart style.

Despite his brilliance, Mozart had a difficult life. Often he received no payment for his work, and the substantial sums he received on other occasions were soon consumed by his extravagent lifestyle. Gradually, his health declined. In popular legend, Mozart died penniless and forgotten, to be buried in a pauper's grave. In fact, although he was no longer as fashionable in Vienna as he had once been, he continued to receive rich commissions from more distant parts of Europe, Prague in particular. Many of his begging letters survive, but they are evidence not of poverty but of his ability to always spend more than he earned.

Mozart lived just a little over half of Beethoven's life span, yet was amazingly prolific from early childhood until his death in 1791. He left a rich body of chamber and orchestral music, and a series of operas which is generally regarded as the finest ever written. Although he made smaller contributions to the development of new musical forms than Bach, Beethoven, and perhaps Haydn, the perfection of his execution is such that he is usually ranked alongside them as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Principals of Music-Mozart Hartenhoff Buy This Art Print At AllPosters.com

In the decades following Mozart's death there were several attempts to inventory his compositions, but it was only in 1862 that Ludwig von Köchel, a Viennese botanist, mineralogist, and educator, succeeded in this enterprise. Köchel's stout book of 551 pages was entitled (in German) "Chronological-Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Musical Works of WOLFGANG AMADE MOZART". Köchel is the source of the ubiquitous "K" prefix on the numbers given to Mozart's works instead of the more usual "Opus".

Some of Mozart's more popular works are:

• Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade for String Quartet & Bass)
• Alla Turca (Sonata for Piano)
• Elvira Madigan (Concerto for Piano No. 21)
• Symphony No. 25
• Symphony No. 40
• The opera Don Giovanni
• The opera Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)
• The opera The Magic Flute
• The opera The Abduction from the Seraglio
• The opera Cosi fan tutte

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart"