Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Child Prodigy to Composer

2. Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart Born in 1756 in the city of Salzburg, in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was a territory in Central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806.

3. Childhood as a musical prodigy: • Mozart’s Father Leopold Mozart was one of Europe’s leading music teachers. • He was a prolific and successful composer of instrumental music, but he gave up composing when his son’s outstanding musical talents became evident. • Due to all the touring all over Europe with his sister, Mozart learns to speak 15 different languages. • Amadeus first compositions were written at age five, a small Andante (k.1a) and Allegro (k. 1b).

4. Style of Music: CLASSICAL We often say “classical music” to mean any kind of music in the Baroque, Classical, or Romantic styles. Mozart wrote Classical music, a specific style in the late 1700s - early 1800s. Mozart was a prolific composer during his short life. He wrote over 600 pieces: including 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, 23 operas, 20 masses, 29 string quartets, 33 serenades, chamber music, sonatas, etc.

5. Vienna Marries Constanze Weber in 1781 and Composes the opera “The abduction from the Seraglio”. Together they have 6 children, but only 2 survive into adulthood. He moved to Vienna in 1787 and became court composer to Emperor Joseph II. Focused on writing opera - Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni He died four years later of kidney failure or rheumatic fever at the age of 35 and was buried in an unmarked grave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr_jkORTbBs

6. Requiem, and the movie Amadeus Mozart was an extremely superstitious man and was terrified of ghost. One night a mysterious man dressed in gray appeared at his door to commission him to write a Requiem mass. Mozart at that time was already very ill and feared the stranger who continued to appear to him until his death. Mozart was under the delusionthat this man was asking him to write this piece for his own funeral. It turns out that the anonymous person who commissioned the Requiem Mass was a Count named Walsegg who had a habit of commissioning famous composers and later claiming their compositions as his own. For years after Mozart’s death Walsegg claimed that the Requiem was his own work. Apparently, he fooled no one.