Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Table of Contents

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images & Videos

the Mozart family; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Hear neuroscientist Richard Haier speak about plasticity and debunk the Mozart effect, the claim that IQ can be increased by listening to a Mozart sonata

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “Conservati fedele”

For Students

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart summary

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Q: Who was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) was an Austrian composer. Mozart composed music in several genres, including opera and symphony . His most famous compositions included the motet Exsultate, Jubilate , K 165 (1773), the operas (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), and the Jupiter Symphony (1788). In all, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces of music. Today he is widely considered one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music .

Q: How old was Mozart when he began playing music?

Mozart was a child prodigy . His father—a talented violinist—taught him basic notes on the harpsichord . Mozart composed his first piece of music in 1761, at age five; by age six, he had performed before two imperial courts. In 1763 Mozart and his sister, Maria Anna (”Nannerl”), went on tour. For three years the siblings toured western Europe, performing in major cities such as Munich , Augsburg , Paris , and London . In Paris Mozart published his first piece of music, and in London he composed his first symphony . After the tour concluded in 1766, Mozart went to Vienna, where he composed a German singspiel ( Bastien und Bastienne ) and an Italian opera buffa ( La finta semplice ). In 1769, 13-year-old Mozart was appointed honorary Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court.

Q: What are Mozart’s most famous compositions?

Mozart wrote in all the popular genres of his time, and he excelled in every one. He wrote several successful operas, including The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and The Magic Flute (1791). Mozart also composed a number of symphonies and sonatas . His last symphony—the Jupiter Symphony —is perhaps his most famous. Mozart completed the Jupiter Symphony in 1788, just three years before his death. At his death, Mozart left incomplete his, K 626. The requiem was later completed by Mozart’s student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr .

Q: What did Mozart contribute to Western music?

Mozart was not a revolutionary musician. He rarely experimented with musical form , and he often recycled successful structural formulations in his work. In short, Mozart did not innovate. He mastered. He perfected existing forms and, in so doing, raised the symphony , sonata , and opera to new heights. His later compositions, especially, highlight his versatility and dexterity as a musician. They also showcase his ability to convey feeling through music. Mozart’s immediate successor, Ludwig van Beethoven , expanded on his work. Beethoven, unlike Mozart, did not resist experimenting with form.

Austrian composer

Also known as: Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Written by Stanley Sadie

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Dec 18, 2024 • Article History

Quick Facts

In full:: Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Baptized as:: Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart

Born:: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, archbishopric of Salzburg [Austria]

Died:: December 5, 1791, Vienna (aged 35)

Notable Works:: song; “A Musical Joke”; “Adagio für Harmonika K. 356”; “Adagio und Rondo K. 617”; “Bastien and Bastienne”; “Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K 581”; “Concerto in A Major”; “Così fan tutte”; “Deh! vieni alla finestra”; “Don Giovanni”; “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”; “Exsultate, Jubilate, K 165”; “Haffner”; “Idomeneo, rè di Creta”; “Il sogno di Scipione”; “Jupiter Symphony”; “Là ci darem la mano”; “La clemenza di Tito”; “La finta giardiniera”; “La finta semplice”; “Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento”; “Lucio Silla”; “Mass in C Major”; “Mitridate, rè di Ponto”; “Prague”; “The Abduction from the Seraglio”; “The Magic Flute”; “The Marriage of Figaro”

Notable Family Members:: father Leopold Mozart

Who was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

How old was Mozart when he began playing music?

What are Mozart’s most famous compositions?

What did Mozart contribute to Western music?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, archbishopric of Salzburg [Austria]—died December 5, 1791, Vienna) was an Austrian composer, widely recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. With Haydn and Beethoven he brought to its height the achievement of the Viennese Classical school. Unlike any other composer in musical history, he wrote in all the musical genres of his day and excelled in every one. His taste, his command of form, and his range of expression have made him seem the most universal of all composers; yet, it may also be said that his music was written to accommodate the specific tastes of particular audiences.

Early life and works

Mozart most commonly called himself Wolfgang Amadé or Wolfgang Gottlieb. His father, Leopold, came from a family of good standing (from which he was estranged), which included architects and bookbinders. Leopold was the author of a famous violin-playing manual, which was published in the very year of Mozart’s birth. His mother, Anna Maria Pertl, was born of a middle-class family active in local administration. Mozart and his sister Maria Anna (“Nannerl”) were the only two of their seven children to survive.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Petr Il'ich Chaikovskii), Russian composer.

Britannica Quiz

A Study of Composers

The boy’s early 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 (he was afraid of the trumpet). Just before he was six, his father took him and 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.

“The miracle which God let be born in Salzburg” was Leopold’s description of his son, and he was keenly conscious of his duty to God, as he saw it, to draw the miracle to the notice of the world (and incidentally to profit from doing so). In mid-1763 he obtained a leave of absence from his position as deputy Kapellmeister at the prince-archbishop’s court at Salzburg, and the family set out on a prolonged tour. They went to what were all the main musical centres of western Europe—Munich, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Mainz, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Paris (where they remained for the winter), then London (where they spent 15 months), returning through The Hague, Amsterdam, Paris, Lyon, and Switzerland, and arriving back in Salzburg in November 1766. In most of these cities Mozart, and often his sister, played and improvised, sometimes at court, sometimes in public or in a church. Leopold’s surviving letters to friends in Salzburg tell of the universal admiration that his son’s achievements aroused. In Paris they met several German composers, and Mozart’s first music was published (sonatas for keyboard and violin, dedicated to a royal princess); in London they met, among others, Johann Christian Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach’s youngest son and a leading figure in the city’s musical life, and under his influence Mozart composed his first symphonies—three survive (K 16, K 19, and K 19a—K signifying the work’s place in the catalog of Ludwig von Köchel). Two more followed during a stay in The Hague on the return journey (K 22 and K 45a).

After little more than nine months in Salzburg the Mozarts set out for Vienna in September 1767, where (apart from a 10-week break during a smallpox epidemic) they spent 15 months. Mozart wrote a one-act German singspiel, Bastien und Bastienne, which was given privately. Greater hopes were attached to his prospect of having an Italian opera buffa, La finta semplice (“The Feigned Simpleton”), done at the court theatre—hopes that were, however, frustrated, much to Leopold’s indignation. But a substantial, festal mass setting (probably K 139/47a) was successfully given before the court at the dedication of the Orphanage Church. La finta semplice 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.

Still only 13, Mozart had by now acquired considerable fluency in the musical language of his time, and he was especially adept at imitating the musical equivalent of local dialects. The early Paris and London sonatas, the autographs of which include Leopold’s helping hand, show a childlike pleasure in patterns of notes and textures. But the London and The Hague symphonies attest to his quick and inventive response to the music he had encountered, as, with their enrichment of texture and fuller development, do those he produced in Vienna (such as K 43 and, especially, K 48). And his first Italian opera shows a ready grasp of the buffo style.