Mozart
"The classical period produced more
instrumental than vocal music, a wealth of
serious and comic operas as well
as vocal religious music also appeared during
this time"(Ferris, 231). One of
the best composer of this time was Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart. In this paper
I will go through his childhood, his friends and
family, and of course his
music. Enjoy!!! Child of the Enlightenment The world
that Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart entered ceremoniously in 1756 was brimming in
change. Historians refer
to this era as the Age of Enlightenment, one of
unparalleled scientific,
philosophical, and political ferment. Within Mozart’s
lifetime it set in
motion forces that would fundamentally alter life not only in
his native,
Salzburg, but also around the globe. The Enlightenment was not, to
be sure, a
democratic movement. In France, the absolutism of the Sun King,
Louis
XIV, continued under Louis XV and XVI. But in Austria, Empress
Maria Theresa
introduced a greater measure of tolerance and freedom among her
subjects, laying
a foundation for the democratic revolutions that followed.
Wolfgang’s father
Leopold came from a family of Augsburg bookbinders. He
received a solid Jesuit
education, more intellectual than evangelical after a
year at the Benedictine
University in nearby Salzburg; Leopold stopped
attending classes to pursue a
career as a musician. "Leopold figured as
Mozart’s most important first
model. He taught his son the clavier and
composition"(Mercardo 763).
Wolfgang’s mother Anna-Maria brought as much
talent to her 32-year marriage as
did Leopold. Though deprived of a formal
education, she was highly intelligent
and quick-witted— qualities that
attracted the sober and reserved Leopold.
Only two of their seven
children survived infancy. Wolfgang’s musically
talented sister Nannerl was
five years older. Yet in this painting, the 12-year-
old looks like a
spinster of seventy—complete with budding double chin.
Wolfgang, too,
looks far older than his 7 years, and controls the action from
his place at
its center. The Child Prodigy Indeed, Mozart marks the beginning of
the
Western fascination with the child prodigy. Dressed in the festive
outfit
given Wolfgang in 1762 by the Empress Maria Theresa, this boy of not
quite seven
years old looks, for all the world, like a miniature adult who
has simply
skipped childhood. "Mozart was keenly aware of his exceptional
ability, which
had been fostered and rutted in him by his father from a very
early
age"(Schroter). Other nineteenth-century artists
represented
Wolfgang—variously said to be anywhere from 11 to 14 as a
curly-locked angel.
For them, how else could the divine music that poured
out of a child-size body
be explained? The idealization of Mozart’s genius
was complete by the end of
the nineteenth century. Mozart composes with his
violin in one hand and music
has appeared miraculously on his stand in the
other. The message is
unmistakable: "Mortals use quills, Mozart simply
wills"(Solomon) On the Road
The temptation to take his two prodigies on
the road proved irresistible to
Leopold, who assumed sole responsibility
for Mozart’s education. Between 1762
and 1766, the Mozarts appeared at almost
every major court in Europe. Wolfgang
dazzled audiences with his ability to
read difficult music at sight and to
improvise. In London, as elsewhere, the
Mozarts hobnobbed with the leading
musicians. Probably the most important of
these was Johann Christian Bach, the
youngest son of Johann Sebastian. It is
no accident that Mozart’s early
symphonies, composed in London, are often
stylistically indistinguishable from
those of J. C. Bach. When Mozart was 13,
his prowess as a keyboard player,
violinist, improviser, and composer were
already legendary. "When Mozart was
21 he wrote "Paris" Symphony, N31
while he was in Paris looking for a music
position. He was thoroughly
disenchanted with the French and their
music"(Internet). From 1768 to 1775,
between stays in Salzburg, he and Leopold
made three further forays to Italy
and Germany. Wolfgang evolved from a prodigy
into a serious composer. Public
Successes A self-confident Mozart assured his
father in 1782 that he would be
able to support a wife and family in Vienna, As
a result which he called
"Clavierland. Of its earlier devastation, the
dominant architectural style in
Vienna is Baroque, aided in the 1700s by an
influx of Italian sculptors,
stucco workers, and painters. The dominant
architect and architectural
historian was Italian-trained Johann Fischer von
Erlach(1656-1723), whose
densely decorated structures still stand out today."
He planned to
achieve this by writing music for the public: operas, symphonies,
and
concertos featuring himself as pianist. Although public performances
were
less frequent than today, they were for that reason on a more lavish
scale. Of a
set of piano concertos, Mozart commented "There are passages here
and there
from which the connoisseurs alone can derive sattisfaction; but
these passages
are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to
be pleased,
though without knowing why"(Solomon 293). In spite of intrigues
raised
against him, Mozart managed to present The Abduction from the Seraglio
in 1782.
Of its success, he wrote proudly to his father:"People are crazy
about this
opera, and it does me good to hear such applause." For the first
few seasons,
Mozart enjoyed an intoxicating popularity among the
Viennese. In a series of
academies attended by almost 300 supporters and
patrons, he unveiled a string of
masterful piano concertos. Emboldened by his
success, he moved his family to the
best part of town. Mozart tried to take
advantage of the emerging
entrepreneurial opportunities in Vienna. Four of
his operas—The Abduction from
the Seraglio(1782), The Marriage of
Figaro(1786), Don Giovanni(1787), and Così
fan tutte(1790) —were premiered or
performed in the prestigious Burgtheater.
But the Viennese were not
disposed to settle on one composer for long, even one
whose talents dwarfed
those of all others. Figaro—begun in October 1785, only
nine months after the
completion of the C-major String Quartet—provides an
instructive example. The
play by Beaumarchais had been banned shortly after its
Parisian premiere
in1784. By 1787, Mozart’s star in Vienna had begun to set.
In Peter
Shafer’s play Amadeus, Mozart’s failures are attributed to an
infantile
personality and the intrigues of court composer Antonio Salieri. But
there is
no evidence that either of these wonderful dramatic conceits were
true
historically. Indeed, Mozart and Salieri were on cordial terms. Papa
Haydn We do
not know the occasion on which Mozart first encountered Joseph
Haydn, though it
was almost certainly around 1781, possibly at one of the
gatherings organized by
Baron von Swieten to hear the music of J. S.
Bach. At 50, Haydn was twice
Mozart’s age. By now he was also at least
twice as well known. Mozart had
known Haydn’s music for at least ten years.
In Haydn he not only found a
composer whose achievements were on a level with
his own, but a warm and
sympathetic friend in whom he could confide. This
contrasted strongly with the
strained relationship that Mozart enjoyed with
his father. In the autumn of
1791, Mozart’s health became progressively
worse, and he was subject to fits
of depression and presentiments of death.
However, he worked feverishly to
complete the Clarinet Concerto, K.622, and
the Masonic Cantata and was trying to
finish the Requiem. He died on December
5, 1791, and was buried in a pauper’s
grave"Viennese society where to blame
for Mozart’s lack of recognition, slow
demise, and interment in a pauper’s
grave"(Braunbehrers). The unfinished
Requiem, which Mozart imagined was
for himself, is numbered K.626. "His body
was gone, but his magnificent
music-symphonies, opera, duos, trios, quartet,
violon concertos, piano
concertos, vocal and choral works praising God,
happiness, and all of
life-lives forever"(Mirsky144) Listening example: Mozart
1 symphony
(K.16) was written at the age of nine. His symphonic compositions
culminate
in the "Jupiter" written in 1788 when Mozart was 32. His earlier
symphonies
seem to give greatest importance to the first movement. In the
"Jupiter"
Mozart build toward the finale with passages in a fugal style as
the grand
climax after the minuet (3rd Movement) Composer: W.A. Mozart
Title:
Jupiter Symphony Key: C Meter: In threes Form: A B A (Minuet and
Trio) Terms to
Review: Enlightenment: A philosophical movement of the
eighteenth century that
placed primary faith in the power of mankind to solve
chronic problems through
the application of reason and scientific method
rather than faith and
speculation. The Enlightenment anticipated democratic
revolutions, but took
place under political monarchies. As a child of the
Enlightenment, Mozart
considered himself a member of the natural aristocracy
but was anything but a
democrat. Violin: The highest and the most glamorous
member of the string
family, pitched a fifth above the viola. In a string
quartet, both of the treble
instruments are violins. One who plays the violin
(however well or badly) is
known as a "violinist." If you are contemplating
taking up a string
instrument and fame is your goal, then the violin is your
first choice. Mozart,
Leopold: (1719-1787) Father of Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart. Leopold served over four
decades as a court musician to five
archbishops of Salzburg. In 1756, the year
that Wolfgang was born, he
published the first edition of his Violin School,
which soon brought him
international fame. In 1800, more than a dozen years
after Leopold’s death,
his treatise was still being reprinted. As Wolfgang’s
only formal teacher, he
exercised a pivotal influence on his son’s
development. Opera: A drama set to
music. Opera was the dominant form of Western
public music from the
seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, parallel in
importance to our
modern cinema. Baroque: Period in musical history extending
from ca. 1600 to
1750. The music of the late Baroque (ca. 1690 to 1750) is best
known today.
Its major representatives were Johann Sebastian Bach in Germany,
Georg
Friderich Handel (another German) in England, Antonio Vivaldi in Italy,
and
Jean-Philippe Rameau in France. Mozart was born as the late Baroque drew to
a
close. As an adult, he came to know and admire the music of Bach and
Handel.
Piano Concerto: One of the public forms of instrumental music
cultivated by
Mozart in Vienna. Mozart can, for all practical purposes,
be credited with the
invention of the Classical piano concerto. Antonio
Salieri: Italian composer
(1750-1825) who spent most of his career in Vienna
and became one of its most
influential musicians. So fond was the emperor,
Joseph II, of Salieri that he
became known as the "musical pope." Salieri was
first and foremost an opera
composer, though a considerably less innovative
one than Mozart. Both Ludwig van
Beethoven and Franz Schubert studied
with Salieri. Joseph Haydn: Austrian
composer (1732-1809) whose
eighteenth-century fame eclipsed that of Mozart.
Unlike Mozart, Haydn was
a relatively late bloomer, composing most of his
important music after the
age of 35 (at which age Mozart was dead). Haydn played
a seminal role in the
development of the symphony and the string quartet. His
friendship with
Mozart from ca. 1781 on was crucial to the musical development
of both
composers. Summary: The world that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
entered
unceremoniously in 1756 was awash in change. Historians refer to this
era as the
Age of Enlightenment. Indeed, Mozart marks the beginning of
the Western
fascination with the child prodigy. The idealization of Mozart’s
genius was
complete by the end of the nineteenth century. Between 1762 and
1766, the
Mozarts appeared at almost every major court in Europe.
Wolfgang dazzled
audiences with his ability to read difficult music at sight
and to improvise
Four of his operas—The Abduction from the
Seraglio(1782), The Marriage of
Figaro(1786), Don Giovanni(1787), and
Così fan tutte(1790) —were premiered or
performed in the prestigious
Burgtheater. Then Mozart met Haydn; we do not know
the occasion on which
Mozart first encountered Joseph Haydn. In Haydn, he not
only found a composer
whose achievements were on a level with his own, but a
warm and sympathetic
friend in whom he could confide. In the autumn of 1791,
Mozart’s health
became progressively worse. He died on December 5, 1791, and
was buried in a
pauper’s grave.