He composed over works, including some of the most famous and loved pieces of symphonic, chamber, operatic, and choral music. Mozart was born in Salzburg to a musical family. From an early age, the young Mozart showed all the signs of a prodigious musical talent. By the age of 5 he could read and write music, and he would entertain people with his talents on the keyboard.
By the age of 6 he was writing his first compositions. Mozart was generally considered to be a rare musical genius, though Mozart said that he was diligent in studying other great composers such as Haydn and Bach.
Approximately three hours and 10 minutes including one minute intermission. His father, Leopold Mozart, a noted composer, instructor, and the author of famous writings on violin playing, was then in the service of the archbishop of Salzburg. Leopold and Anna Maria, his wife, stressed the importance of music to their children.
Together with his sister, Nannerl, Wolfgang received such intensive musical training that by the age of six he was a budding composer and an accomplished keyboard performer. In Leopold presented his son as performer at the imperial court in Vienna, Austria, and from to he escorted both children on a continuous musical tour across Europe, which included long stays in Paris, France, and London, England, as well as visits to many other cities, with appearances before the French and English royal families.
Mozart was the most celebrated child prodigy an unusually gifted child of this time as a keyboard performer. He also made a great impression as a composer and improviser one who arranges or creates. In London he won the admiration of musician Johann Christian Bach — , and he was exposed from an early age to an unusual variety of musical styles and tastes across Europe. From the age of ten to seventeen, Mozart's reputation as a composer grew to a degree of maturity equal to that of most older established musicians.
He spent the years from to at Salzburg writing instrumental works and music for school dramas in German and Latin, and in he produced his first real operas: the German Singspiel that is, with spoken dialogue Bastien und Bastienne. Mozart wrote to patrons, out of necessity one would say, and therefore his work would follow instructions, and common structures and directions. It was more about satisfying rather than surprising — which perhaps explains the smaller room for improvement and development in his music.
It does not aim at musical progress and innovation, at bringing the listener out of his comfort zone; it is melodic — and melody is key to popularity. It is diverse and appeals to all tastes — from opera, to chamber and symphonic music.
Finally, it has musical interest — behind this apparent simplicity, Mozart would sprinkle his music with interesting musical surprises and twists — he is well-known for using chromaticism at a time where it was still considered a strong dissonance, and two centuries before Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie used it as the foundation of bebop!
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More Blogs. Making It Easier for Audiences How can promoters optimise potential audience engagement and retention? Leave a Comment Cancel Comment All fields are required. He was probably a nightmare to deal with and certainly no stranger to life's luxuries he loved a drink, whether he could afford it or not , but isn't that why we follow celebrities nowadays? If it wasn't for his foibles, there's no way he could've composed the way he did.
He might've been fighting off debt-collectors and nursing a sore head for much of his compositional life, but it led to music that still thrums with life and enthusiasm. Take the overture to The Marriage of Figaro , for example. It starts with an almost imperceptibly quiet flurry of woodwinds listen to a clip in our playlist below , but it only takes a few seconds before it absolutely explodes into existence.
Not only does it give you a flavour of the opera it precedes, it also says a huge amount about how Mozart composed. It's restless, tangential and, above all, lively as anything.
Or, if you want to start somewhere a little more reflective, have a go at the second movement from the Clarinet Concerto in A sitting comfortably, of course. For a composer synonymous with the phrase 'too many notes', the theme is incredibly simple. It encapsulates the real melancholy that plagued Mozart's life, particularly towards the end as he grew more tired and got into more trouble - the highs were spectacularly high, but the lows revealed a painful kind of nostalgia.
Why is Mozart great? Because he lived his life like it might be over at any moment.
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