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Homework Help: Music: Composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, christened Johannes
Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was born in
Salzburg on 27 January 1756. His father,
Leopold Mozart, was a famous musician and composer in his
own right. In his twenty-fourth year, Leopold received an
appointment as violinist in the orchestra of the Archbishop of
Salzburg, finally rising to the position of chapel master. He
composed with fertility, and produced a famous violin method.
But, as Leopold himself realized, his greatest work was not his
own music, butÑhis son, Wolfgang.
Much has been written about Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart's phenomenal precociousness. At the age of three, he
already sat in front of the harpsichord attempting to find
harmonic successions of thirds; whenever he succeeded, his
shrill voice rang out joyfully. When Wolfgang was four, his
father began to teach him the elements of harpsichord and,
playfully, the rules of composition. Wolfgang did not need to
learn. He began producing minuets and other small pieces for
harpsichord, and several sonatas for harpsichord and violin.
He produced with such ease that by his sixth year he had
produced an imposing quantity of minuets, sonatas, and even a
concerto. His sensitive ear could recognize that the violin of
his fatherÕs friend was tuned an eigth of a note lower than he
himself tuned his own instrument; and it could rebel so
violently against a raucous sound that at the blast of a
trumpet he swooned with pain. Music, obviously, came as
naturally to him as breathing.
Leopold Mozart, recognizing the extraordinary
gifts of his two children (for
Maria Anna, five years Wolfgang's senior, was also strongly
talented) decided to exhibit his children before all Europa.
When Wolfgang was six years old, therefore, an extensive concert
tour brought him to the foremost concert halls and royal courts
of Europa. Wherever he performed, the sweet charm of his
personality and his incredible genius conquered the hearts of
music lovers. Francis I of
Wein lovingly referred to him as "ein kleine hexenmeister"
("a little master-wizard"). In Frankfurt, Mozart gave somthing
of a one-man circus show: "He will play," ran the announcement
in the Frankfurt newspaper, "a concerto for the violin, and will
accompany symphonies on the clavier, the manuel or keyboard
being covered with a cloth, with as much facility as if he
could see the keys; he will instantly name all the notes played
at a distance, whether singly or in chords as on the clavier or
any other instrument, bell, glass or clock. He will, finally,
both on the harpsichord and the organ, improvise as long as may
be desired and in any key."
"I was only fourteen years old," wrote Goethe
many years later to Eckermann about this Frankfurt performance,
"but I see, as if I were still there, the little man with his
childÕs sword and his curly hair. . . . A phenomenon like that
of Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.Ó
In Paris, Wolfgang became the darling of
Versailles. He was, as Grimm wrote "so extraordinary a
phenomenon that one finds it difficult to believe it unless one
has seen him with oneÕs own eyes and heard him with one's own
ears." The Paris visit was marked by the appearance of Mozart's
first published work, four sonatas for the harpsichord.
From Paris, the Mozarts came to London, where
Wolfgang won the heart of Johann Christian Bach, chapel master. In London, Wolfgang
gave several sensational performances at the Vauxhall Gardens
which were the subject of great wonder.
The Mozarts were back in Salzburg in 1766, after
an absence of four years. The tour had been a greater success
artistically than materially. True, Mozart was given many gifts
by royalty, but the principal goal towards which Leopold aspired
had been unachieved, the acquisition of a permanent, lucrative
post by Wolfgang in one of the principal European courts.
One year later, the Mozarts were once again on
tour. They had come to Wein where Wolfgang was commissioned to
compose his first opera. Intrigues, created by envious
composers (who realized their inferiority), prevented this first
opera receiving a performance. In Wein, however, another
charming theatrical work of Mozart, Bastien und Bastienne,
an opŽra-bouffe, was performed at the home of a friend, Dr.
Messner.
Towards the close of 1769, the Mozarts made
their first journey to Italia, a journey crowned with glory. In
Mantua, they attended a concert of the Philharmonic orchestra
which performed a few of Wolfgang's compositions in his honour.
In Milano, they received a commission for Wolfgang to compose an
opera seria for the following year. Bologna brought Mozart into
contact with the great Martini, who welcomed the young genius
with open arms of admiration and respect. In Roma, there took
place that phenomenal proof of Mozart's genius which has
frequently been quoted. Yount Mozart attended a performance of
the celebrated Miserere of Allegri which could be heard
only in Roma during Holy Week performed by the papal choir. By
papal decree it was forbidden to sing the work elsewhere, and
its only existing copy was guarded slavishly by the papal choir.
Any attempt to copy the song or reproduce it in any form was
punishable by excommunication. Mozart, however, had heard the
work only once when, returning home, he reproduced it in its
entirety upon paper. (I have heard the piece; it is long and
extremely complex, with double-orchestra, organ, and conflicting
choral parts.) No one has ever been able to even dream of
duplicating this feat, even on a much smaller scale. This
incomparable feat soon became the subject for awed whispers in
Roma; it was not long before the Pope himself heard of this
amazing achievement. The Pope summoned Mozart, but instead of
punishing the young genius with excommunication, he showered
praise upon him and gave him handsome gifts. A few months
later, the Pope bestowed upon Mozart the Cross of the Order of
the Golden Spur.
The following autumn, the Mozarts were back in
Italia for Wolfgang to fulfil his commission for Milano and
bring to completion his opera seria, Mitradate, re di Ponte
. "Before the first rehearsal," Herr Leopold Mozart wrote
to his wife, "there was no lack of people to run down the
music and pronounce it beforehand in satirical language to be
something poor and childish, alleging that so young a boy, and
Deutsch in the bargain, could not possibly write an Italiano
opera and that, although they acknowledged him to be a great
executant, he could not understand or feel the chiaroscuro
required in the theatre. All these people have been reduced to
silence since the evening of the first rehearsal with small
orchestra, and say not a word."
At the performance of Mitridate on
Christmas day of 1770, the work was a phenomenal success. One
of the soprano arias, contrary to all precedent, was encored.
Cheers greeted the diminutive composer as he reached the stage.
The newspapers commented upon that "rarest musical grace" and
that "studied beauty" which seemed to be Wolfgang's intuitive
idiom.
The next few years of Mozart's life were drab.
Except for two brief intermissions, he remained in Salzburg
whose limited intellectual world chafed him considerably.
Moreover, his musical labour at the Court of the Archbishop was
an endless humiliation. He was the principal composer and
virtuoso at the Court, but his salary was so meagre and his
work so unappreciated that each day was for him crowded with
trials. His fellow musicians at the Court were dissolute
scoundrels, whose musical tastes were vulgar and whose interests
centred upon gambling and drink. "Tell me," Wolfgang wrote at
this time,"how could a decent fellow possibly live in such
company?"
It was, therefore, with a yearning heart that
Wolfgang dreamt of escaping from Salzburg. A new extensive
tour was, therefore, planned for Mozart in 1777, and since Herr
Leopold was refused by the Archbishop a leave-of-absence,
Wolfgang Mozart left in the company of his mother to conquer the
music world anew.
But the music world was this time not so easily
conquered by Mozart. He was now twenty-one years old, a
child prodigy no longer. The music world had in the past
lavished its adoration upon a little pug-nosed child who could
achieve miraculous musical feats. Now that the child had
entered man's estate, he had lost his great appeal. MŸnchen
and Mannheim turned a deaf ear to his pleas for a permanent
post at court; even random commissions were not forthcoming.
These disappointments, however, did not smother
Wolfgang's high spirits. Now a man, he found consolation from
his disappointments in frequent love affairs. In Augsburg,
there was his cousin, Basle, his first genuine love. "Basle,"
he wrote to his father,"seems to have been made for me, and I
for herÑfor both of us have that little bit of badness in
us." In Mannheim, where he was a household guest of a musical
family called Cannabich, he in turn courted Rosa Cannabich and
then Aloysia Weber, a singer, daughter of a copyist. He
thought seriously of marrying Aloysia; only the heated and
embittered letters of his father convinced him that it was
wiser to delay marriage until he had procured his desired post.
The road, therefore, next brought him to Paris, where in the
Summer of 1778 Mozart's mother passed away.
In Paris, too, Mozart met disappointment. There
were those who were acutely jealous of his phenomenal genius;
the others thought of him only as a one-time prodigy who had
outgrown his talent. Because of these people, it was
impossible for him to receive the appreciation he deserved.
Small commissions fell to him, but they were so slight and of
such negligible importance that they failed to support him
adequately. Even Grimm, once so idolatrous, now lost interest
in Wolfgang, complaining in a long letter to Herr Leopold
Mozart, that Wolfgang was "too confident, too little a man of
action, too much ready to succumb to his own illusions, too
litte au courant with the ways that lead to success."
It was not long before Mozart, convinced that no
important post was open for him, decided to return to Mannheim
and marry Aloysia Weber. To his bewilderment and humiliation,
he learned upon his arrival that Aloysia had forgotten him so
completely during his absence that she did not even recognize
him when he entered.
Disappointment and disillusionment now
completely overwhelmed him. He returned to Salzburg (a town he
detested with increasing strength each time he returned to it)
for a brief and sombre period. In 1780, a commission from
MŸnchen for an opera seria brought him escape. This commission
resulted in the first of Mozart's great opera, Idomeneo.
Idomeneo, upon its first performance on 29 January, 1781,
was a rousing success. Ramm, the oboist, and Lange, the
horn-player "were half-crazy with delight,"and the latter
exclaimed: "I must own that I have never yet heard any music
which made such a deep impression upon me!" The audience
expressed its enthusiasm in no uncertain responses.
This success inspired Mozart to sever all
connections with Salzburg and his employer, the Archbishop, and
to settle permanently in Wein. Shortly after he made Wein his
permanent home, he was commissioned by Joseph II to compose a
Singspiel. Die EntfŸauthrung auf dem Serail duplicated in
Wein the success that Idomeneo enjoyed in MŸnchen.
Gluck, the foremost composer of operas at the time, had the
work especially performed for him, his praise being lavish.
Joseph II honoured Mozart with rewards. And Prince Kaunitz,
after hearing the opera, openly expressed the opinion that a
genius like Wolfgang Mozart could appear only once.
On 4 August 1782 Mozart was married to
Constanze Weber, youngest sister of his one-time beloved
Aloysia. The ceremony was a simple one, the only ones present
being the bride's mother and youngest sister, two witnesses, and
a friend of the family. "The moment we were made one," Mozart
wrote to his father,"my wife and I began to weep, which
touched everyone, even the priest. ...We are married now; we
are man and wife! And we love each other enormously. We feel
that we are made for one another."
It was shortly after his marriage that Mozart
met and became a close friend of
Josef Haydn. Haydn recognised Mozart's genius, and until
the end of his life exerted his every effort to bring
recognition and fame to the younger composer who, he sincerely
felt, was without an equal in all music.
On 1 May 1786, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro
was introduced in Wein. "I can still see Mozart," wrote
Michael Kelly, a singer, in his Reminiscences "dressed in
his red fur hat trimmed with gold, standing on the stage with
the orchestra, at the first rehearsal, beating time for the
music....The players on the stage and in the orchestra were
electrified. Intoxicated with pleasure, they cried again and
again, and each time louder than the preceding one: 'Bravo,
maestro! Long live the great Mozart'...It seemed as if the
storm of applause would never cease....Had Mozart written
nothing but this piece of music it alone would, in my humble
opinion, have stamped him as the greatest composer of all time.
Never before was there a greater triumph than Mozart and his
Figaro!"
Despite this emphatic success, Mozart knew at
this time a period of great trial and depression. His child,
Raimund, had died three months after birth, inspiring in the
composer a fit of melancholy which was not easily dissipated.
Moreover, at this time, Mozart knew appalling poverty.
Repeatedly, he wrote pitiful letters to publishers, to friends,
to distant acquaintances for small loans to relieve his
trying circumstances. Finally, his wife Constanze was ill, her
sickness brought on by undernourishment.
Yet, in spite of these trying years, Mozart's
pen knew no recess from the production of imperishable
masterpieces. In October of 1787 he produced for Prag
Don Giovanni, which more than one critic has designated
as the greatest opera (including me). Don Giovanni was
greeted with thunderous cheers; but to the impoverished
composer it meant only one hundred meagre florins. One year
after Don Giovanni, Mozart composed his three final
symphoniesÑnumbers 39 (in G-minor), 40 (in E-flat major),
and 41 (in C-major, the Jupiter)Ñall in the
incredible span of two months. In 1790, came Cos“ fan tutte
, followed closely by Die Zauberflšte. And
between the composition of these monumental works, Mozart was
composing a prolific library of concerti for solo instruments
and his masterpieces for string quartet, along with hosts of
other works.
Mozart's last work was composed under mysterious
circumstances. In 1791 a stranger, masked and dressed in grey,
accosted Mozart and commissioned him to compose a requiem. The
stranger was representing a wealthy nobleman who frequently
asked great composers to produce works for him which he later
presented under his own name. But to Mozart, ill and morbid as
he was at this time, it appeared that this stranger was a
messenger from the other world sent to warn the composer that
the time had come for him to compose his own requiem. Through
the sleepless, delirious nights, the messenger from the other
world haunted Mozart's thoughts. Feverishly he worked upon his
requiem, refusing both rest and food so that he might finish his
work before it was too late. "Willingly would I follow your
advice," he wrote to a friend who tried to persuade him to take
a holiday,"but how can I do it?...I know by my feelings that my
hour has come. It is striking even now! I am in the region of
death."
He was found at his desk unconcious. He was
taken to bed, and the physician who had been summoned soon
announced that Mozart was seeing his last days. Mozart had
already known that he was dying. To his pupil, S. Mayer,
he explained precisely how the Requiem was to be brought
to completion. Shortly before his last breath left him, he
attempted to sing parts of his last great work. On 5 December
1791, he said farewell to his family and turned his face to the
wall; shortly afterwards he was dead.
Mozart's remains were thrown into a pauper's
grave in the churchyard of St. Mark. One week later, when
Constanze returned with flowers to Mozart's body, she could not
find the grave. Because Mozart had died like a pauper, his
grave had been left unmarked, his body unidentified. Thus
passed probably the greatest genius the world has ever known.
Mozart was short and slim, and though his head
was slightly too large for the body its well-proportioned
features gave him an attractive appearance. His face had a
softness that was almost effeminate, his cheeks always being
sickly pallid. His eyes, piercing in their intensity, were
eloquently expressive. His hair, of which he was considerably
proud, was a rich shock.
Well-poised, meticulously well dressed (he
frequently sported laces and jewelry) and possessed of charming
manners he made a deep impression upon these with whom he came
into contact. Though moody by temperment and introspective, he
was considerably fond of the society of pleasant people. He
adored dancing, and it was with great difficulty that
Constanze could keep him from frequenting places of
questionable reputation. His recreation consisted of bowling
and playing billiards. "He was generally cheeful and in good
humour," Constanze Mozart has recorded,"rarely melancholy,
though sometimes pensive. His speaking voice was gentle, except
while directing music when he became loud and energeticÑ
would even stamp with his feet, and might be heard at a
considerable distance."
Commenting upon Mozart's method of composition,
Robert Pitrou wrote: "With him, both stages - the birth of
ideas and their elaboration - were probably unconcious. His
mind was constantly creating, without ever a break. When he
came to the third stage - to committing to paper - he used
to give his ideas at one stroke the very form he was aiming at...
When at his desk, he always seems...to have been copying music
already fully written down in his mind. We even know, from his
letters, that his mind could turn to other music the while.
Sending a prelude and fugue to his sister on 20 April 1792
[error of date is copied direct from quote], he wrote: 'Forgive
the untidy arrangement. I had composed the fugue first, and
while writing it out, I was thinking out the prelude.'"
Mozart himself has written: "When I am in the
right mood, ideas seem to teem within me. Those I like I
retain. Then there are scraps which might go to the making of
many a good dish. When I start composing I draw upon the
accumulation in my brain."
Commenting succinctly on Mozart's principal
operas, Eric Blom has written: "With Idomeneo mastery may
well be said to have been reached...Fine work Mozart certainly
did put into Idomeneo, and in spite of the influnce of
Piccinni and of certain conventions (mainly choral) of French
grand opera, he was becoming an independant musical
personality. His treatment of accompanied recitative shows a
very sensitive readiness to apply expressive touches...In
Die EntfŸauthrung auf dem Serail Mozart was at last
wholly in his element, not because of any special liking for the
Deutsch Singspiel...but chiefly because by 1782 he was a
fully matured master of his craft and had learnt a good deal
about life....Indeed one would not have a note different...for
it never ceases to be delicious as it is apt to its type and
subject....It is a structure and a collection of tunes of
such fascinating grace that one would like to call back every
phrase of it to hug it over and over again....And then came
Le nozze di Figaro...the perfect opŽra-bouffe....
Beaumarchais'[s] exposure of a refined but pernicious
civilization is here made the pretext for music as sunnily
civilized [sic] as the world ought to have if the dreamers of
Mozart's age had been right....These qualities
[Le nozze di] Figaro has to a great degree never
again attained in music, and it has moreover a profound
humanity, a sympathetic penetration into the hearts of men and
womenÑespecially women...[Le nozze di] Figaro
is Italian[o] comic opera in its final stages of perfection....
With all its overwhelming perfection, [Le nozze di]
Figaro still shows an almost disconcerting readiness to
use the current idiom of the time....But the next opera, the
greatest of all...Don Giovanni, makes a tremendous
advance in achieving the originality already, so to speak, at
the fountainhead of inspiration....It is impossible to conceive
that any notion as here set down by Mozart could have come from
the pen of any other composer, then or later. What is more, not
a single number in Don Giovanni can be imagined to
occur in any other opera by Mozart himself. Everything is in
character, everything colored [sic] by the particular mood into
which this great tragi-comic subject cast him....After Don
Giovanni we are magically transported into yet another
world: that of Cos“ fan tutte. Well, scarcely a world at
all; only a show of marionettes....Once again Mozart achieved
the miraculous feat of writing a score which, consistent in
style from start to finish, could not by any conceivable chance
lend a single one of its number to any other works of his. The
whole perfume and flavor [sic] of the music is new and unique.
Artifice is the keynote of it....
"What Mozart wanted was not declamation but
spontaneous emotional expression, not grandly ordered drama but
the variety of life....That is why he was not in the least
disturbed by the hair-raising inconsistencies, the pantomime
absurdities of The Magic flute [Die Zauberflšte?]
....Here was a great deal of nonsense, but it was good theatre,
it was alive, and there was a multiformity of setting, of
situation, of character such as he had never before had occasion
to handle...The variety of The Magic flute
[Die Zauberflšte?] score ought to be bewildering; somehow
it is only astonishing in a favorable [sic] sense....The music
itself is much more diversified than that of any opera of
Mozart's....the flashy Italian[a] arias of the Queen of the
Night [Kšnigin der Nacht?] next to Sarstro's solemn utterances
in Mozart's 'masonic' manner, the popular ditties of Popageno
side by side with the profound humanity of Pamina's
tear-compelling G-minor lament and the wonderful dramatic truth
of her brief mad scene...all this and more is by some marvel of
genius fashioned into a single gem of many factsÑand of
inestimable value."
Edvard Grieg, the famous composer, has written
an illuminating essay on Mozart which is not widely known. In
it, he has discussed Mozart's final symphonies in the following
manner: "We note at once the great step from Haydn's to Mozart's
treatment of this highest of instrumental forms, and our
thoughts are involuntarily transferred to the young Beethoven
who, without any specially noteworthy break, rises from where
Mozart left off to those proud summits which none but he was
destined to reach. In the introduction of the E-flat major
symphony, just before the first allegro, we come upon
harmonic combinations of unprecedented boldness. They are
introduced in so surprising a way that they will always preserve
the impression of novelty....In the G-minor symphony, Mozart
shows himself to us in all his grace and sincerity of feeling.
It is worth noting what astonishing effects he gets here by the
use of chromatic progressions. In the Jupiter symphony
[Symphonie Nr.1 C major KV. 551] we are astounded, above all,
by the playful ease with which the greatest problems of art are
treated. No one who is not initiated suspects in the finale,
amid the humurous tone gambols, what an amazing contrapunal
knowledge and superiority Mozart manifests. And then this
ocean of euphony! Mozart's sense of euphony was, indeed, so
absolute that it is impossible, in all his works, to find a
single bar wherein it is sacrificed to other considerations."
Mozart was the greatest composer who ever
lived. Take some time to listen to Mozart's music, the music of Heaven.
Homework Help: Music: Composers
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