Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Essay, Research Paper

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 1756 & # 8212 ; 1791 Composer. Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg. His male parent, Leopold Mozart, a noted composer and educator and the writer of a celebrated treatise on fiddle playing, was so in the service of the archbishop of Salzburg. Together with his sister, Nannerl, Wolfgang received such intensive musical preparation that by the age of six, he was a budding composer and an complete keyboard performing artist. In 1762, Leopold presented his boy as a performing artist at the imperial tribunal in Vienna, and from 1763 to 1766, he escorted both kids on a uninterrupted musical circuit across Europe. The circuit included long corsets in Paris and London every bit good as visits to many other metropoliss, with visual aspects before the Gallic and English royal households.

Mozart was the most famed kid prodigy of this clip as a keyboard performing artist and made a great feeling, excessively, as composer and improviser. In London, he won the esteem of so high a musician as Johann Christian Bach ( 1735-1782 ) , and he was exposed from an early age to an unusual assortment of musical manners and gustatory sensations across the Continent.

Salzburg and Italy, 1766-1773

From his ten percent to his 17th twelvemonth, Mozart grew in stature as a composer to a grade of adulthood equal to that of his most high older coevalss ; as he continued to spread out his conquering of current musical manners, he outstripped them. He spent the old ages 1766-1769 in Salzburg, composing instrumental plants and music for school play in German and Latin. In 1768, he produced his first existent operas: the German Singspiel ( that is, with spoken duologue ) Bastien und Bastienne and the opera buffa La finta semplice. Artless and naif as La finta semplice is when compared to his ulterior Italian operas, it however shows a latent sense of character portraiture and all right truth of Italian text scene.

Despite his repute as a prodigy, Mozart found no suited station unfastened to him. With his male parent one time more as an bodyguard, the 14-year-old Mozart set off for Italy in 1769 to seek to do his manner as an opera composer, the field in which he openly declared his aspiration to win and that offered higher fiscal wagess than other signifiers of composing at this clip.

Mozart was good received in Italy: in Milan, he obtained a committee for an opera ; in Rome, he was made a member of an honorary knightly order by the Pope ; and in Bologna, the Accademia Filarmonica awarded him rank despite a regulation usually necessitating campaigners to be 20 old ages old. During these old ages of travel in Italy and returns to Salzburg between journeys, he produced his first large-scale scenes of opera seria ( that is, tribunal opera on serious topics ) : Mitridate ( 1770 ) , Ascanio in Alba ( 1771 ) , and Lucio Silla ( 1772 ) , every bit good as his first String Quartets. At Salzburg in late 1771, he renewed his authorship of Symphonies ( Nos. 14-21 ) .

In these operatic plants, Mozart displays a complete command of the varied manners of aria required for the great ace vocalists of the twenty-four hours ( particularly large-scale district attorney capo arias ) , this being the exclusive reliable demand of this type of opera. The strong propensity of these plants toward the vocalists & # 8217 ; virtuosity instead than toward dramatic content made the opera seria a quickly deceasing signifier by Mozart & # 8217 ; s clip, but in Lucio Silla he however shows clear grounds of his power of dramatic look within single scenes.

Salzburg, 1773-1777

During this period, Mozart remained chiefly in Salzburg, employed as concertmaster of the archbishop & # 8217 ; s tribunal instrumentalists. In 1773, a new archbishop took office, Hieronymus Colloredo, who was a fledgling to Salzburg and its provincial ways. Unwilling to permit the frequent absences of the Mozarts, he declined to advance Leopold to the station of chapel maestro that he had long coveted. The archbishop showed every bit small apprehension of immature Mozart & # 8217 ; s particular gifts. In turn Mozart abhorred Salzburg, but he could happen no better station. In 1775, he went off to Munich, where he produced the opera buffa La finta giardiniera with great success but without touchable effects. In this period at Salzburg he wrote nine Symphonies ( Nos. 22-30 ) , including the first-class No. 29 in A Major ; a big figure of serenades, including the Haffner Serenade ; all of his six Concertos for Violin, several other concertos, and church music for usage at Salzburg.

Mannheim and Paris, 1777-1779

Despite his continued productiveness, Mozart was entirely dissatisfied with provincial Austria, and in 1777, he set off for new finishs: Munich, Augsburg, and prolonged corsets in Mannheim and Paris. Mannheim was the place of a celebrated tribunal orchestra, along with a all right opera house. Mozart wrote a figure of attractive plants at that place ( including his three Flute Quartets and five of his Violin Sonatas ) , but he was non offered a station.

Paris was a immensely larger theatre for Mozart & # 8217 ; s endowments ( his male parent urged him to travel at that place, for & # 8220 ; from Paris the celebrity of a adult male of great endowment reverberations through the whole universe, & # 8221 ; he wrote his boy ) . But after nine hard months in Paris, from March 1778 to January 1779, Mozart returned one time more to Salzburg, holding been unable to procure a foot-hold and depressed by the full experience, which had included the decease of his female parent in the thick of his stay in Paris. Unable to acquire a committee for an opera ( still his main aspiration ) , he wrote music to order in Paris, once more chiefly for air current instruments: the Sinfonia Concertante for four solo air current instruments and orchestra, a concerto for flute and harp, other chamber music, and the concert dance music Les Petits riens. In add-on, he was compelled to give lessons to do money.

In his affecting letters from Paris, Mozart described his life in item, but he besides told his male parent ( missive of July 31, 1778 ) , & # 8220 ; You know that I am, so to talk, soaked in music, that I am immersed in it all twenty-four hours long, and that I love to be after plants, survey, and meditate. & # 8221 ; This was the manner in which the existent Mozart saw himself ; it far better reflects the actualities of his life than the fictional image of the unworried spirit who dashed off his plants without forethought, an image that was mostly invented in the 19th century.

Salzburg, 1779-1781

Returning to Salzburg one time more, Mozart took up a station as tribunal music director and fiddler. He chafed once more at the restraints of local life and his humble function under the archbishop. In Salzburg, as he wrote in a missive, & # 8220 ; one hears nil, there is no theatre, no opera. & # 8221 ; During these old ages he concentrated on instrumental music ( Symphony Nos. 32-34 ) , the Symphonia Concertante for fiddle and viola, several orchestral serenade, and ( despite the deficiency of a theatre ) an unfinished German opera, subsequently called Zaide.

In 1780, Mozart received a long-awaited committee from Munich for the opera seria Idomeneo, musically one of the greatest of his plants despite its unmanageable libretto. It was besides one of the great turning points in his musical development, as he moved from his peregrinations of the 1770s to his Vienna visit in the 1780s. Idomeneo is, efficaciously, the last and greatest work in the full tradition of dynastic opera seria, an art signifier that was disintegrating at the same clip that the great European tribunals, which had for decennaries spent their substance on it as amusement, were themselves get downing to feel the air currents of societal and political revolution. Mozart & # 8217 ; s merely other work in this genre, the opera seria La clemenza di Tito ( 1791 ) , was a hastily written work composed on demand for a enthronement at Prague. It is significantly non cast in the traditional big dimensions of antique opera seria, with its long arias, but is cut to two Acts of the Apostless like an opera buffa and has many characteristics of the new operatic design Mozart evolved after Idomeneo.

Vienna, 1781-1791

Mozart & # 8217 ; s old ages in Vienna, from age 25 to his decease at 35, encompass one of the most colossal developments in so short a span in the history of music. While up to now he had demonstrated a complete and fertile appreciation of the techniques of his clip, his music had bee

n mostly within the scope of the higher degrees of the common linguistic communication of the clip. But in these 10 old ages, Mozart’s music grew quickly beyond the comprehension of many of his coevalss ; it exhibited both thoughts and methods of amplification that few could follow, and to many the late Mozart seemed a hard composer. Franz Joseph Haydn’s changeless congratulations of him came from his lone true equal, and Haydn harped once more and once more on the job of Mozart’s obtaining a good and unafraid place, a job no uncertainty compounded by the green-eyed monster of his Viennese challengers.

Mozart disparaged many of his lupus erythematosus talented coevalss in scathing footings. Leopold frequently entreated him to compose in a simple and pleasing manner ( & # 8221 ; What is little can still be great & # 8221 ; ) . Answering to such a supplication, Mozart ( missive of Dec. 28, 1782, from Vienna ) wrote of his ain work in a manner that might use to much of his music: & # 8220 ; These concertos [ K. 413-415 ] are a happy medium between what is excessively easy and what is excessively hard & # 8230 ; there are transitions here and at that place from which merely connoisseurs can deduce satisfaction ; but these transitions are written in such a manner that the less erudite can non neglect to be pleased, though without cognizing why. & # 8221 ;

The major instrumental plant of this period encompass all the Fieldss of Mozart & # 8217 ; s earlier activity and some new 1s: six symphonic musics, including the celebrated last three: No. 39 in E-flat Major, No. 40 in G Minor, and No. 41 in C Major ( the Jupiter a rubric unknown to Mozart ) . He finished these three plants within six hebdomads during the summer of 1788, a singular effort even for him.

In the field of the twine four, Mozart produced two of import groups of plants that wholly overshadowed any he had written before 1780. In 1785, he published the six Fours dedicated to Haydn ( K. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, and 465 ) , and in 1786 added the individual Hoffmeister Quartet ( K. 499 ) . In 1789, Mozart wrote the last three Fours ( K. 575, 589, and 590 ) , dedicated to King Frederick William of Prussia, a celebrated cellist. The six Fours dedicated to Haydn doubtless owe something to Mozart & # 8217 ; s survey of the earlier work of Haydn, possibly most to the self-asserted & # 8220 ; new and particular mode & # 8221 ; of Haydn & # 8217 ; s Op. 33 of 1781, a phrase that may mention to the complete engagement in these plants of all four instruments in the motivic development. Mozart & # 8217 ; s works wholly met the criterions set by Haydn up to so, and surpassed them.

Other chamber music on the highest degree of imaginativeness and workmanship from Mozart & # 8217 ; s Vienna old ages includes the two Piano Fours, seven late Violin Sonatas, the last Piano Trios, and the Piano Quintet with air currents ; and in the last five old ages of his life, the last String Quintets and the Clarinet Quintet. This decennary besides saw the composing of the last 17 of Mozart & # 8217 ; s Piano Concertos, about all written for his ain public presentation. They represent the high point in the literature of the classical concerto, and in the undermentioned coevals merely Ludwig van Beethoven was able to fit them.

A considerable influence upon Mozart & # 8217 ; s music during this decennary was his increasing familiarity with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel, which in Vienna of the 1780s was barely known or appreciated. Through the private intermediacy of an partisan for Bach and Handel, Baron Gottfried new wave Swieten, Mozart came to cognize Bach & # 8217 ; s Well-tempered Clavier, from which he made agreements of several fugues for strings with new preliminaries of his ain. He besides made agreements of plants by Handel, including Acis and Galatea, the Messiah, and Alexander & # 8217 ; s Feast.

In a figure of late plants particularly the Jupiter symphonic music, Die Zauberfl Te ( The Magic Flute ) , and the Requiem one sees an overt usage of contrapuntal processs, which reflects Mozart & # 8217 ; s awakened involvement in contrapuntal techniques at this period. In a more elusive sense, much of his late work, even where it does non do direct usage of fugal textures, reveals a nuance of contrapuntal organisation that doubtless owed something to his deepened experience of the music of Bach and Handel.

Operas of the Vienna Old ages

Mozart & # 8217 ; s development as an opera composer between 1781 and his decease is even more singular, possibly, since the jobs of opera were more far-ranging than those of the larger instrumental signifiers and provided less equal theoretical accounts. In opera, Mozart instinctively set about raising the perfunctory dramatic and musical conventions of his clip to the position of echt art signifiers. Christoph Willibald Gluck had successfully achieved a reform of opera from pettiness, but Gluck can non stand comparing with Mozart in pure musical innovation. Although Idomeneo may so owe a good trade to Gluck, Mozart was instantly thereafter to turn away wholly from opera seria. Alternatively, he sought German or Italian librettos that would supply phase material adequate to excite his powers of dramatic look and dramatic timing through music.

The first of import consequence was the German Singspiel entitled Die Entf hrung gold dem Serail ( 1782 ; Abduction from the Seraglio ) . Not merely does this opera have an huge assortment of expressive portraitures through its arias, but what is new in the work are its minutes of reliable dramatic interaction between characters in ensembles. Following this set, Mozart turned to Italian opera, and he was fortunate plenty to happen a librettist of echt ability, a true literary craftsman, Lorenzo district attorney Ponte. Working with district attorney Ponte, Mozart produced his three greatest Italian operas: Le nozze di Figaro ( 1786 ; The Marriage of Figaro ) , Don Giovanni ( 1787, for Prague ) , and Cosi fan tutte ( 1790 ) .

Figaro is based on a drama by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais, adapted skilfully by district attorney Ponte to the demands of opera. In Figaro, the ensembles go even more of import than the arias, and the considerable profuseness of action in the secret plan is managed with a accomplishment beyond even the best of Mozart & # 8217 ; s rivals. Not merely is every character convincingly portrayed, but the work shows a blending of dramatic action and musical articulation that is likely unprecedented in opera, at least of these dimensions. In Figaro and other late Mozart operas, the vocalists can non assist ordaining the functions conceived by the composer, since the agencies of word picture and dramatic look have been built into the arias and ensembles. Mozart evolved this rule, grasped by merely a few composers in the history of music, in these old ages, and, like everything he touched, wholly mastered it as a technique. It is this that gives these works the quality of flawlessness that opera audiences have attributed to them, together with their absolute command of musical design.

In Don Giovanni, elements of humor and poignancy are blended with the representation of the supernatural onstage, a rare happening at this clip. In Cosi fan tutte, the really thought of & # 8220 ; operatic & # 8221 ; look including the overdone discharge of sentiment is itself made the topic of an dry comedy on fidelity between two braces of lovers, aided by two operators. In his last opera, The Magic Flute ( 1791 ) , Mozart turned back to German opera, and he produced a work uniting many strands of popular theatre but with agencies of musical look runing from quasi-folk vocal to Italianate coloratura. The secret plan, set together by the histrion and showman Emanuel Schikaneder, is partially based on a fairy narrative but is to a great extent impregnated with elements of Freemasonry and perchance with modern-day political overtones.

On reasoning The Magic Flute, Mozart turned to work on what was to be his last undertaking, the Requiem. This Mass had been commissioned by a helper said to be unknown to Mozart, and he is supposed to hold become obsessed with the belief that he was, in consequence, composing it for himself. Ill and exhausted, he managed to complete the first two motions and studies for several more, but the last three subdivisions were wholly missing when he died. At the goads of Mozart & # 8217 ; s married woman, Constanze, whom he married in 1782, his student Franz S ssmayer completed it after Mozart & # 8217 ; s decease, on December 5, 1791. Close to destitute at the clip of his decease, Mozart was given a third-class funeral.