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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
_{27 January 1756 - 5 December 1791}

Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at 17 he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized.

Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate-the whole informed by a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute." His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."

GET YOUR MOZART ON

Everyone knows of the child-wonder who was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At age 6, Mozart found himself playing for the Imperial Court in Vienna, blowing them all away with his talent. He was at that time already a budding composer who was about to embark on a three year performance tour of Europe. Mozart would go on to write over 600 compositions throughout his life, including the world famous operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, La Clemenza di Tito and Così fan tutte.

But did you also know...

• His baptismal name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.
• He sometimes composed his symphonies while playing billiards.
• The city of Salzburg, Austria still honours Mozart today with a museum and an annual music festival dedicated to him.
• He had a photographic memory.
• He could play back an entire piece of music after just one listen.
• He had a potty mouth, as seen in his surviving letters. He even wrote a musical canon, a party piece just for friends, called Leck mich im Arsch (Kiss My Arse).
• He measured 5'4"
• In love but rebuffed by soprano Aloysia Weber, Mozart went on to marry her sister, Constanze Weber.
• Mozart and Constanze had 6 children, but only 2 survived through infancy.
• His final commission came in the form of a requiem Mass, for which he would be paid 100 ducats. The funeral song turned out to be his swansong.
• The cause of Mozart's death is unknown, although there have been speculations that it was trichinosis, mercury poisoning or rheumatic fever.
• Although he was a well-known and well-loved composer, he died practically penniless.

_{SOURCE: Vancouver Opera Blog}