Composer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Austria · b. 1756

Biography

Vienna from 1781 meant a freelance life, precarious in that city and the making of the piano concertos, in which a soloist's display and a symphonist's argument are held in the same hand. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been taught by his father Leopold and shown across Europe as keyboard player, violinist and composer before he was ten, absorbing Italian opera, German counterpoint and French orchestral manners on those journeys without surrendering a voice that was already unmistakably his; before Vienna he served the Salzburg court and chafed at its limits. The three operas written with Lorenzo Da Ponte — Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte — remade comic opera by letting social action and private feeling proceed at once inside an ensemble. His last year brought Die Zauberflöte, the Clarinet Concerto and the Requiem, unfinished when he died in Vienna in 1791. His first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus, was written at eleven, and Mitridate, re di Ponto was staged in Milan under his own direction after the Italian journey of 1769, during which he studied composition with Padre Martini. The first Viennese years brought Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 1782 and the symphonies numbered 33 to 38, and the last three symphonies followed in 1788.

Works performed

Cantatas and oratorios

Symphonic works

Works for solo instrument and orchestra

Opera excerpts (arias, duets, scenes)

Other works

Events