![]() ![]() This biographical construction, however, hardly does justice to the life Mozart must have experienced, not least in its music-centricity: more often than not, the facts of Mozart's everyday life, his education, his travels, and the social and cultural constructs and currents of his time, remain unconnected to his music, except in obvious instances such as commissions and works demonstrably composed for special occasions or his early works, usually said to repre4sent his assimilation of local models, wherever he happened to be at their time of composition. The one significant difference, perhaps, is that Mozart's alleged decline is 'redeemed' by the composition, in his final year, of two transcendent works: the sacred Requiem and the secular The Magic Flute. Most Mozart biographers see in this three-fold division a pattern that, even if its dates do not exactly correspond with the traditional, Rousseauian model of a creative life - apprenticeship (which for Mozart is said to extend from 1763 to the late 1770s), maturity (the late 1770s to about 1788), and decline (about 1788-1791) - is nevertheless more or less consistent with how other composers' lives, including Palestrina, Beethoven and Rossini, are usually represented. His life and works can conveniently be divided into three distinct periods: 1756-1773 when, as a child prodigy, he toured much of Western Europe and composed his first works 1773-1780, when he was largely based in Salzburg in the employ of the Salzburg court (with a significant interruption from September 1777 to January 1779, when he quit service in search of a position at either Mannheim or Paris) and 1781-1791, when he was permanently resident in Vienna and during which time he composed the works for which he is best remembered. This anecdote illustrates how Mozart is often regarded, almost as a matter of course: as a pre-eminent (some would say 'the' pre-eminent) composer of operas, concertos, symphonies and chamber music. On being taxed with his, Klemperer is said to have replied, 'Oh, I thought you meant the others'. ![]() For readers who prefer to have a paper version, you can download the PDF version of this Biography by clicking on the link below: Mozart Biography Child prodigy, composer, virtuoso performer.Īccording to a possibly apocryphal story, when the conductor Otto Klemperer was asked to list his favourite composers, Mozart was not among them. Mozart, String Quartet K590 (first movement) Mozart, Music for the memorial to Field Marshall Gideon Laudon
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