Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (, baptized Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart) (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His output of over 600 compositions includes works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of European composers and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire. 
==Biography==
===Family and early years===
thumb|left|200px|Mozart's birthplace at Getreidegasse 9, Salzburg, Austria
thumb|middle|200px|Plaque on wall outside Mozart's birthplace at Getreidegasse 9, Salzburg, Austria. It reads Mozart's Birth house, Mozart Museum. W.A. Mozart was born in this house on 27th of January 1756.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart, in the front room of Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg, the capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. His only sibling who survived past birth was an older sister: Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl. Mozart was baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Of these names, the first two refer to John Chrysostom, one of the Church Fathers, and they were names not employed in everyday life. The fourth name, meaning "beloved of God" in Greek, was variously translated in Mozart's lifetime as Amadeus (Latin), Gottlieb (German), and Amadé (French). Mozart's father Leopold announced the birth of his son in a letter to the publisher Johann Jakob Lotter with the words "...the boy is called Joannes Chrysostomus, Wolfgang, Gottlieb". Mozart himself preferred to use the third name (Wolfgang), and may also have taken a fancy to "Amadeus" over the years (see Mozart's name).
Mozart's father Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) was one of Europe's leading musical teachers. His influential textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, was published in 1756, the year of Mozart's birth (English, as "A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing", transl. E.Knocker; Oxford-New York, 1948). He was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, and a prolific and successful composer of instrumental music. Leopold gave up composing when his son's outstanding musical talents became evident. They first came to light when Wolfgang was about three years old, and Leopold, proud of Wolfgang's achievements, gave him intensive musical training, including instruction in clavier, violin, and organ. Leopold was Wolfgang's only teacher in his earliest years. A note by Leopold in Nannerl's music book – the Nannerl Notenbuch – records that little Wolfgang had learned several of the pieces at the age of four. Mozart's first compositions, a small Andante (K. 1a) and Allegro (K. 1b), were written in 1761, when he was five years old.Cliff Eisen, Stanley Sadie, '(Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2006-05-09)
===Years of travel===
During his formative years, Mozart made several European journeys, beginning with an exhibition in 1762 at the Court of the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, then in the same year at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking him and his father to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London (where Wolfgang Amadeus played with the famous Italian cellist Giovanni Battista Cirri), The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip Mozart met a great number of musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other great composers. A particularly important influence was Johann Christian Bach, who met Mozart in London in 1764–65. Bach's work is often taken to be an inspiration for Mozart's music.
They again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768. On this trip Mozart contracted smallpox, and his healing was believed by Leopold as proof of God's plans concerning the child.
After one year in Salzburg, three trips to Italy followed: from December 1769 to March 1771, from August to December 1771, and from October 1772 to March 1773. Mozart was commissioned to compose three operas: Mitridate Rè di Ponto (1770), Ascanio in Alba (1771), and Lucio Silla (1772), all three of which were performed in Milan. During the first of these trips, Mozart met Andrea Luchesi in Venice and G.B. Martini in Bologna, and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. A highlight of the Italian journey, now an almost legendary tale, occurred when he heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere once in performance in the Sistine Chapel then wrote it out in its entirety from memory, only returning to correct minor errors; thus producing the first illegal copy of this closely-guarded property of the Vatican.Documents describing Mozart's transcription of the Allegri Miserere at Wikisource
On September 23, 1777, accompanied by his mother, Mozart began a tour of Europe that included Munich, Mannheim, and Paris. In Mannheim he became acquainted with members of the Mannheim orchestra, the best in Europe at the time. He fell in love with Aloysia Weber, who later broke up the relationship with him. He was to marry her sister Constanze four years later in Vienna. During his unsuccessful visit to Paris, his mother died in 1778.
===Mozart in Vienna===
In 1781, Idomeneo, regarded as Mozart's first great opera, premiered in Munich. The following year, he visited Vienna in the company of his employer, the harsh Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. When they returned to Salzburg, Mozart, who was then Konzertmeister, became increasingly difficult, not wanting to follow the whims of the archbishop relating to musical affairs; and expressing these views, he soon fell out of the archbishop's favor. According to Mozart's own testimony, he was dismissed – literally – "with a kick in the arse".Wolfgang, in a letter to his father Leopold from June 9, 1781. In the original: "bey der Thüre durch einen Tritt im Arsch hinaus werfen". Mozart chose to settle and develop his own freelance career in Vienna after its aristocracy began to take an interest in him.
On August 4, 1782, against his father's wishes, he married Constanze Weber (1763–1842), her name is also spelled "Costanze"; her father Fridolin was a half-brother of Carl Maria von Weber's father Franz Anton Weber. Although they had six children, only two survived infancy: Carl Thomas (1784–1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791–1844; later a minor composer himself). Neither of these sons married or had children who reached adulthood. Carl did father a daughter, Constanza, who died in 1833.
1782 was an auspicious one for Mozart's career: his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio") was a great success, and he began a series of concerts at which he premiered his own piano concertos as director of the ensemble and soloist.
During 1782–83, Mozart became closely acquainted with the work of J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel as a result of the influence of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of works by the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these works led first to a number of works imitating Baroque style and later had a powerful influence on his own personal musical language, for example the fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute"), and in the finale of Symphony No. 41.
In 1783, Wolfgang and Constanze visited Leopold in Salzburg, but the visit was not a success, as his father did not open his heart to Constanze. However, the visit sparked the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C Minor, which, though not completed, was premiered in Salzburg, and is now one of his best-known works. Wolfgang featured Constanze as the lead female solo voice at the premiere of the work, hoping to endear her to his father's affection.
In his early Vienna years, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from 1782–85, and are often judged to be his response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. In a letter to Haydn, Mozart wrote:
A father who had decided to send his sons out into the great world thought it his duty to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a man who was very celebrated at the time, and who happened moreover to be his best friend. In the same way I send my six sons to you... Please then, receive them kindly and be to them a father, guide, and friend!... I entreat you, however, to be indulgent to those faults which may have escaped a father's partial eye, and in spite of them, to continue your generous friendship towards one who so highly appreciates it."Bernard Jacobson (1995) in CD no. 13 of the Best of the Complete Mozart Edition Germany: Philips
Haydn was soon in awe of Mozart, and when he first heard the last three of Mozart's series he told Leopold, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name: He has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition."Letter from Leopold Mozart to his daughter Maria Anna from February 16, 1785. In the original: "Ich sage ihnen vor gott, als ein ehrlicher Mann, ihr Sohn ist der größte Componist, den ich von Person und den Nahmen nach kenne: er hat Geschmack, und über das die größte Compositionswissenschaft."
During the years 1782–1785, Mozart put on a series of concerts in which he appeared as soloist in his piano concertos, widely considered among his greatest works. These concerts were financially successful. After 1785 Mozart performed far less and wrote only a few concertos.
Mozart was influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment as an adult, and became a Freemason in 1785. His lodge was specifically Catholic, rather than deistic, and he worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before the latter's death in 1787. Die Zauberflöte, his penultimate opera, includes Masonic themes and allegory. He was in the same Masonic Lodge as Haydn.
Mozart's life was occasionally fraught with financial difficulty. Though the extent of this difficulty has often been romanticized and exaggerated, he nonetheless did resort to borrowing money from close friends, some debts remaining unpaid even to his death. During the years 1784–1787 he lived in a lavish, seven-room apartment, which may be visited today at Domgasse 5, behind St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna; it was here, in 1786, that Mozart composed the opera Le nozze di Figaro.
===Journey to Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin===
In the spring of 1789, Wolfgang left Vienna for a journey which was to become his second to last. He was accompanying his patron Prince Karl Lichnowsky. The first leg of the trip led Mozart and Lichnowsky to Prague, where they arrived on April 10th 1789. In a letter of April 10thWolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Complete Edition. ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer and Otto Erich Deutsch. Kassel 1962 - 1975. No. 1091 to Constanze, Wolfgang reports that Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia was eagerly awaiting him in Potsdam. 
The next stop of their voyage was Dresden which lay on the way to Berlin. Here, Mozart did what he had usually done on voyages like this: he performed, preferably for potential patrons. First, he gave a private concert which featured a quartet, a trio and Josepha Duschek singing several arias from Don Giovanni.In a letter to his wife Mozart writes that they arranged a quartet at the hotel, which they performed in the chapel. "Wir hatten bei uns a l'hotel de Boulogne ein quartett arrangirt. - wir machten es in der Kappelle mit Antoine Tayber..." see letters no. 1094. The next day, Mozart performed for Elector Friedrich August III of Saxony and his wife Amalie. The successful performance of the Coronation Concerto K. 537 earned him a snuff-box with 100 ducats. In addition to these performances, he also played for the Russian ambassador and in many noble houses.see letter no. 1094
On April 18th, Lichnowsky and Mozart departed for Leipzig, where they arrived two days later. Here, Mozart improvised on the organ at the Thomaskirche in the presence of Cantor Friedrich Doles and organist Karl Friedrich Goerner. Probably on this occasion, the choir of the Thomasschule performed Bach's motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225 and Mozart took advantage of the situation and inspected the autograph.
From Leipzig, Mozart travelled to Berlin, where he arrived some time between April 23rd and April 26th. He was expecting to be welcomed by the King, but instead of receiving Mozart, Friedrich Wilhelm referred him to Jean-Pierre Duport, the director of the chamber music. As court documents show, Mozart's appearance at court was totally unexpected and therefore the King did not receive him. Nevertheless, Mozart composed a set of piano variations on a theme by Duport, K. 573 for the court. He spent some more days in the capital before briefly returning to Leipzig, where he gave a concert at the Gewandhaus. The concert which featured two symphonies, two piano concertos, a fantasy and two scenes performed by Josepha Duschek was apparently not well attended. Mozart writes back home, that "from the point of view of applause and glory this concert was absolutely magnificent but the profits were wretchedly meager" (letter, May 16th 1789).
===Mozart and Prague===
Mozart had a special relationship with the city of Prague and its people. The audience there celebrated the Figaro with the much-deserved reverence he was missing in his hometown Vienna. His quotation "Meine Prager verstehen mich" (My Praguers understand me) became very famous in the Bohemian lands. Many tourists follow his tracks in Prague and visit the Mozart Museum of the Villa Bertramka where you can enjoy a chamber concert. In Prague, Don Giovanni premiered on October 29, 1787 at the Theatre of the Estates. Mozart wrote La clemenza di Tito for the festivities accompanying Leopold II's coronation in November 1790; Mozart obtained this commission after Antonio Salieri had allegedly rejected it.Grove Music Online Cliff Eisen, Stanley Sadie 'Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart', §6: The final years', (Accessed 09 May 2006).
===Final illness and death===
Mozart's final illness and death are difficult topics for scholars, obscured by romantic stories and replete with conflicting theories. Scholars disagree about the cause of decline in Mozart's health – particularly at what point (or if at all) Mozart became aware of his impending death and whether this awareness influenced his final works. The romantic view holds that Mozart declined gradually and that his outlook and compositions paralleled this decline. In opposition to this, some present-day scholars point out correspondence from Mozart's final year indicating that he was in good cheer, as well as evidence that Mozart's death was sudden and a shock to his family and friends.
The actual cause of Mozart's death is also a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet-seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment. The practice of bleeding medical patients, common at that time, is also cited as a contributing cause. However, the most widely accepted version is that he died of acute rheumatic fever; he had had three or even four known attacks of it since his childhood, and this particular disease has a tendency to recur, leaving increasingly serious consequences each time, such as rampant infection and heart valve damage.Solomon, Maynard: Mozart: A Life, HarperCollins, 1995. ISBN 0060926929
Mozart died at approximately 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. With the onset of his illness, he had largely ceased work on his final composition, the Requiem. Popular belief has it that Mozart was thinking of his own impending death while writing this piece, and even that a messenger from the afterworld commissioned it. Documentary evidence has established that the anonymous commission came from one Franz Count of Walsegg on Schloss Stuppach, and that most if not all of the music had been written while Mozart was still in good health. A younger composer, and Mozart's friend and, some say, pupil, at the time, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, was engaged by Constanze to finish the Requiem, which he had been already helping the ill composer with, since Mozart could not write on account of his swollen limbs. He was not the first composer asked to finish the Requiem, as the widow had first approached another Mozart student, Joseph Eybler, who began work directly on the empty staves of Mozart's manuscript but then abandoned it.
Because he was buried in an unmarked grave, it has been popularly assumed that Mozart was penniless and forgotten when he died. He earned about 50,000 florins per year, equivalent to at least 142,000 US dollars in 2006, which places him within the top 1% of late 18th century wage earners, but he could not manage his wealth. His mother wrote, "When Wolfgang makes new acquaintances, he immediately wants to give his life and property to them." His impulsive largesse and spending often had him asking for loans. Many of his begging letters survive, but they are evidence not so much of poverty as of his habit of spending more than he earned. He was not buried in a "mass grave" for paupers but in a regular communal grave according to the 1784 laws in Austria.
Though the original grave in the St. Marx cemetery was lost, memorial gravestones (or cenotaphs) have been placed there and in the Zentralfriedhof. In 2005 new DNA testing was performed by Austria's University of Innsbruck and the US Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, to determine if a skull in an Austrian Museum was actually his, using DNA samples from the marked graves of his grandmother and Mozart's niece. Test results were inconclusive.
In 1809 Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (1761–1826). Being a fanatical admirer of Mozart, he and possibly Constanze, edited vulgar passages out of many of the composer's letters and wrote a Mozart biography. Nissen did not live to see his biography printed, and Constanze had it finished.
==Works, musical style, and innovations==
===Style===
Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetypal example of the Classical style. His works spanned the period during which that style transformed from one exemplified by the style galant to one that began to incorporate some of the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque, complexities against which the galant style had been a reaction. Mozart's own stylistic development closely paralleled the development of the classical style as a whole. In addition, he was a versatile composer and wrote in almost every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. While none of these genres were new, the piano concerto was almost single-handedly developed and popularized by Mozart. He also wrote a great deal of religious music, including masses; and he composed many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.
The central traits of the classical style can all be identified in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are hallmarks, though a simplistic notion of the delicacy of his music obscures for us the exceptional and even demonic power of some of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, and the opera Don Giovanni. The famed writer on music Charles Rosen has written (in The Classical Style): "It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous." Especially during his last decade, Mozart explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time. The slow introduction to the "Dissonant" Quartet, K. 465, a work that Haydn greatly admired, rapidly explodes a shallow understanding of Mozart's style as light and pleasant.
From his earliest years Mozart had a gift for imitating the music he heard; since he traveled widely, he acquired a rare collection of experiences from which to create his unique compositional language. When he went to LondonThe Mozarts first lodged in Cecil Court off Tottenham Court Road, then in Frith Street in Soho, and later in Ebury Street, where a blue plaque commemorates their stay. See BBC World Service article. as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music; when he went to Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna, he heard the work of composers active there, as well as the spectacular Mannheim orchestra; when he went to Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which were to be hugely influential on his development. Both in London and Italy, the galant style was all the rage: simple, light music, with a mania for cadencing, an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other chords, symmetrical phrases, and clearly articulated structures. This style, out of which the classical style evolved, was a reaction against the complexity of late Baroque music. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are "homotonal" (each movement in the same key, with the slow movement in the parallel minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms commonly being written by composers in Vienna. One of the most recognizable features of Mozart's works is a sequence of harmonies or modes that usually leads to a cadence in the dominant or tonic key. This sequence is essentially borrowed from baroque music, especially Bach. But Mozart shifted the sequence so that the cadence ended on the stronger half, i.e., the first beat of the bar. Mozart's understanding of modes such as Phrygian is evident in such passages.
As Mozart matured, he began to incorporate some more features of Baroque styles into his music. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201 uses a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had just published his Opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in German literature, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era to come, is evident in some of the music of both composers at that time.
Over the course of his working life, Mozart switched his focus from instrumental music to operas, and back again. He wrote operas in each of the styles current in Europe: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, or Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is probably the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he developed the use of subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestration, and tone colour to express or highlight psychological or emotional states and dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted. His increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concerti served as a resource in his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was reflected in his later non-operatic compositions. Einstein, Alfred: Mozart: His Character, His Work, translated by Mendel & Broder, Panther books, 1946. ISBN 5860327702
===Influence===
thumb|right|200px|Mozart merchandise on sale at an outside market stall in Residenz Square in Salzburg
Mozart's legacy to subsequent generations of composers (in all genres) is immense.
Many important composers since Mozart's time have expressed profound appreciation of Mozart. Rossini averred, "He is the only musician who had as much knowledge as genius, and as much genius as knowledge." Ludwig van Beethoven's admiration for Mozart is also quite clear. Beethoven used Mozart as a model a number of times: for example, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major demonstrates a debt to Mozart's Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503. A plausible story – not corroborated – regards one of Beethoven's students who looked through a pile of music in Beethoven's apartment. When the student pulled out Mozart's A major Quartet, K. 464, Beethoven exclaimed "Ah, that piece. That's Mozart saying 'here's what I could do, if only you had ears to hear!' "; Beethoven's own Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor is an obvious tribute to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, and yet another plausible – if unconfirmed – story concerns Beethoven at a concert with his sometime-student Ferdinand Ries. As they listened to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, the orchestra reached the quite unusual coda of the last movement, and Beethoven whispered to Ries: "We will never think of anything like that!" Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds is another obvious tribute to Mozart, similar to Mozart's own quintet for the same ensemble. Beethoven also paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on several of his themes: for example, the two sets of variations for cello and piano on themes from Mozart's Magic Flute, and cadenzas to several of Mozart's piano concertos, most notably the Piano Concerto No. 20 K. 466. A famous story asserts that, after the only meeting between the two composers, Mozart noted that Beethoven would "give the world something to talk about." However, it is not certain that the two ever met. Tchaikovsky wrote his Mozartiana in praise of Mozart; and Mahler's final word was alleged to have been simply "Mozart". The theme of the opening movement of the Piano Sonata in A major K. 331 (itself a set of variations on that theme) was used by Max Reger for his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, written in 1914 and among Reger's best-known works.Penguin Guide to Classical Compact Discs
In addition, Mozart received outstanding praise from several fellow composers including Frédéric Chopin, Franz Schubert, Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, and many more.
Mozart has remained an influence in popular contemporary music in varying genres ranging from Jazz to modern Rock and even as far afield as death metal (death metal pioneers Morbid Angel have classical tracks on their albums, stated in the lyric booklets as being heavily influenced by Mozart). An example of this influence is the jazz pianist Chick Corea, who has performed piano concertos of Mozart and was inspired by them to write a concerto of his own.
===Köchel catalogue===
In the decades after Mozart's death there were several attempts to catalogue his compositions, but it was not until 1862 that Ludwig von Köchel succeeded in this enterprise. Many of his famous works are referred to by their Köchel catalogue number; for example, the Piano Concerto in A major (Piano Concerto No. 23) is often referred to simply as "K. 488" or "KV. 488". The catalogue has undergone six revisions, labeling the works from K. 1 to K. 626.
==Rumours and controversies==
Mozart is unusual among composers for being the subject of an abundance of misconceptions, partly because none of his early biographers knew him personally. Many rumours began soon after Mozart died, but few have any basis in fact; biographers often resorted to fiction in order to produce a work. An example is the story that Mozart composed his Requiem with the belief it was for himself. Sorting out fabrications from real events is a vexing and continuous task for Mozart scholars, mainly because of the prevalence of story in scholarship. Dramatists and screenwriters, free from responsibilities of scholarship, have found excellent material among these rumours.
An especially popular case is the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, and, in some versions, the tale that it was poison received from the latter that caused Mozart's death; this is the subject of Aleksandr Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart and Salieri, and Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. The last of these has been made into a feature-length film of the same name. Shaffer's play attracted criticism for portraying Mozart as vulgar and loutish, a characterization felt by many to be unfairly exaggerated, but in fact frequently confirmed by the composer's letters and other memorabilia. For example, Mozart wrote canons on the words "Leck mich im Arsch" ("Lick me in the arse") and "Leck mich im Arsch recht fein schön sauber" ("Lick me in the arse nice and clean") as party pieces for his friends. The Köchel numbers of these canons are 231 and 233.
Another debate involves Mozart's alleged status as a kind of superhuman prodigy, from childhood right up until his death. While some have criticized his earlier works as simplistic or forgettable, others revere even Mozart's juvenilia. In any case, several of his early compositions remain very popular. The motet Exultate, jubilate (K. 165), for example, composed when Mozart was seventeen years old, is among the most frequently recorded of his vocal compositions.
Benjamin Simkin, a medical doctor, argues in his book Medical and Musical Byways of MozartianaDid Mozart Have Tourette Syndrome? at Daniel Publishing PMID 1286388 that Mozart had Tourette syndrome. However, no Tourette syndrome expert, organization, psychiatrist or neurologist has stated that there is credible evidence that Mozart had this syndrome, and several have stated that they do not believe there is enough evidence to substantiate the claim.FAMOUS PEOPLE WITH TOURETTE'S SYNDROME AND/OR OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER, SchoolBehavior.com, May 20, 2006.
===Amadeus (1984)===
Milos Forman’s 1984 motion picture Amadeus, based on the play by Peter Shaffer (itself based on the poetic short drama "Mozart and Salieri" by the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin), won eight Academy Awards and was one of the year’s most popular films. It was criticized for a number of historical inaccuracies related to the reality of the relationship between Mozart and Salieri. Salieri frequently lent Mozart musical scores from the court library with which he was charged, that he often chose compositions by Mozart for performance at state occasions, and Salieri taught Mozart's son, Franz Xaver. The idea that Mozart never revised his compositions, dramatised in the film, is not supported by the autograph manuscripts, which contain many corrections.Ulrich Konrad: Mozarts Schaffensweise: Studien zu den Werkautographen, Skizzen und Entwürfen. Göttingen, 1992.
In response to the criticism, Shaffer states on the DVD release of the film that the dramatic narrative was inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel – one brother loved by God, and the other scorned. However, why these characters or these events in particular were chosen is not explained.
Shaffer and Forman go into greater detail on this topic during the "Commentary" audio track of the 2001 director's cut of the film. Shaffer repeatedly asserts that in each scene he "began with a kernel of truth", and then added, condensed and fictionalized facts for dramatic purpose. Forman avers that, while they veered so far from historical fact, they did capture the "spirit" of Mozart's story.
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==See also==
* List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
* :Category:Compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
* Mozart's name
* Mozartkugel, a confectionery named in his honor.
* Mozart effect, a disputed theory that certain kinds of music enhance performance on certain mental tasks; the researchers who coined the term used a piece by Mozart in their first study.
* Rock Me Amadeus, a 1985 song by Falco, based on Forman's film
* The Vermont Mozart Festival, an annual classical music festival named in the composer's honor; since 1974, it has performed 278 of Mozart's 626 works—possibly more than any other festival or concert series in the United States.
* Complete works editions
** Alte Mozart-Ausgabe
** Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
==References==
==Further reading==
* Braunbehrens, Volkmar: Mozart in Vienna: 1781-1791, Timothy Bell Trans, HarperPerennial, 1986 ISBN 0-06-0974052
* Deutsch, Otto Erich: Mozart: A Documentary Biography, Eric Blom et al. Trans, Stanford University Press, 1965
* Aloys Greither: Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1962
* Robert W. Gutman: Mozart: A Cultural Biography, Random, 2001 ISBN 0-15-100482-X
* H. C. Robbins Landon: 1791: Mozart's Last Year, Thames & Hudson, 1988 ISBN 0-500-28107-6
* Piero Melograni: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A Biography, The University of Chicago Press, 2006 ISBN 0-226-51956-2 Read an excerpt
* Massimo Mila: Lettura delle Nozze di Figaro, Einaudi, 1979 ISBN 88-06-18937-9
* Mark Rayner: The Amadeus Net, ENC, 2005 ISBN 0-9752540-1-4
* Rushton, Julian: Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7
* Stanley Sadie, ed.: Mozart and his Operas, St. Martin's, 2000 ISBN 0-312-24410-X
* Maynard Solomon: Mozart: A life, Harper, 1996 ISBN 0-06-092692-9
* Hershel Jick: A Listener's Guide to Mozart's Music, Vantage, 1997 ISBN 0-533-12308-9
* Marcia Davenport: Mozart, The Chautauqua Press, 1932
* Wilhelm Otto Deutsch, Mozart und die Religion (2005)
* Nicholas Till: Mozart and the Enlightenment,Faber,Norton, 1992 ISBN 0-571-16169-3
* Gregory Allen Robbins, Mozart & Salieri, Cain & Abel: A Cinematic Transformation of Genesis 4
* The Mozart Project
* Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe, Editors: The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, Cambridge University Press, 2006 ISBN 0-521-85659-0
==External links==
=== General references===
* The Mozart Project – the life, times and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
* Infography about Mozart
* Compact Mozart biography - at mozartones.com
*The Danish Radio Sinfonietta's official Mozart website - Articles, downloads, and links
*A Profile of Amadeus Mozart from Aaron Green, guide to Classical Music at About.com.
*WAMozartFan.com The Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Educational Fanpage - resource for students, teachers and music lovers.
*The Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from Classical Music Pages
*Mozart Forum Exploring the world of Classical-Era Music (1770-1827), encompassing the music, personalities and accomplishments of Mozart and his contemporaries.
*Mozart Archive
* Mozart
*Année Mozart (French) blog about W.A. Mozart and his family
*WorldCat Identities page for 'Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 1756-1791'
*"mozart") 783 Digitised Works of and about Mozart in The European Library
===Scores===
* Digital Mozart Edition: Neue Mozart-Ausgabe published online
* Piano Sheet Music of Compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Out of Copyright Editions)
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*Mozart's Scores by Mutopia Project
*Mozart Melody Index at Tunespotting.com
* Mozart melodies at Musipedia
* Mozart scores in PDF for the piano
* Full opera scores to Mozarts greatest operas (Scroll halfway down on the page)
*Salzburg Mozarteum
*Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Information
* Mozart Scores You can preview scores while listening audio streams
===Recordings===
* Free Mozart recordings of string quartets, symphonies, concertos and more from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum podcast, "The Concert."
* (Hundreds of) MIDI files at Kunst der Fuge (to be saved and listened) and Classical MIDI Connection (to be listened only)
* Mozart at Piano Society - Biography and various free recordings in MP3 format.
* Mozart cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
* Mozart at archive.org
* Mozart Video's - Free Selection of Mozart Video Performances
* Listen to a free recording of Ave verum corpus, KV 618 from Coro Nostro, a mixed chamber choir based in Leicester, UK.
* Live recording of recitative and aria for soprano, piano & orchestra, Ch'io mi scordi di te...Non temer amato bene, KV 505 (Mary Gayle Greene, mezzo-soprano)
* Mozart-Tower Germany: Complete edition of his works on MP3 format. (Also: Mozart-Turm)
* Piano Sonatas K 533, 545, 570, 576 MP3 Creative Commons Recording
===Specific topics===
* A free walking tour of Mozart in Prague via podcast
* The "Mozart Catalogue" digitised by the British Library - Go to "Turning the Pages"
*The Mozart Effect
* Cadenzas from the A Clarinet Concerto - Clariperu Many trancriptions from artists like Sabine Meyer, John McCaw, Charles Neidich, etc.
*Mozart's Thematic Catalogue - turn the pages of Mozart's musical diary online (requires Shockwave plugin)
*gallica.bnf.fr, picture of Mozart, his mother, his father, his wife, and his family (bnf = French National Library).
*Mozart and pauses
*The "Jenamy Concerto" The proper name of Mozart's piano concerto K. 271 revealed
* Mozart und die Religion (2005), Wilhelm Otto Deutsch
* Born between Salzburg and Braunau am Inn
* Information about Mozart, Salzburg and the city's musical heritage
* Mozart's 250th Birthday, from NPR
* The alleged last portrait painting of Mozart
* Mozart and Freemasonry
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