Category: Classical Music and Composers
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) has been among the most prolific and influential as well as renowned classical composers of all-time, born in Salzburg (nowadays Austria), with as good as a hefty over 800 works to his name.
Salzburg shaped the capital of the namesake Prince-Archbishopric within the Holy Roman Empire at the time as Mozart carved out a career during the later stages of the Classical period (roughly between 1750 and 1820 AD) in music.
He quickly emerged as a child prodigy, just as his elder sister Nannerl (Maria Anna), and received his early teachings entirely by his father Leopold, a minor composer and violinist himself, to come up with his first symphony (“Symphony No. 1”) as early as eight years old in 1764.
The family would often embark on lengthy concert tours around central and western Europe so young Mozart’s itinenary quickly engaged cities like Vienna, Prague, Paris, Milan and London where he met influential composers and familiarised himself with their works, composing the successful opera “Mitridate, re di Ponto” at just 14.
For all his brilliance and talent, he faced financial struggles and professional insecurity for much of his life while he even came at odds with his father, now the deputy Kapellmeister, and Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo as he left his rather low-paying situation at the Salzburg court in 1781 to seek better fortunes elsewhere.
After he settled in Vienna, he got married to Austrian singer Konstanze Weber (1782), with whom he had six children, and became good friends particularly with Joseph Haydn (1784) while a return to opera composing between 1786 and 1787 saw him deliver his masterpieces “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Don Jiovanni.”
Haydn actually wrote that “posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years” with regard to Mozart, who had further engaged Freemasonry in late 1784 and came in the service of emperor Joseph II as the latter’s chamber composer in 1787.
His circumstances suffered a blow, mainly due to the Austro-Turkish War, and had to borrow considerable amounts of money late this decade but the final year of his life witnessed a resurgence that lined up the likes of “The Magic Flute” and the unfinished “Requiem in D minor” (1791).
The “Symphony No. 7” in A major is a symphony that comprises four movements composed by Ludwig van Beethoven while he was recovering from health issues at the spa of the Bohemian town of Teplitz between 1811 and 1812, dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries.
Van Beethoven actually conducted himself at its premiere at a charity concert for wounded soldiers from the Battle of Hanau at the university of Vienna, the orchestra led by his friend and teacher Ignaz Schuppanzigh, on 8 December 1813 to the rousing reception of the audience, who demanded an encore of the second movement of ‘Allegretto.’
That second movement has been so popular with audiences ever since that is still often performed independently as a full-fledged work even nowadays.
Breaking through History 