MOZART, JOHANN CHRYS0ST031 WOLFGANG GOTTLIEB, one of the greatest of musical composers, was b. Jan. 27, 1756, at Salzburg, where his father was sub-director of the archiepiscopal chapel. His extraordinary musical talents were cultivated to the utmost by his father. At the age of four he played the clavichord, and composed, a number of minuets and other pieces still extant. When only six years of age his performances were so remarkable that his father took him and his sister, who possessed similar gifts, to Munich and Vienna, where they obtained every kind of encouragement from the elector of Bavaria and the emperor Francis I. In 1763 and 1764 the Mozart family visited Pails and London. At the age of seven young Mozart surprised a party of musicians, including his father, by taking part, at sight, in a trio for stringed instru ments. Symphonies of his own composition were produced in a public concert in Lon don; and whilst there he composed and published six sonatas, and made acquaintance with the works of Handel, recently decease I. Two years later, when but 12 years of age, he composed the music for the religious service, and for a trumpet concert at the dedication of the orphan-house church in Vienna, and conducted it in presence of the imperial court. In 1769, at the age of 13 lie was appointed director of the prince arch bishop of Salzburg's concerts; and in the same year traveled with his father to Italy, where he created an unheard-of enthusiasm by his performances and compositions. He composed the opera of Hithridates at in Oct., 1770, and it was publicly performed there in December of that year. At the age of 16 he was the first clavecinist in the world; be had produced two requiems and a stabat mater, numerous offertories, hymns, and motetts, four operas, two cantatas. 13 symphonies, 24 pianoforte sonatas, not to speak of a vast number of concertos for different instruments, trios, quartets, marches, and other minor pieces. In 1779 he was appointed composer to the imperial court at 'Vienna, where lie then fixed his residence. and there the musical works were composed upon which his great fame chiefly depends. His office in Vienna, however, was rather honor ary than lucrative, and he lived by concerts, musical tours, teaching of music, and the' small profits derived from the sale of his published works, till an offer of a large made to him by the king of Prussia led the emperor to give him 800 florins a year. His
great opera of Idomenee was composed in 1780, with a view to induce the family of mada moiselle Constance Weber, afterwards his wife, to consent to the marriage, which they had declined on the ground of ,his reputation not being sufficiently established. This opera forms an epoch not in the composer's life only, but in the history of music. In construction, detail, instrumentation, and every imaginable respect, it was an enormous advance on all previous works of the kind, and established his repute as the greatest musician whom the world lied seen. Die Enlfilltrung arts dent Serail followed. His six quartets, dedicated to Haydn, appeared in 1785. and in 1786 Le _bare di Figaro. In 1787 he produced his ellef-tr mare, Don Giovanni. which, though received with enthusiasm at Prague, was at first beyond the comprehension of the Viennese. GORi fan MU/appeared in 1790. To 1791, the last year of his short life, we owe %Aruba:Pile, La Clemenza di Tile. and the sublime requiem composed in anticipation of death, and finished only a few days before his decease. He died Dec.5, 1791, aged 35.
In the intervals of his greater. works, Mozart composed the majority of the orchestral symphonies, quartets, and quinttets, wide' are an almost indispensable part of the pro gramme of every concert in the present day, besides masses as familiar in England-as in Catholic Europe, innumerable pianoforte concertos and sonatas, and detached vocal com positions, all of the most perfectly finished description. To Ilaydn, Mozart always acknowledged his obligations; but Ilaydnca obligations to Mozart are at least as great. Haydn, though born 24 years earlier, survived 3lozart 18 years, and all his greatest works, written after Mozart's death, bear manifold traces of Mozart's influence. Mozart is the first composer in whose works all traces of the old tonality disappear; lie is the father of the modern school. " No composer has ever combined genius and learning in such pea fact proportions; none has ever been able to dignify the lightest and tritest forms by such profound scholarship, or, at the moment when he was drawing most. largely on the resources of musical science, to appear so natural, so spontaneous, and so thoroughly at his ease." See the Lives by Holmes (Lond. 1845) and Jahn (Leip. 1856). The Life by Nohl (2d. ed. 1877) and the Letters have been translated by lady Wallace.