Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The seventh and final child of Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart was born in Salzburg on this day in 1756. Christened Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, their son is remembered to history by the name he preferred: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Of the seven children, only two survived infancy--Wolfgang and his sister Maria Anna (called “Nannerl”). Leopold Mozart was an accomplished musician and he taught Nannerl to play harpsicord when she was seven years old, soon recognizing the girl’s remarkable talent. Soon afterwards, Wolfgang, who was four years younger than Nannerl, began to demonstrate his own extraordinary musical genius.

Wolfgang began playing the harpsicord at age three, then added violin. By the time he was five, he was proficient on both instruments, had begun composing music of his own, and had given his first public performance. The boy, his father proclaimed, was “a miracle of God.”

Leopold virtually abandoned his own career and set off on a tour of Western Europe, exhibiting his precocious children in royal and Imperial courts in Bavaria, Vienna, and Prague, delighting and aweing those who came to see and hear the gifted children play.

For the next three and half years the family traveled Europe, performing for royalty and aristocracy in Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen, and elsewhere. Wolfgang’s talent continued to soar during these years. At age 8 he composed his first symphony, and he continued to compose for the rest of his life.

During the tours (there were five more over the next decade) Leopold would often challenge audiences to present Wolfgang with any music, declaring that the boy would play it on sight. As a child he also demonstrated the remarkable ability to write out from memory any piece of music he had heard.

Once Nannerl reached 18 she stopped traveling on the tours, her father no longer being able to display her as a child prodigy. Nannerl’s interesting life story will the subject of a future Dose.

In 1781, at age 25, Wolfgang moved to Vienna, quitting his position as a court musician in Salzburg. There over the next ten years he would rise to the peak of his fame, even as he often struggled financially. In 1782 he married Constanze Weber. They would have six children together, only two of whom survived infancy.

Over the course of his brief but extraordinary life Mozart composed over 600 works, ranging across nearly every known genre—symphonies, operas, concertos, sonatas, minuets, masses, and more. His astonishing oeuvre includes 68 symphonic works, 54 concertos, 18 masses, and 23 operas. Many of his compositions are among the best loved and most enduring in musical history.

Mozart died at his home in Vienna on December 5, 1791, at age 35. The cause of his death remains a mystery and a source of much speculation.

Happy birthday to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born 267 years ago today.

The 1819 portrait by Barbara Kraft is based on a c. 1781 portrait by Johann della Croce, depicting Mozart at about age 25. According to Nannerl, Kraft's portrait is the best likeness of her brother.