Mozart, WOLFGANG AMADEUS CHRYSOSTOM, was the younger child of Leopold Mozart, Kapellmeister to the Archbishop of Salzburg, and was born in Salzburg on 27th January 1756. Numerous anecdotes are related of his childhood, illustrating an almost incredible precocity of genius, whose early promise, however, was amply fulfilled in his after-life. On his first professional tour through Europe when he was six years old, he was accompanied by his sister Marianne, and under their father's care the children visited Vienna, Paris, Belgium, and London. The greatest triumphs of Mozart were won in Bologna, then the musical centre of Italy. The Philharmonic Academy there suspended the rule by which no one under twenty was eligible for membership, in order to elect this young prodigy of barely fifteen. The wonderful power of his memory was illustrated by a famous feat performed in this Italian tour. The Easter music in the Sistine chapel was jealously kept from the eyes of outsiders, and no copy of it was permitted to be made. After one hearing, Mozart wrote from memory a full and minutely correct vocal score. During all the years of childhood and boyhood Mozart had been ever under the immediate care of his father, until his twenty-first year, when, stung by the indignities heaped upon him at the archiepiscopal court, he asked permission to leave it. In September 1777 he left Salzburg for Paris, with his mother as companion and adviser; and from this date began that struggle with the world in which he was to be so soon overthrown. In Mannheim, which he visited on the way, he made the acquaintance of a new instrument, the clarionette, which he was the first to incorporate in the modern orchestra, and fell in love with Aloysia Weber, the second daughter of a poor man with a considerable family. For many obvious reasons Leopold Mozart was greatly disturbed, and the correspondence between the anxious loving father and the disappointed but always dutiful son throws a flood of light on the relation, as beautiful as it is rare, in which they stood to each other.
In Paris mother and son had to practise the strictest economy, for the mature musician no longer commanded the limitless admiration and interest so readily accorded to the prodigy fifteen years before. In poor lodgings and amid depressing surroundings the mother's health gave way; she died in her son's arms; and Mozart returned to the paternal roof in Salzburg.
In 1781, having re-entered the service of the archbishop, he followed him with the rest of the prelate's household to Vienna. Although the archbishop was proud to have such a famous artist in his suite, he hated Mozart, and even the compliments so easily won on all hands by the young man were made so many occasions to wound his proud spirit. At last, stung by the studied and systematic insult to which he was subjected by his patron, Mozart retorted in language more caustic than prudent, which procured him an instant and ignominious dismissal.
Mozart took lodgings with his Mannheim friends, the Webers, who had now settled in Vienna. The father, his firm friend, was now dead, and Aloysia was married; but her place in Mozart's heart was taken by her younger sister Constance, a very gentle and attractive girl. Constance made a loving and devoted wife, but a wretched manager. She kept her husband up to his engagements, and amused him by her powers as a story-teller; but debts and difficulties increased. Just a month previous to his marriage he produced the charming little opera, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which paved the way for the next, The Marriage of Figaro, the most delightful of lyric comedies. With his magic wand he touched the somewhat coarse or at least questionable elements in Beaumarchais' play, and these assumed an ideal form in a supernatural atmosphere of pretty piquancy where naughtiness is unknown. The opera was more than a success, it created a furore; yet jealousy and court intrigue prevented any reward, any acknowledgment that the greatest living musician was labouring and hungering in their midst. More generous appreciation was offered him in Prague, and, being commissioned to write an opera for the theatre there, he set to work on Don Giovanni. The summer-house and the little stone table on which most of the charming music was written are still shown in the gardens, where, amid the noise of conversation and skittles, he worked apparently undisturbed. The extraordinary success of Don Giovanni made it impossible for the court still to overlook the composer, and he was appointed 'Kammer-Musicus' to Joseph II., his duties being to supply dance-music for the imperial balls at a salary of £80 a year.
Pecuniary embarrassments pressed heavily on his heart once so light, and he writes of gloomy thoughts, which he has to repress with all his might. He had great hopes that a journey to Berlin, via Dresden and Leipzig, in company with his friend and pupil, Prince Lichnowski, might give some chance of bettering his condition; and indeed Frederick-William II. of Prussia was so delighted with him that he offered him the post of Kapellmeister with about £450 a year. But a sentimental loyalty prevented him from accepting it. Ever-increasing difficulties induced him to inform the emperor of the king of Prussia's offer, and when Joseph seemed painfully surprised, Mozart, confirmed in an unreasoning affection for a monarch who did so little for him, exclaimed: 'I throw myself upon your kindness and remain.' Joseph II. ordered a new opera, Così fan Tutti, but owing to his death, and the indifference to art of his successor Leopold II., the composer reaped no pecuniary benefit. He made one more desperate application for a regular post, and was rewarded by being appointed assistant and successor (without pay for the present) to the Cathedral Kapellmeister, who outlived him many years. His carelessness and improvidence beset him with endless petty embarrassments, and Constance's frequent illnesses, which necessitated prolonged visits to health-resorts, were an additional and serious drain on the precarious income. He was hastened towards financial ruin too by his heedless and overpowering generosity, often casting his pearls before swine—'false friends,' his sister-in-law terms them, 'secret blood-suckers and worthless people, intercourse with whom ruined his reputation.' In 1791, Mozart's health even then breaking down, an adventurer, a brother freemason, applied to him for help. This was Schikaneder, a theatre manager, who found himself in difficulties, from which he said only a new opera by Mozart could save him. He suggested the subject himself, The Magic Flute, and, seeing Mozart's failing health and uncertain powers of work, he took care to keep him under his own eye, giving him working accommodation in his own house, and keeping him in good humour with copious supplies of wine and frequent invitations to dinner. For a short time Mozart, harassed and ailing, sought to forget himself in a continual fever of excitement, and the lapses of these few sad weeks, multiplied and magnified, gave rise to the judgments which upon those who so hastily condemn reflect double the dishonour they would impute. As the struggle with the world became more unequal, as the iron entered deeper into his soul, his vision became clearer to read the mystery of life. In six weeks he wrote his three greatest symphonies, in which first throbs that intense expression of passion and 'Weltschmerz' which was to raise Beethoven, his stronger successor, to the highest place of honour in Music's temple.
In March 1791 he began the Magic Flute, which was produced on the 30th September; and, though it was at first coldly received, it rapidly conquered public opinion, and in the end made the fortune of the lucky Schikaneder. While he was at work on the opera Mozart received the famous visit about which so much mystery has been made. One night a stranger, now known to have been the steward of a nobleman, Count Walsegg, appeared and commissioned him to write a Requiem Mass to be finished in a month. He enjoined the strictest secrecy, and departed as mysteriously as he had come. The month passed, and Mozart was just stepping into the travelling-carriage which was to take him to Prague for the production of a new opera, when the stranger again appeared and reminded him of his promise. The incident made a deep impression on him; and the idea that it was a summons from the other world grew upon the fevered brain and broken heart of the composer. He was really dying, and, as he worked hard at the Requiem, he felt, as he said, that he was writing it for himself. On the 4th of December a few friends met in his room to rehearse the part of the work which was finished, but the dying composer was unequal to the effort. During the evening he seemed, even in unconsciousness, to be occupied with his work until at midnight came the last summons.
He was buried in the common ground of St Mark's Churchyard, and no friendly eye saw his remains laid in their last resting-place. When the bereaved wife made inquiries a few days afterwards, she found that the gravedigger had been changed, and her search for the grave proved fruitless; thus no one knows where Mozart was buried. It was many years after his death that Vienna awoke to sense of her shame and erected a beautiful monument to the memory of her adopted son.
Mozart wrote 624 compositions; he left no branch of the art unenriched by his genius; and he takes a high place in all. Indeed, in opera and symphony, in spite of the more advanced writings of Wagner and Beethoven, he may be said to be second to none. Gifted with an inexhaustible vein of the richest, purest melody, he is at once the glory and the reproach of the Italian school (see OPERA); for, while he surpasses all Italians on their own chosen ground, his strict training in the German school placed at his service those wonderful resources of harmony and instrumentation in which the south-erners have always been deficient. His most important operas are those already mentioned, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and Figaro. The first stands upon a pinnacle of its own in the history of opera. It has no rival, and commands the unlimited admiration of every true musician; the great deficiencies of the libretto are forgotten in the charm of the music, in the masterly combinations of effect shown in the finales and concerted pieces, and in the triumph of sustained dramatic power in the last scene. The greatest compliment that could be paid the Magic Flute is that it still holds its place as a classic on the opera-stage, in spite of the most incoherent and incomprehensible plot. The importance of the orchestration gives the work a place only second to Don Giovanni, and it has been a favourite study with all great opera-composers. Figaro is perhaps the most perfect opera of the three, for in it the plot is slight, and the time required for its development very short.
Of forty-one symphonies there are three which will occupy an honoured place so long as music exists. These are the C major (called the 'Jupiter'), G minor, and E♭. The first deserves its name from the proud and noble rhythm of the first part, and the absolute ease with which the last movement sets forth a triumph of the most complicated counterpoint. In the G minor beat the first distinct pulses of that great wave of romanticism and passion which was to flood with its influence all future musical development.
The E♭ is very lively and good-humoured and tender withal. It might almost be called a 'Carneval,' written before Schumann had shown the way to such titles. The quartets are very beautiful and exceedingly original; but they are not associated with Mozart's name as they are with that of Haydn, nor is the fame of the earlier creator overshadowed in this branch of the art as is the case in the realm of orchestral writing. His pianoforte sonatas, and those for the violin and piano, are of no great importance except in the development of musical form; but an exception must be made in the case of the Fantasia in C minor, which, like the G minor symphony, foreshadows much of the new school, and reaches even so far as the influence of Schubert. His Masses are all youthful works, with the faults of youth easily recognisable, and the marks of the haste with which they were supplied as occasion required. The Ave Verum, a late church composition, though simple, is very expressive and touching. The unfinished Requiem remains a noble monument of his genius.
The great authority on Mozart's life is Otto Jahn (1856-59; 2d ed. 1867; Eng. trans. by Townsend, 1882); see also the Life by Nohl (Eng. trans. by Lady Wallace, 1877), that by Meinardus (1882), and the English one by Holmes (1845; 2d ed. 1878). Nohl edited the Correspondence (2d ed. 1877). See also the Life by Fischer (1888) of Mozart's second son, Wolfgang Amadeus (1791-1844), who wrote a few compositions of slight importance.