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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
January 27, 1756 — December 5, 1791
“Opera comes to me before anything else.”
The usual picture of Mozart is of a child prodigy who spent the last few years of his life in reduced circumstances, if not dire poverty (much brought on by an ignorant and demanding wife), and who died at 35, a forgotten man. Only the child prodigy part is true. Much of the myth has been perpetuated in the play and movie, Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer. While they have been justly acclaimed as great theater, the picture they give of Mozart, the man and the musician is far from accurate. Shaffer was not trying to be historically correct; he tells how he deliberately made changes and rearranged incidents to make the drama stronger.
While there have been many musical prodigies, the most famous of all is Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, later called Wolfgang Gottlieb, but usually known as Wolfgang Amadeus. (The Greek, Theophilus; the German, Gottlieb; and the Latin, Amadeus, all mean love of God.) He himself preferred Amadè, Amadé, Amadeo, or even Adam. This was changed to Amadeus posthumously. It is appropriate that a name Mozart never used, Amadeus, is the title of a drama about a life he did not live.
We know much about Mozart. He was an inveterate letter writer. Since much of his correspondence survives, we know not only of his activities, but also of his thoughts. Yet so much mythology has grown up about his life and his death, that it is difficult to separate truth from fiction.
THE EARLY YEARS
 Wolfgang’s father, Leopold, was from Germany and held the post of violinist and Vice Kapellmeister at the court of the Prince- Archbishop of Salzburg, now part of Austria. He authored a book on violin performance methods, was very well educated, and interested himself in the art, literature and politics of the time. Wolfgang was the youngest of seven children, but only one other survived. His sister Maria Anna Walpurga Ignatia, known as Nannerl, was also musically gifted.
Mozart started clavier (an earlier version of the piano) lessons when he was three. By the time he was five, and still not able to write, he was dictating his own compositions to his father. He had tried to write them down himself but could produce only a confusion of “notes”, mostly ink-blots. The first of his “official” compositions, K.1a and 1b, bear a date a few weeks after his fifth birthday and list the composer as J.G. Wolfgang Mozart. By the time he was seven, he had taught himself to play the violin well enough to sight-read, even a difficult piece he had not heard before.
Most of Mozart’s youth was spent in travel and, while still a boy, he became fluent in both Italian and French. There is no evidence of any formal schooling; apparently his father was his tutor in all subjects. On his first trip to Vienna at age six, Mozart and his sister played for the Holy Roman Empress, Maria Theresa, and he promised that, when he grew up, he would marry her daughter, Marie Antoinette. However, as the Queen of France and the wife of Louis XVI, she was destined to meet her death on the guillotine.
The years 1763-1766 were spent on a grand tour of Northern Europe, visiting all of the important cities. Between 1769 and 1773, the adolescent Mozart made three trips to Italy, performing and composing. At the age of fourteen, he was knighted by Pope Clement XIV with the highest class of the Order of the Golden Spur. This made him a member of the nobility with all its privileges.
In spite of the demands made on him because of his gifts, Mozart was, to all appearances, a happy child. He loved performing and the adulation it brought him. Yet he cried easily, was always begging people to “love him” and had extended periods of illness. It is obvious he felt the pressure of his fame.
At the age of eleven, Mozart wrote his first vocal work, Apollo et Hyacinthus, a series of intermezzi. Next came a Singspiel, Bastien und Bastienne, first performed in the home of Dr. Anton Mesmer, the famous hypnotist and advocate of magnetic healing, who gave his name to the word “mesmerize”. By the time he was twelve, Mozart had composed his first true opera, the comic La finta semplice (The Pretended Simpleton). The rehearsals were a disaster, the singers did not like having a boy conduct them, and the accusation was made that the piece was written by the father rather than the son. The theater canceled the contract and refused to pay the Mozarts’ fee.
Leopold devoted his life to his son’s career but seems to have done his best to prevent his maturation and to keep him tied to his family. He continually warned the boy about making friends with anyone, claiming that all men were villains. As a child, the young Mozart was a sensation, but once he was grown, he would no longer be such a phenomenon. Leopold controlled every phase of the boy’s career, trying his best to keep him celibate and unmarried. According to Maynard Solomon, this treatment, and Mozart’s reaction to it, resulted in the “myth of the eternal chiId”, one who never grew up; many of his contemporaries commented on his small stature and his childish behavior. Later writers, such as Schopenhauer and Hegel, took up the theme and used him as an example of the effect of genius. Mozart’s behavior lent credence to this myth. He played up to what he thought others expected and became noted for his word-play, obscenities, wit, and general outrageousness. Mozart felt close to his family, and he respected his father’s opinion, but there is no evidence of the obsession depicted in Amadeus.
For a while young Wolfgang worked in Salzburg. There the family met the leader of a group of traveling players, Emanuel Schikaneder, who was later to provide the libretto for Die Zauberflöte, and who gave the Mozart family free passes to his troupe's offerings in Salzburg. Mozart was very unhappy in Salzburg; church music had been cut to a minimum, and there was no opportunity for writing opera. As a result, he was always looking for operas to compose and for opportunities to leave home. In a letter to his father he wrote, ”The archbishop can never pay me enough to compensate for the slavery”.
For Mozart's later years see the article "Mozart in Vienna" under The Magic FluteEAO
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