The Divine Prodigy
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In 1781, Mozart left the service of Salzburg’s Archbishop and made Vienna his home. His letters describe both the indignities that drove the break and his hopes for an independent career. Concerts, teaching, publishing and commissions would support that experiment, with successes and financial pressures often close together. The following decade brought the Da Ponte operas, The Magic Flute, the last three symphonies and the unfinished Requiem. This book reconstructs the working life behind those familiar titles.
“I simply follow my own feelings.”
1756–1791
Born Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart on 27 January 1756 in Salzburg. Died on 5 December 1791 in Vienna, aged thirty-five. The precise modern diagnosis of his final illness remains uncertain.
600+
The Köchel catalogue records hundreds of compositions, including unfinished works and pieces whose attribution has changed. His output spans operas, concertos, symphonies, chamber music, keyboard works and sacred music.
Age 5
Mozart composed his first pieces at the age of five. By six he had performed before Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna and was touring the courts of Europe.
7
His seven mature operas — Idomeneo, The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, La clemenza di Tito, and The Magic Flute — transformed the art form forever.
A composer whose operas, concertos, symphonies and chamber music helped shape the Classical tradition; he died at thirty-five with the Requiem unfinished
Defining Events
The Child Who Conquered Europe
At the age of seven, Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl embarked on a three-and-a-half-year tour of Europe with their parents, Leopold and Anna Maria. They performed before Louis XV at Versailles, George III in London, and dozens of courts and concert halls across the continent. In London, young Mozart met Johann Christian Bach, whose galant style would shape his own musical language.
The Marriage of Figaro
With librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte adapting Beaumarchais’s banned play, Mozart created an opera that was simultaneously a comedy of manners, a meditation on class, and a revolution in musical drama. The early performances at Vienna’s Burgtheater prompted repeated calls for encores. In May 1786, Emperor Joseph II prohibited encores of numbers with more than one voice to limit the length of performances. The opera remains a central work of the international repertory.
The Magic Flute and the Requiem
In the final year of his life, Mozart composed two works that stand among the greatest achievements in Western music. Die Zauberflöte premiered on 30 September 1791 to packed houses at the Theater auf der Wieden. Meanwhile, an anonymous commission for a Requiem Mass occupied him alongside other work. He died on 5 December, leaving the Requiem unfinished. Constanze arranged for its completion; after work by Joseph Eybler, Franz Xaver Süssmayr supplied the familiar performing version.
Timeline
Born in Salzburg
Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart is born on 27 January 1756 at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg, the seventh and last child of Leopold Mozart, a court musician and author of a celebrated violin method, and Anna Maria Pertl. Only Wolfgang and his older sister Maria Anna (‘Nannerl’) survive infancy.
First Performances Before Royalty
In the year he turns six, Wolfgang performs before Elector Maximilian III Joseph in Munich and then before Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. Legend has it the child slipped on the polished floor and was helped up by the young Archduchess Marie Antoinette, to whom he proposed marriage on the spot.
The Grand Tour of Europe
Leopold and Anna Maria take Wolfgang and Nannerl on a tour of western Europe lasting three and a half years. They perform in Munich, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris, London, and The Hague. In London, Wolfgang meets Johann Christian Bach and composes his first symphonies (K. 16 and K. 19). He is seven at the start of the tour and eight during his first year in London.
Three Italian Journeys
Leopold takes Wolfgang on three trips to Italy — the cradle of opera. In Rome, the fourteen-year-old writes out Allegri’s Miserere from memory at the Sistine Chapel. In Milan he premieres Mitridate, re di Ponto for a successful run. Pope Clement XIV also awards him the Order of the Golden Spur, though the honour should not be treated as a documented reward for the transcription.
Break with the Archbishop
After years of growing tension with his employer, Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo of Salzburg, Mozart is literally kicked out of the Archbishop’s antechamber by Count Arco. He settles permanently in Vienna to build a career through performances, teaching, publishing and commissions, declaring to his father: ‘The heart ennobles the man.’
The Da Ponte Operas
In partnership with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart composes three operas that revolutionise the art form: Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790). In 1785, before the first of these premieres, Joseph Haydn tells Leopold Mozart: ‘Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.’
Appointed Imperial Chamber Composer
Following the death of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Emperor Joseph II appoints Mozart as Imperial and Royal Chamber Composer at a salary of 800 florins per year — less than half what Gluck had received. Mozart reportedly quips: ‘Too much for what I do, too little for what I could do.’ That same year, his father Leopold dies in Salzburg.
The Magic Flute, the Requiem, and Death
Mozart’s final year is a frenzy of composition: La clemenza di Tito for the coronation of Leopold II in Prague, Die Zauberflöte for Emanuel Schikaneder’s popular theatre in Vienna, the Clarinet Concerto (K. 622), and the unfinished Requiem. He dies on 5 December 1791 at 12:55 a.m., aged thirty-five. He is buried in a common grave at St. Marx Cemetery.
Key Figures
Joseph Haydn
The friendship between Haydn and Mozart is one of the most celebrated in the history of music. Twenty-four years Mozart’s senior, Haydn recognised the younger man’s genius immediately. After hearing Mozart’s string quartets dedicated to him, Haydn told Leopold Mozart: ‘Your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.’ Mozart, in turn, called Haydn his ‘dearest friend’ and wept when they parted for the last time.
Lorenzo Da Ponte
The Venetian adventurer, poet, and priest who provided Mozart with the words for his three greatest operas: Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Da Ponte’s brilliant libretti gave Mozart the dramatic material that drew out his deepest musical genius. After Mozart’s death, Da Ponte emigrated to America, taught Italian at Columbia and helped establish Italian opera in New York.
The Legacy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart died on 5 December 1791 with the Requiem unfinished. His burial at St. Marx followed Viennese practice, and the exact grave was later lost. That loss need not become a story that nobody valued the composer or his work.
Constanze helped secure the manuscripts, arrange performances and preserve his reputation. Musicians have continued to give those scores new life, finding dramatic wit, tenderness and difficulty in music whose apparent ease can conceal demanding craft. The first-person narrative offered here is a reconstruction; its voice belongs alongside the letters and other evidence from which Mozart’s life can be studied.
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Dramatised first-person narrative; not an autobiography.