What does everyone know about Mozart’s musical, spiritual and personal journey?
Born in 1756, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the son of Leopold Mozart, a composer, conductor and violonist. Leopold taught music to his two children, Wolfgang and his older sister Nannerl. The children were gifted, especially Amadeus, who wrote his first compositions, an ‘andante’ and an ‘allegro’, in 1761. In 1762, Mozart composed three minuets and one ‘allegro’. They toured with their father throughout Western Europe between 1763 and 1766, performing in towns like Vienna, Munich, Paris, the Hague or London, where they stayed longer. They played in front of many royals. During the year 1764, Mozart wrote two sonatas and his first symphony.
‘Mozart wrote’: it is not possible to enumerate all his compositions until 1791, the year where Mozart died, having composed ‘Die Zauberflöte’ and saw the birth of his sixth child. Let us notice that, even if Mozart is known to have joined the Freemasons in 1784, he was raised as a catholic and the Church occupied an important place in his life: he received the Order of the Golden Spur in 1770 for his compositions. Even if a Papal Bull had condemned Freemasonry in 1738, Mozart saw no problem belonging to the two organizations and he received a catholic funeral service.
Some facts talking about Mozart’s musical genius
Whether genius is innate or acquired, be it natural or the result of hard word, genius is genius. Facts tell us about Mozart’s capacities: in 10 years, he wrote 8 symphonies, 6 operas, 17 concertos, 11 string quartets, 5 string quintets and a lot of other compositions. Plus all these compositions were and are acclaimed and played countless times all around the world, from the time of their publication until now. Mozart wrote more than 600 compositions during his all too short life.
But let us go further. It is proven that Mozart was able to hear complete pieces of music in his head before writing them and he was distinguishing(he distinguished) them from the material he had previously written. Composed to be entertaining and fun, his music was quickly appreciated for its simple melodies, its contrasting moods and its rich orchestration. However, Mozart did not deny he worked very hard to obtain these results, studying famous masters over and over.
Mozart was innovative and solved various musical problems. For instance, until him, opera presented characters from mythology and the aristocracy. It was mainly based on dialog, alternating arias and recitatives. Mozart wrote operas with characters having real personalities and belonging to the middle-class. Musically speaking, these works were fluid, blending recitatives and arias. Also, they were more cohesive than operas written before, the orchestration and allt he other musical elements contributing to add depth to the characters and the plots.
It is impossible to sum up in a few words all the qualities presented by all Mozart’s compositions. As an indicator, we may highlight that Leonard Bernstein, during his Norton lectures, explained that Mozart managed to transform prosodic symmetry into poetic balance: it means that, apparently academic and unnecessary, repetition in Mozart’s music, because it is combined with a powerful orchestration and a subtle harmony, is absolutely not.