Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart\'s Life,

¶ … Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [...] Mozart's life, his compositions, and his importance to the world, and the world of music. Mozart's music is still some of the most popular classical music played today, and his life is still studied because his music is so well-known and liked. Films such as Amadeus have been made about him that just make his legend even bigger. Mozart was a genius, and one of the greatest classical composers who ever lived. He created grand musical material during his life, and had he lived longer, it is clear he would have created even more monumental and memorable pieces.

Most experts, musicians, and biographers agree that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a true genius. He was born in 1756, his father taught him to play the harpsichord, organ, and violin at a very young age, and he was composing his first music before he was five. When he was six, his father sent him on a musical tour of European cities with his older sister. He was extremely prolific in music at a very young age. This article notes, "His progress as a composer was amazing; by the age of 13 he had written concertos, sonatas, symphonies, a German operetta, Bastien und Bastienne, and an Italian opera buffa, La finta semplice" ("Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus"). This is one of the things that has added to his fame and popularity, and has made him such a legend. He was a great composer, and began at a very young age.

He was a court composer in Vienna for several years, but ultimately chafed at how many constraints his position placed on him. He loved the freedom of working for himself, but had financial difficulties his entire life because it was difficult to support himself with his music. He traveled around Europe, and found the music of other areas influenced his own music, especially the music of Italy. In 1782, he married Constanze Weber, and he had to support her by teaching music and giving public concerts. In 1787, he became the chamber musician and court composer of Joseph III, but he still did not earn enough for a comfortable life, and money troubles plagued him until he died. He often had to beg money from friends and relations, and had to move to smaller quarters several times with his family. Mozart died in 1791, at the age of thirty-five. It is hard to imagine just what he could have accomplished musically, and what innovations he would have conceived if he had lived a longer life.

Mozart's work spanned just about every musical genre. He wrote operas, symphonies, string quartets, requiems, librettos, concertos, and just about every form of music popular at the time. He was extremely prolific and extremely talented. Some of his works were exceptional at the time, and some were not really appreciated until after his death. Some of his most important works were six string quartets (1782-85), "The Abduction from the Seraglio," 1782, "The Violet," 1785, "The Marriage of Figaro," 1786, "Don Giovanni," 1787, and "Symphony no. 41 in C," or the "Jupiter Symphony," 1788, but these are only a few of numerous compositions.

The Marriage of Figaro" is one of Mozart's most popular operas, and it is still performed quite frequently today. It is a sequel to the popular opera "The Barber of Seville," and a retelling of a very controversial play that had been banned in Vienna. Mozart wrote the work with the help of a friend and fellow composer, Lorenzo da Ponte (real name Emmanuele Conegliano). He and da Ponte wrote the opera very quickly, as one of his biographers notes, "The writing must have been mainly done in six weeks - the figure given in da Ponte's memoirs - starting in mid-October. It seems that rather than compose the work straight through Mozart set similar kinds of numbers in groups according to their basic emotional character" (Keys 175). The work is an "opera buffa" (a light or amusing opera, today called a "comic opera"), with very complex multiple plots that Mozart manages to get through to the audience through action and voice. Another critic writes, "The action is both structured around and plotted towards numerous and prominent moments of reconciliation" (Sadie 262). The opera keeps the audience laughing, but they also have to pay attention to the action, as well as the music, to comprehend the final outcome. It indicates how complex Mozart was, and how he could translate the complexity of his mind to his music.

The "Jupiter Symphony" is another of his most celebrated works, and he wrote it in the last years of his life, along with several other symphonies. Many musicians feel the "Jupiter" is exceptional for a number of reasons, and that its' finale is one of the reasons. One reviewer writes, "[T]he most significant feature of the opening of the 'Jupiter' finale is that of its double beginning: the movement literally begins twice, and given the tradition of fugal finales, in the 'wrong' order"

Sisman 230). Many people find the many subtleties of Mozart's music difficult to comprehend and listen to, and the "Jupiter" is one of those works. Reviewer Sisman continues, "Mozart was fully aware that people found his music difficult; in the 'Jupiter' he seemed to magnify the difficulty to specific rhetorical ends, the full union of figures for intellect and imagination" (Sisman 235). It is true that Mozart's music invokes the "intellect and imagination," today as it did then. His music is lush and flowing, and filled with passion and life.