Leopold Mozart was a successful composer and violinist, whose famous treatise on violin playing (Versuch einer grundlichen Violinschule) was first printed in 1756. In 1763, Leopold was made vice-Kapellmeister at the Salzburg court, whose sympathetic archbishop, Sigismund von Schrattenbach, appreciated and encouraged the activities of Leopold and his children.

Boyhood

In 1762 the Mozart children played at court in Vienna; the Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, received the Mozarts cordially. During a large European concert tour (1763- 66) the Mozart children displayed their talents to audiences in Germany, in Paris, at court in Versailles, and in London (where Wolfgang wrote his first symphonies and was befriended by Johann Christian Bach, whose musical influence on Wolfgang was profound). In Paris, Wolfgang published his first works, four sonatas for clavier with accompanying violin (1764). In 1768 he composed his first opera, La finta semplice, for Vienna, but intrigues prevented its performance, and it was first presented a year later at Salzburg. In 1769-70, Leopold and Wolfgang undertook a tour through Italy, where, in Rome, Wolfgang wrote down Allegri'sMiserere from memory after one hearing. This first Italian trip culminated in Wolfgang's new opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto, composed for Milan. In two further Italian journeys Wolfgang wrote two more operas for Milan, Ascanio in Alba (1771) and the impressive Lucio Silla (1772).

In 1772, Archbishop von Schrattenbach died, to be succeeded by Hieronymus von Colloredo. The latter, at first sympathetic to the Mozarts, later became irritated by Wolfgang's prolonged absences and stubborn ways. In 1772, von Colloredo retained Wolfgang as concertmaster at a token salary. In this capacity Mozart composed a large number of sacred and secular works. Wishing to secure a better position outside Salzburg, he obtained permission to undertake another journey in 1777. With his mother he traveled through Germany to France, where he composed the well-known Paris Symphony (1778); he could find no permanent position, however. His mother died in Paris.

Maturity

Mozart's career in Vienna began promisingly, and he was soon (1782) commissioned to write The Abduction from the Seraglio, a Singspiel, for the Court Opera. His concerts were a great success, and the emperor, Joseph II, encouraged him, later (1787) engaging him as court composer at a modest salary. Mozart's works were now in constant demand by amateur and publisher. In 1782 he married Constanze Weber from Germany (Mozart had fallen in love with her sister, Aloysia, at Mannheim in 1777-78), much to his father's dismay. The young pair visited Salzburg in 1783; there, the Kyrie and Gloria of Mozart's great Mass in C minor, composed in Vienna and destined to remain unfinished, were performed.

Mozart's greatest success was The Marriage of Figaro (1786), composed for the Vienna Opera. The great piano concertos and the string quartets dedicated to his "dear friend" Joseph Haydn, whom he had long admired and had first met in 1781 at Vienna, were also composed during this period.

FINAL YEARS

In 1791, Mozart was commissioned to write a requiem (unfinished). He was at the time quite ill--he had never known very good health--and imagined that the work was for himself, which it proved to be. His death, on Dec. 5, 1791, which gave rise to false rumors of poisoning, is thought to have resulted from kidney failure. After a cheap funeral at Saint Stephen's Cathedral, he was buried in an unmarked grave at the cemetery of Saint Marx, a Vienese suburb. Much has been made of this, but at that time such burial was legally required for all Vienese except those of noble or aristocratic birth.

Mozart excelled in every form in which he composed. His contemporaries found the restless ambivalence and complicated emotional content of his music difficult to understand. Accustomed to the light, superficial style of Rococo Music, his aristocratic audiences could not accept the complexity and musical depth of much of Mozart's music. Yet, with Joseph Haydn, Mozart perfected the grand forms of symphony, opera, string quartet, and concerto that marked the Classical Period in Music. In his operas Mozart's uncanny psychological insight, particularly into his female characters, is unique in musical history. His music informed the work of the later Haydn and of the next generation of composers, most notably Beethoven. The brilliance of his work continued until the end, although darker themes of poignancy and isolation grew more marked in the last five or six years of his short life. Couched as they are in a language of shining technical perfection, his compositions continue to exert a particular fascination for musicians and music lovers.

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Early Life

In 1787 Beethoven was sent to Vienna, but his mother fell ill, and he had to return to Bonn almost immediately. She died a few months later, and in 1789 Beethoven himself requested that his alcoholic father be retired, a move that left him responsible for his younger brothers Caspar Carl and Nikolaus Johann. Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna a second time in November of 1792, in order to study with Franz Josef Haydn.

In 1794 French forces occupied the Rhineland; consequently, Beethoven's ties with and support from the Bonn court came to an end. His father had died a month after his departure from Bonn, and in 1794 and 1795 his two brothers joined him in Vienna. He remained there the rest of his life, leaving only for long summer holidays in the surrounding countryside and, in his early years, for occasional concerts in nearby cities. His only extended journey was to Prague, Dresden, and Berlin in 1796.

Beethoven never held an official position in Vienna. He supported himself by giving concerts, by teaching piano, and increasingly through the sale of his compositions. Members of the Viennese aristocracy were his steady patrons, and in 1809 three of them-- Prince Kinsky, Prince Lobkowitz, and the Archduke Rudolph--even guaranteed him a yearly income with the sole condition that he remain in Vienna.

VIENNESE CAREER

A second crisis a decade later was the breaking off of a relationship with an unnamed lady (probably Antonie Brentano, the wife of a friend) known to us as the "Immortal Beloved," as Beethoven addressed her in a series of letters in July 1812. This was apparently the most serious of several such relationships with women who were in some way out of his reach, and its traumatic conclusion was followed by a lengthy period of resignation and reduced musical activity.

During this time Beethoven's deafness advanced to the stage that he could no longer perform publicly, and he required a slate or little notebooks (now known as "conversation books") to communicate with visitors. The death of his brother Caspar Carl in 1815 led to a 5- year legal struggle for custody of Caspar's son Karl, then 9 years old, in whom Beethoven saw a last chance for the domestic life that had otherwise eluded him. His possessiveness of Karl provoked a final crisis in the summer of 1826, when the young man attempted suicide. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven's health began to fail, and he died on Mar. 26, 1827 in Vienna.

His Music

A general growth in the proportions and rhetorical power of Beethoven's works in the period 1798-1802 culminates in the highly dramatic compositions that mark the beginning of the middle period in 1803. The earliest of these--the Third Symphony (Eroica, 1803), the opera Fidelio (1803-05), and the Waldstein (1804) and Appassionata (1804) sonatas--have a heroic cast that seems to respond to the initial fears provoked by Beethoven's deafness. In the works composed from about 1806 until 1812, this heroic character alternates with an Olympian serenity. The characteristic symphonic and chamber works from this period are the Fourth (1806), Fifth (1805-07), and Sixth (1807-08) symphonies; the Fourth (1805-06) and Fifth (Emperor, 1809) piano concertos; the Violin Concerto (1806); the Rasumovsky quartets (1806); the piano trios, op. 70 (1808) and op. 97 (Archduke, 1811); the Coriolanus Overture (1807); and the incidental music for Goethe's drama Egmont (1810).

This monumental middle-period style began to lose its attraction for Beethoven after 1812, the year of the Seventh and Eighth symphonies. The years 1813 and 1814 are not rich in impressive new works, and beginning in 1815 his music became generally less dramatic and more introspective. The first group of works in this new, late-period style includes the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte, op. 98 (To the Distant Beloved, 1816); the piano sonata, op. 101 (1816); and the two sonatas for cello and piano, op. 102 (1815). In these works (1820-22), and string quartets, op. 127, 130, 131, 132, and 135 (1824-26), Beethoven relied less on the classical three- or four- movement format, dominated by a dramatic first movement in sonata form, and more on the juxtaposition of movements (from two to seven) of widely differing style and character. In particular, he favored variation and fugal procedures in which the hidden implications of his themes emerge gradually. Occasionally he reverted to elements of the heroic middle-period style, as, for example, in the Hammerklavier Sonata, op. 106 (1817-18); the Missa Solemnis (1818- 23); and the Ninth (Choral) Symphony (completed 1823). Even these works, however, are colored by a new immediacy of expression.

As Beethoven grew more isolated, from both his physical surroundings and the popular stylistic tendencies of the day, his music tended increasingly to expressive extremes. Passages of sublime contemplation join with simple folk melodies, impassioned recitatives, and abstract archaisms in a wholly personal synthesis.

BEETHOVEN'S IMPORTANCE

Beethoven himself became a powerful symbol, the prototype of the modern artist-hero as opposed to the artist-craftsman of the preerevolutionary Europe. His fierce independence and his painfully achieved artistic triumph over personal adversity, especially in the dramatically conceived works of the middle period, made him a model for those later composers such as Wagner who sought to teach or preach through art. At the same time, his fidelity to classical principles of composition, that is, his use of large-scale structure rather than local thematic events to achieve his most profound effects, has made his works the single most important source for the various systems of analysis developed by modern theorists and pedagogues.

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