Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period, born in Salzburg and active mainly in Vienna. He wrote in nearly every major genre of his time, including opera, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, piano works and sacred music, and his output is still among the most performed in the music repertoire. His career is usually divided between his childhood tours as a prodigy, his years as a court musician in Salzburg, and his freelance period in Vienna. Together these phases show how a composer of the late eighteenth century moved from patronage toward independent work in a changing europe.
Mozart matters for several reasons. His operas, from Italian opera buffa to German-language singspiel, reshaped how drama and music combined. His piano concertos and symphonies helped define the form and expressive range of the Classical style that later composers, including Beethoven, built upon. Historians also use his life and papers to study the economics of musical work in the late enlightenment period. The entry below follows his life and works in order, then turns to the cataloguing of his music, his reception after his death, and the debates that remain.
This entry covers his biography and musical output in detail, along with the scholarly tools that define his works today, such as the Köchel catalogue and the authenticity questions it raises. It also traces how his reputation developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, how modern performance and research practice have changed, and how his life has been retold in popular culture. Throughout, the entry separates documented facts from later legend, especially in accounts of his final years and his rivalry with contemporaries.
Early life and the child prodigy years
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg, the son of Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria Pertl. Of the seven children the couple had, only Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl survived childhood. Leopold had come to Salzburg from Augsburg. He was a modest composer but an experienced teacher. In 1743 he joined the musical establishment of the ruling prince-archbishop as fourth violinist, and he became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. The violin treatise he published in 1756, the year of his son's birth, achieved success and gave him a professional reputation beyond the court.
Instruction began at home. Leopold first taught his daughter keyboard, and Wolfgang soon came to the lessons himself, and his exceptional learning ability let him master musical concepts quickly and even intuitively. Sources disagree on when his creative work began. One account has him playing the harpsichord by three and composing by four, while another says he composed from the age of five.
The family's travels turned this training into a public enterprise. In January 1762 the children played at the Bavarian court in Munich. In October that year, Leopold took both children to Vienna. The imperial performance was held at Schönbrunn on 13 October, where Maria Theresa, Franz Stephan and their children were enchanted by his performance on the piano and violin. The mini-tour was financially rewarding: it let Leopold put aside the equivalent of two years' salary in his Salzburg bank account.
From 1763 the touring became much longer. The grand tour of western Europe ran from June 1763 to November 1766, with long stays in London and Paris. The itinerary took in 17 cities in seven different countries, and the children performed for courts and aristocratic audiences throughout. Reports from London describe a feat in which the two children played together on the same two-manual harpsichord with a handkerchief placed over the keys. Mozart was on tour for more than two-thirds of the years between the ages of six and seventeen.
Leopold's role went beyond that of a father. He acted as teacher, manager, agent and promoter at once, and in nearly every city the prodigy performed for the leading figures of the musical establishment. He also tried to turn the reception into lasting opportunity. During the 1768 Vienna stay he pursued an opera commission for his son after a casual remark by Emperor Joseph II, selecting an Italian libretto for the purpose. Much of this activity is documented in the family correspondence. Because of the many letters Mozart wrote to his father, his life is unusually well documented. Leopold's letters also praised his daughter, calling her in 1764 one of the most skillful pianists in Europe, which shows how carefully he presented both children to their audiences.
The early compositions raise the hardest questions. Wolfgang's first 14 compositions, written between the ages of five and seven, are all notated in Leopold's handwriting. Leopold's role in these pieces was probably that of a scribe who also offered guidance: he taught common patterns and probably gave feedback, but he appears to have transcribed the child's ideas faithfully, without heavy editing. Even contemporaries were uncertain. The Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg himself doubted the authenticity of Wolfgang's earliest pieces, suspecting that Leopold had written them, because they were not nearly as childish as one would expect from a five-year-old.
Authenticity problems continue into the London years. The first symphony, K. 16, was written in August or September 1764 in London, when Mozart was only eight. Other London-period works are less secure. A copy of the Symphony in F major (K. Anh. 223/19a), written in Leopold's hand, was found in 1980, and its title page dates the work to 1765, when Wolfgang was nine. Because Leopold often advertised his son as younger than he actually was, that date is treated with caution. The four-hand keyboard sonata K. 19d was long accepted as genuine, but the general consensus among most scholars is now that Mozart did not write it. Since 1993, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe has placed it among the works of spurious or doubtful authenticity.
Scholars resolve such cases by weighing handwriting, copying history and style rather than relying on a single attribution. Handwriting is especially treacherous in this period, because André, Köchel and others after them mistook Leopold's handwriting for that of Wolfgang's, which carried some pieces into the Mozart canon. The same problem affects the earliest childhood works, where the boy's notated ideas, his father's hand and later copies overlap, and the surviving evidence is often incomplete.
Salzburg court service
Status under the prince-archbishop
Mozart's standing at the Salzburg court changed several times. Before Mozart's first journey in 1770 to Italy, Archbishop Schrattenbach conferred upon him the honorary title of concertmaster at age 14. The salaried post came later. From 1772 he was a salaried concert-master at the Salzburg court, serving the court under Hieronymus Colloredo, who was elected Prince-Archbishop on 14 March 1772. Colloredo was a difficult employer. He inherited large debts from his predecessor, and his Enlightenment-inspired reforms ran contrary to Salzburg traditions. The work itself involved both church and secular duties. The court musician works in the state rooms of the Residenz and the Cathedral.
The Italian journeys and opera commissions
Salzburg service was interrupted by three journeys to Italy. The first trip lasted just over a year, until March 28, 1771. The family didn't stay away for long, returning on a second visit from Aug. 13 to Dec. 15, 1771. The third and final Italian journey was from Oct. 24, 1772, to March 13, 1773. The trips were commercially productive. The success of his first opera seria, Mitridate, re di Ponto, in Milan's Teatro Regio Ducale on 26 December 1770, led the ducal theatre to order a second opera. That work, Lucio Silla, was given on December 26, 1772, and after a difficult premiere it proved even more successful than Mitridate, with 26 performances. A third commission, Ascanio in Alba, K. 111, a pastoral serenata full of dances, was composed in 1771 in Milan, then controlled by Austria. The work had been commissioned by the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa to mark the marriage of her son Archduke Ferdinand. These Italian works were the decisive stage of his training in opera seria and in the orchestral idioms of the Italian overture and opera buffa.
Instrumental and sacred output for Salzburg
Back in Salzburg, Mozart wrote in many genres for the court and for civic occasions. It was one of a group of 17 symphonies composed in Salzburg for the court orchestra of Archbishop Hieronymus, Count Colloredo, and the symphonies of these years range from early pieces to later works in G minor and E-flat. Serenades were written for the university, including the Serenade No. 4 in D major, K. 203, written in August 1774 for ceremonies at the University of Salzburg. In 1775 he produced a series of violin concertos: during the period between April and December of 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote). Sacred music was equally important. Mozart wrote religious works and symphonies for the cathedral and court chapel, and in 1776–77 he composed a group of short church sonatas for strings and organ.
Rupture with the archbishop
The relationship with Colloredo deteriorated over the later 1770s. In 1777, the 21-year-old Mozart was desperate to leave Salzburg, and so asked Archbishop Colloredo to allow him and his father, Leopold, to find their income elsewhere. The archbishop's response was to dismiss both of them from his service, however he later felt remorse, and allowed Leopold to resume his job of deputy Kapellmeister. Mozart left on a tour to Mannheim and Paris later that year, and returned as court and cathedral organist in January 1779. Friction continued. The archbishop became exceptionally annoyed with Mozart's frequent absences, and the Mozart family letters, especially those from the period 1777-1779, include numerous negative comments about the archbishop. The final break came in 1781. After the premiere of "Idomeneo" in Munich at the beginning of June 1781, Mozart falls out with the archbishop. Mozart was dismissed from Salzburg service and chose to remain in the imperial capital.
Vienna and the freelance career
Independence without a salaried post
The 1781 falling-out with Archbishop Colloredo ended Mozart's Salzburg employment, and Vienna became the base for a career built on independent work. He established himself in Vienna as a freelance performer, teacher and composer. That independence came with no fixed salary, so he had to find clients and patrons on his own. Although he was appointed Court Composer only in 1787, he was forced to drum up interest in his work among potential clients and patrons. This arrangement gave him artistic freedom, but it also brought financial instability.
Social life was part of the job. Mozart moved among the salons and Masonic lodges of the capital, and it was there that he came into contact with enlightenment thinking, which also found its way into his work, especially his operas.
Sources of income
Scholars who have reconstructed his earnings usually list several streams. An economic study by William and Hilda Baumol describes five principal sources of income, with performance as a large part, since he received much of his income as a virtuoso pianist. Private performances in aristocratic houses paid unevenly, because payment was at the discretion of the host and probably varied greatly.
Teaching was another mainstay, chiefly of wealthy amateurs learning piano. Pupils included Barbara Ployer, for whom he wrote a concerto, and Theresia von Trattner, the daughter of a publisher who was also his landlord in 1784. Commissions from opera houses, by contrast, typically brought a flat fee rather than royalties. Publication mattered as well: subscribers to his 1784 concerts received engraved editions, which could be played at home in chamber arrangements. The subscription list held 176 names.
The income was not stable. Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War, and the aristocracy's ability to support music had declined. By 1789 he was writing to his friend Michael Puchberg that subscription lists drew almost no response in Vienna, a sign of how quickly the market had cooled. Some of the uncertainty was eased by a court post. In December 1787 Emperor Joseph II appointed him his "chamber composer", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year. Historians generally regard that stipend as modest, and it seems to have done little to relieve the Mozarts' chronic financial troubles.
Piano concerts and subscription series
The piano concerto was the core of his public income. Shortly after his arrival in Vienna in the autumn of 1782, he wrote a series of three concertos for his own use in subscription concerts. The first full concerto of that group was written for these concerts, and later series followed. He composed 26 piano concertos, considered among his greatest works, for performance at his own concerts, and he organized subscription series of three or four concerts or more.
The results could be striking. In March 1784 he arranged three concerts at the Trattnerhof, and the premiere of the Piano Concerto in E-flat, K. 449, took place on 17 March. Mozart wrote to his father that the hall was packed and that the new concerto won exceptional applause. He had persuaded subscribers who had earlier wanted to attend only if he played, and he claimed 30 more subscribers than two rival performers combined. Such series were periodically repeated, although their profitability varied.
Theatres and audiences
Vienna's stages were managed largely by the court. Joseph II had taken direct control of the Burgtheater in 1776, establishing a national theatre there. From 1783 it housed Italian opera, while the German opera company, reconstituted in 1785, moved to the Kärntnertortheater. Mozart's German-language works fell between these arrangements. The Abduction from the Seraglio was premiered at the Burgtheater on 16 July 1782, a time when the plot and setting appealed to the fashion for all things Turkish that had taken hold in Viennese society. The opera became his most successful stage work of the decade, and it was then taken to Prague and many German cities. Three of Mozart's operas premiered at the Burgtheater, including The Marriage of Figaro in 1786.
Audiences were demanding and sometimes critical. Joseph II reportedly thought the Abduction had too many notes, and Mozart replied that it contained exactly as many as were needed. Mozart's Viennese public also responded to fashion and novelty. By 1786 the Viennese were already tiring of Mozart and turning their attention to other composers such as Antonio Salieri, and Mozart took Figaro and then Don Giovanni to Prague, where he found a receptive public.
Rivals and court politics
Mozart's competitors were tied to the court's patronage system. Salieri was firmly entrenched as a leading figure in Viennese music, particularly in Italian opera, a genre the Austrian court prized. In February 1786 the Emperor staged a contest between the two in the Orangery at Schönbrunn, with Mozart writing a German Singspiel and Salieri an Italian opera buffa. After the first performances at Schönbrunn, both one-act operas were performed on three further evenings at Vienna's Kärntnertor Theater. Documents of the period describe a professional competition rather than a personal feud: it was a typical professional competition of the time, not the personal vendetta of later legend.
Compositional style and musical language
Mozart's mature idiom is best understood as a synthesis rather than the product of a single school. His early exposure to Italian stage music, the orchestral practice of Mannheim, Parisian concert life and English symphonic and keyboard writing gave him a repertoire of models, which he later reworked into a personal language. Mozart heard and absorbed Italian opera, Mannheim orchestral writing, Parisian public concert culture, London symphonic and keyboard traditions, and the contrapuntal legacy he later encountered more deeply in Vienna. The Italian gift for long, singable melody remained the foundation of his line, while the German tradition supplied density of texture and the French supplied elegance of surface and a taste for lively theatrical effect.
His command of counterpoint came largely from Vienna in the early 1780s. In 1782 and 1783 Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Van Swieten's Sunday gatherings gave the older repertoire a living presence rather than a purely historical one. Mozart and Haydn had, of course, known something of Bach and Handel before and had studied learned counterpoint, but at van Swieten's gatherings, they were exposed to living and breathing counterpoint that was great music. Mozart responded by writing string versions of Bach's keyboard fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier (perhaps for performance at one of van Swieten's gatherings). Fugal textures then entered the Great Mass in C minor, where this study intensified his contrapuntal writing, and they reappear in the fugal passages of The Magic Flute. The borrowed technique was absorbed into his expressive vocabulary: learned style becomes part of Mozart's own expressive language rather than a historical imitation.
The relationship with Haydn is the most documented exchange of the period. He wrote six string quartets between 1782 and 1785, and dedicated them to Haydn. The dedication described the set as the product of long and difficult labour, acknowledging Haydn's authority in a genre Haydn had helped establish. Mozart's quartets show the influence of Haydn's Opus 33 set of 1781, which appeared in 1781 and is thought to have shaped the younger composer's approach. The debt was mutual in practice: Mozart did not simply imitate Haydn but integrated Haydn's innovations into his own style. The String Quartet in C major, K. 465, shows the result. Its slow introduction contains unusual counterpoint, which gave the work its "Dissonance" nickname. When the quartets were heard in Mozart's home in early 1785, Mozart performed the quartets with "my dear friend Haydn and other good friends", and Haydn's praise for Mozart became well known.
The darker, more volatile passages in Mozart's music are often linked to Sturm und Drang, the late eighteenth-century German literary movement of heightened feeling. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. The label is retrospective, and Mozart's G minor works are only a small part of his output. He wrote a G minor symphony as a teenager, and of Mozart's forty-one symphonies, only two are in minor keys. Both are in G minor — No. 25, written at seventeen. The later one, No. 40 of 1788, shows his interest in the artistic movement called Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), which showcased darker and stronger emotions. Its orchestration reflects the same mood: the work was first conceived with four horns, a feature that the Mozart scholar H. C. Robbins Landon linked to the Sturm und Drang G minor style. In a 1958 Bärenreiter foreword, Hellmut Federhofer went further and called G minor Mozart's lifelong key for pain and tragedy, a claim that rests on interpretation rather than on documentary evidence.
Operas and music theatre
Italian apprenticeship and the late opera seria
Mozart's stage career began in Italy, where two main types of opera competed: opera seria, the most prestigious form, whose complex plots came from mythology or ancient history, and its comic counterpart, opera buffa. His first full-length serious opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto, composed at age 14 for Milan's Teatro Regio Ducale, premiered on 26 December 1770. The work was commissioned to open the Milan season, and audiences were enthusiastic enough that the Milanese who saw the opera went back 21 more times. Its composer had carefully adapted his writing to the vocal abilities of singers he was forced to work with.
The next Milan commission, Lucio Silla, premiered in December 1772 and was regarded as a moderate success. It was also the last stage work Mozart wrote before reaching adulthood, and his last Italian commission.
The Munich opera Idomeneo, re di Creta, first performed in January 1781, marks the point at which the opera seria began to change in Mozart's hands. He kept the elements of a genre built on arias that follow one another with little concern for dramatic progression, while profoundly altering them. The importance and expressive power of its choruses, inspired by Gluck's lyric tragedy, foreshadow The Magic Flute, and the vocal writing for Electra anticipates the Queen of the Night. Alfred Einstein's verdict was that the work dismantled the traditional limits of opera seria and pointed the way toward lyric drama.
The Da Ponte trilogy
Lorenzo Da Ponte obtained a position as librettist to the Italian Theatre in Vienna, and from that base Mozart composed three operas for Vienna between 1786 and 1790, all set to libretti by Da Ponte. Da Ponte followed the common practice of reworking existing plots, but the quality of his elaboration gave them new life.
The Marriage of Figaro was composed quickly; Mozart wrote it in six weeks. Its political content was controversial, and after compromises were made regarding offensive political and sexual material from the original play, Joseph II permitted the opera's creation. The plot turns on an "enlightened" Count who considers reinstating the feudal law of droit de seigneur, and the scheme is undone by the servants. The opera premiered only three years before the French Revolution, and the Beaumarchais play on which it was based was banned in France. Its musical achievement lay in its treatment of character: with economy of musical gesture, Mozart transformed the stereotypes of opera buffa and commedia dell'arte into an opera full of complex and realistic characters.
Don Giovanni builds on a feudal order that allowed a nobleman to seduce anyone he pleased, usually without legal or moral repercussions. Così fan tutte, premiered in Vienna on 26 January 1790, is the last of the three. Don Alfonso wagers that the fiancées of Ferrando and Guglielmo will prove unfaithful if given the chance. Da Ponte began this libretto with Salieri and completed it with Mozart. The three operas together guaranteed Mozart's reputation as the most significant opera composer of the 18th century.
German-language theatre and the Singspiel
A Singspiel is a type of German opera which had spoken dialogue as well as singing, and was often about magical stories. Die Entführung aus dem Serail was commissioned by Emperor Joseph II, who aimed to create a national Singspiel as a counterpart to the Italian-influenced court opera. It was produced by the Nationalsingspiel company and premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 16 July 1782. The libretto by Gottlieb Stephanie was based on Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Mozart took a keen interest in shaping the libretto and insisted on various changes for dramatic and musical effect.
The work's exotic colour reflected European taste. Turkish stories and music were very popular at that time in Europe, and Mozart writes some Turkish music (or what Europeans thought was Turkish music) in this opera. Among all his operas, it became the most frequently performed, not only in Vienna but across German-speaking Europe.
The Magic Flute, a late Singspiel, continued this tradition. Its premiere in 1791 took place in a suburban popular theatre in Vienna, where comic characters, spectacle and stage magic appealed to a wide public. The genre thus connected Mozart's music with the entertainment culture of the city's non-court stages.
Character, ensemble and orchestration
Mozart's singers received music shaped to their strengths. Die Entführung's most spectacularly virtuosic vocal music is written for the heroine Konstanze. Her aria "Martern aller Arten" is accompanied by an orchestra and four solo instruments, and is like a concerto movement.
Orchestration also served character and setting. For the Turkish colour of Die Entführung, the classical orchestra was supplemented with instruments needed for "Turkish" music: bass drum, cymbals, triangle, and piccolo. The core wind group consisted of pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets. In the Da Ponte operas, multi-voice ensembles and finales carry the action across scene changes without pause, a technique that allowed the characters to develop in real time rather than in separate arias.
Symphonies
Mozart's symphonic output began in childhood. The first of his symphonies, K. 16 in E-flat, dates from 1764, when he was eight and the family was in London. The family's Grand Tour also produced K. 19 in D, composed in London in 1765. During the Grand Tour of 1763 to 1766 he wrote around fifteen symphonies, and many of them have not survived. The early works followed the pattern of the Italian opera overture, the sinfonia. Although some of these keep the three-movement Italian form, he soon preferred a four-movement layout with a minuet. The Salzburg years then brought a mix of models. Several symphonies of 1773 use the three-movement Italian form, but he also experimented with the Austrian symphony with minuet, a form he may have heard in Vienna and in Salzburg from Michael Haydn. His 1772 Divertimenti K. 136–138 are in three movements, fast-slow-fast, after the manner of the Italian sinfonia, and they are often called the "Salzburg symphonies." A critic, Jens Peter Larsen, described Symphony No. 14 (1771) as a fine example of the fusion of Viennese symphonic traditions with distinctly Italian cantabile.
The last three symphonies, Nos. 39, 40 and 41, were completed in the summer of 1788. No. 39 was completed on 26 June and No. 40 on 25 July. The Jupiter was completed on August 10. Their purpose is not documented. Music scholars have found no indication of a commission, and the usual explanation is a planned series of subscription concerts. Yet no mention of such plans is found in his letters or in the press, which leaves the motive open. Each symphony has a distinct character. Mozart moved from mellow lyricism in No. 39 in E-flat to darkly tragic grace in No. 40 in G minor, and then to festive formality in No. 41 in C. The orchestration varies as well. In No. 39 he used clarinets instead of oboes, and in No. 41 he returned to the normal brass complement, while again including oboes rather than clarinets.
The structure of the late symphonies shows how far Mozart had pushed sonata form and counterpoint. The Jupiter is the largest and most complex of his symphonies. Its opening movement is in sonata form, and its finale, also in sonata form, has a brisk fugal coda. Scholars have noted that in the finale Mozart combines dense Baroque counterpoint with crystal clear Classical phrasing. The G minor symphony shows a different kind of texture. In its minuet the three-bar phrases and tense, driving syncopation keep the listener off balance. Nikolaus Harnoncourt argued that the three works form a unified whole, pointing out that the final symphony has no introduction, unlike No. 39, but has a grand finale. Mozart's approach to introductions varied by audience. The Prague Symphony, No. 38, is in three movements (rather than four, which had become the vogue for symphonies in that day), and it is one of the few with a slow introduction to the first movement, a common practice for Haydn but rare for Mozart.
The reception of the symphonies depended on the city. In Prague, the Symphony No. 38 was first performed on 19 January 1787, at a concert organized for his financial benefit, during a visit prompted by the success of Le nozze di Figaro. Freeman points out that the adulation accorded Mozart in Prague was unprecedented for an eighteenth-century musician who was recognized as both composer and performer. In London, the young composer's early symphonies were heard in public. The Symphony No. 1 premiered on 21 February 1765 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, with Mozart conducting. By contrast, the 1788 set had a much slower path to the public. All three of these final symphonies had to wait until after Mozart's death to be published and performed. No first performance of the "Jupiter" has been identified, although the parts were published in 1793. The nickname itself came from outside the composer's circle. It was probably coined by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who had brought Haydn to London.
Piano and other concertos
Mozart's piano concertos are the core of his contribution to the genre. One reference work counts twenty-seven piano concertos, and he largely composed them for his own use. The Vienna group is the most important. The dozen piano concertos composed between February 1784 and December 1786 are works of the highest quality and originality. Another count gives 23 original piano concertos, which reflects the difference between original works and arrangements.
The Viennese concertos were tied to a practical system of subscription concerts. In 1784 Mozart started the first of his subscription concerts, advertising new compositions in Vienna's newspaper and then inviting people to sign up. Subscribers were invited to attend private performances of three piano concertos (KV 449, 450 & 451) and presented with sheet music, which Mozart had engraved. The engravings included versions for orchestra and for smaller forces, so the works could be performed as chamber music at home. Mozart reported to his father that he had 30 subscribers more than Richter and Fischer combined. The concerto K. 449 is a case in point: Mozart had begun it earlier, and he finished it in February 1784, calling it a concerto of an entirely special manner.
The soloist-orchestra relationship became more intricate across the Vienna period. Maynard Solomon, as cited in one programme note, praised the highly developed relationship between soloist and orchestra in these works. The wind writing was a central feature of this development. Simon Keefe has noted contemporary comments that the woodwind writing in K. 451 had a "newly intricate and sophisticated" character compared with Mozart's earlier keyboard concertos. The late C minor concerto, K. 491, has one of the largest instrumental forces in the series: the work is scored for strings, woodwinds, horns, trumpets and timpani. Mozart also left the soloist's part only partly written out, since he intended to perform the work himself.
Mozart's concertos for other instruments form a smaller group, and they were often written for particular players. The five violin concertos, four for horn, two for flute, and one each for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon make up this group. The five violin concertos date from 1775 in Salzburg, and they were probably written for his own use as concertmaster of the Archbishop of Salzburg's orchestra. Their dating is still debated, since analysis of the handwriting, papers and watermarks has proved that all five violin concertos were redated several times. The Oboe Concerto K. 314 was composed in the spring or summer of 1777, for the oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis. In 1778 Mozart re-worked it as a concerto for flute in D major. His last concerto for a wind instrument, the Clarinet Concerto K. 622, was written for the clarinettist Anton Stadler. Because Mozart found the oboe too penetrating for the circumstances, the orchestra lacks oboes and instead uses pairs of flutes and a pair of bassoons in addition to the usual horns.
These smaller concertos show how Mozart adapted the form to particular instruments and audiences. The Viennese piano concertos drew on subscription audiences, while the Salzburg works for strings and winds were written for the players of the court orchestra. Across the genre, the balance between soloist and ensemble, and the use of wind colour, were shaped by the performers available and the expectations of the listeners.
Chamber music and solo keyboard works
The six quartets dedicated to Haydn
Mozart's best-known quartets are a group of six. He wrote six string quartets between 1782 and 1785, and dedicated them to Haydn. They were published in 1785 in Vienna as his Op. 10. The sequence follows the order of composition, apart from a swap of two works. The stylistic debt is traced to Haydn's own quartet series: the quartets are thought to be stylistically influenced by Haydn's Opus 33 series, which had appeared in 1781. Mozart's father had a hand in the dedication, and the quartets were dedicated to Haydn at Mozart's dad's urging.
The dedicatory letter presents the set in a family image, comparing the works to sons sent into the wider world and placed under the protection of an older, esteemed friend. Mozart also admitted the effort had been demanding. He acknowledged the older composer's supremacy in this difficult genre, admitting that the quartets had cost him a long and laborious study. Unlike many of his other works, these were not commissioned. No patron commissioned these quartets, which makes them an unusually personal effort by the composer. Because no deadline pressed on him, he could revise freely. He had leisure to experiment, trying out new styles and even rewriting whole movements when he was less than happy with the results.
The quartets were performed in Vienna in January and February 1785. Mozart played them at a social occasion on 15 January 1785, with Haydn among the guests. Leopold Mozart was present at the later performance, having travelled from Salzburg to visit. Haydn's verdict was recorded by Leopold: Haydn told him that Mozart was the greatest composer known to him, either in person or by name. The set appeared in print in September 1785, when Artaria in Vienna published the quartets, and they quickly drew both lively criticism and essays on music theory. The later quartet K. 499 belongs to the same period of Viennese chamber publishing. It was written in 1786 in Vienna and was published by, if not indeed written for, his friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister.
Two of the set have acquired nicknames. The String Quartet No. 19, K. 465, is subtitled "Dissonance" on account of the unusual counterpoint in its slow introduction.
Piano sonatas, fantasies and works with other instruments
The solo keyboard output spans much of his career. One catalogue dates the sonatas to 1774-1789, and editions differ on how many works to count: one collection presents a complete set of 18 Piano Sonatas, while the IMSLP listing numbers nineteen. The early sonatas, beginning with K. 279, were written for keyboard players of modest means and were often used by pupils and amateurs. The A minor sonata, K. 310, is among the more serious works in the group; a facsimile of its first page in Mozart's own hand is available. Among the most popular is the sonata K. 331, which closes with the "Alla turca" rondo.
Mozart also wrote free-form pieces. The fantasies include K 394, K 396 and K 397. A distinctive pairing is the Fantasy and Sonata in C minor, K. 475 and 457, which is listed as "Fantasy and Sonata in C minor, K 475 and 457". Beyond solo keyboard, violin and piano sonatas, which he described as piano and violin works, and piano duets formed part of his chamber output. Piano quartets, such as K. 478 (1785) and K. 493 (1786), extend this combination of keyboard with strings.
Divertimenti, serenades and string quintets
Mozart's divertimenti grew out of Salzburg social life. He probably wrote the divertimentos for one of the musical evenings held in the homes of Salzburg's leading residents, at which he frequently performed on keyboard and violin. At the time, his official position in Salzburg was as concertmaster of the court orchestra. The scoring was flexible: he may have intended the works for a string quartet, a "divertimento" quartet with double bass instead of cello, or a chamber-scale string ensemble. The serenade K. 525, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik", dates from 1787. According to Mozart's own catalogue, it was originally planned in five movements, but the second movement, Minuet and Trio, is lost.
The late divertimento, the String Trio K. 563 of 1788, shows the form at its most ambitious. It is his last divertimento and differs from his other divertimenti not only in its instrumentation but also in its compositional ambition and scope. It was written while money was short. Mozart composed the work for his friend, fellow Freemason and creditor Johann Michael Puchberg.
The string quintets show the most sustained development. Early experiments date from the 1770s, followed by a quintet arrangement of a serenade, the twin masterpieces of 1787, and two late works from 1790 and 1791. The C major quintet K. 515 was completed on 19 April 1787 and is the most amply scaled of all Mozart's chamber works. The added viola is central to the sound: it allows Mozart to weave textures of remarkable density and urgency. The commercial reception was modest. Mozart found few takers for the string quintets K. 515 and 516, and the quintet arrangement K. 406 of the C minor Wind Serenade, because chamber works of that era were usually sold in sets of three or six. He eventually sold the three works to Artaria, which issued K. 515 in 1789, K. 516 in 1790 and K. 406 in 1792.
Private performance and teaching
Much of this repertoire was heard first in private settings. The Haydn quartets were played at Mozart's own home, and the string quintets and other chamber works were designed for amateur and salon audiences as well as professional players. The simpler keyboard sonatas and divertimenti were suited to pupils and to domestic music-making, while the late works demanded skilled ensembles. The chamber repertoire therefore served Mozart's career in several ways: it displayed his technical command to Viennese colleagues, it supplied material for his own performances, and it gave him works that could be sold to publishers.
Sacred and vocal music
Salzburg liturgical works
Most of Mozart's sacred music comes from his Salzburg years, when he held a post as organist and composer at the cathedral. Among his 17 extant settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, many were written for the Catholic service in Latin. The Coronation Mass, K. 317, is probably the best known of the Salzburg masses. Mozart completed it in 1779, probably on March 23, 1779, for use on Easter Sunday, April 4. The archbishop, Hieronymus von Colloredo, wanted short settings, and the composer met that requirement while keeping the movements cohesive. The opening of the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo are alike in their strongly uneven rhythms, in spite of tempo and metrical differences.
The nickname has no secure origin. The name was once thought to refer to the ceremonial crowning of a statue of the Virgin Mary in the church of Maria-Plain, near Salzburg, but that theory has now been discredited. Scholars also suggest that a short church sonata may have been performed between sections. Mozart may well have inserted a brief church sonata between movements, and one of his single-movement church sonatas has been associated with the Coronation Mass, since it was written about the same time, is in the same key, and has the same orchestration.
The unfinished Mass in C minor
Mozart worked on the Mass in C minor, K. 427, in 1782–83, after moving to Vienna, and he never completed it. It remained unfinished, missing large portions of the Credo and the complete Agnus Dei. The Kyrie and Gloria are complete, while the Credo survives only in part. The traditional explanation, that the work was a vow tied to his marriage, rests on a single letter of 4 January 1783. Ulrich Konrad, after an analysis of that letter, fails to support this belief. The first performance took place in Salzburg on 26 October 1783, and Constanze sang the soprano solos, while Mozart conducted.
The style combines learned counterpoint with the operatic idiom of the time. He juxtaposes old-style choral fugues, the result of studying Bach and Handel, with contemporary Italianate arias. Some musicologists connect this ambition with the private concerts of Bach and Handel that Baron Gottfried van Swieten gave in Vienna, which exposed Mozart to Baroque choral music. The reasons for the unfinished state remain uncertain. The suggestion that Mozart composed the Mass to celebrate the birth of his first child has generally been dismissed, yet the child's death a few months later at least offers a plausible explanation for his disinclination to finish the work.
The Requiem
The Requiem in D minor, K. 626, was commissioned anonymously. Count Franz von Walsegg ordered it through intermediaries. The count, an amateur chamber musician who routinely commissioned works by composers and passed them off as his own, wanted a Requiem Mass he could claim he composed to memorialize the recent passing of his wife. At the time of Mozart's death on 5 December 1791, only the opening movement was complete in all of the orchestral and vocal parts. The Introit was fully scored, while the Kyrie and the sequence existed in drafts.
Constanze was anxious about losing the fee. Joseph Leopold Eybler received the score from Mozart's widow, promising to complete it, but he later gave up and returned it to Constanze, who turned to Süssmayr. It remained for Eybler and Süssmayr to reconstruct and/or fill in the sketches of a large portion of the torso, and for Süssmayr to compose the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. The completed score was delivered to Walsegg, dated 1792. A performance for Constanze's benefit was arranged by Gottfried van Swieten on 2 January 1793. The extent of Süssmayr's work and the authorship of the later movements remain debated. In 1991 Robert Levin presented a 'completed' version in which he corrected what he called Süssmayr's errors in musical grammar. That version has since been preferred by many conductors and ensembles. The autograph manuscript later was acquired by the Austrian National Library in 1831–38.
Other sacred and vocal works
Mozart's vocal works in sacred genres also include motets, vespers and single liturgical pieces. His choral and sacred vocal output includes Exsultate, jubilate for soprano and orchestra, K. 165, the Coronation Mass, the Vesperae solemnes de confessore, K. 339, and Ave verum corpus, K. 618. The concert aria and the church setting shared a virtuosic vocal idiom, and this overlap is one of the points where sacred and theatrical styles meet. Few large liturgical settings date from the Vienna years, and from Vienna we have just the unfinished Mass in C minor and the Requiem. Sacred music in the eighteenth century was generally commissioned by patrons, with the church or nobility providing financial support, and composers wrote music to fit specific religious services.
Manuscripts, cataloguing and attribution
From February 1784 until shortly before his death, Mozart kept a thematic register of his own works, headed Verzeichnüss aller meiner Werke. It records what he wrote during those years, and its contents are entirely in his own hand. Each opening pairs the dated descriptions on the left with musical incipits on the right, so that each opening usually contains the entries for five works. The earliest item is the E-flat piano concerto K. 449, entered on 9 February 1784, while the final entry is the Masonic cantata K. 623, dated 15 November 1791 (ff. 28v-29r). Because the entries were made close to the time of composition, the register is a central source for dating the later works. Its own history is not entirely simple, however. Some scholars think the opening group of entries was written up retrospectively in November 1784 (for a discussion of this matter see Leeson and Whitwell, and Rosenthal and Tyson pp., and an analysis of the inks has led to the suggestion that a larger block of entries was copied from an earlier catalogue in 1786 .
After Mozart's death, the register became a working tool for publishers. Creating a published record of Mozart's works was a priority for both Constanze and André, and André used the Verzeichnüss as the basis for a thematic catalogue published in 1805. The manuscript is now held by the British Library under the shelfmark Zweig MS 63.
Ludwig Ritter von Köchel's Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichniss, issued in 1862, was the first comprehensive listing of Mozart's output (it appeared after earlier attempts by Franz Gleißner and Johann Anton André, published in 1833). The problem Köchel faced was that Mozart did not enumerate his works with a consecutive set of opus numbers, and he had not always dated his compositions. Köchel therefore used the register for the 1784–1791 period, while many compositions written before 1784 could only be estimated. The main sequence held 626 items, and five appendices (Anh. I–V) collected lost authentic works, fragments, works by Mozart transcribed by others, doubtful works and misattributed works .
Köchel's numbering was revised several times. Paul von Waldersee's 1905 edition was a limited update that mainly added pieces that had come to light since 1862 . Alfred Einstein's 1937 edition was a far larger undertaking. Building on earlier analyses, he re-dated many works and moved some items from the appendices into the main body under letter suffixes such as 196e . The 1964 edition by Franz Giegling, Gerd Sievers and Alexander Weinmann corrected the chronology again and restructured the appendices . The sequence of changes can be traced in a single case. A divertimento for wind octet was numbered K. Anh. 226 in K1; Einstein placed it in the K3 main catalogue as K. 196e, between K. 196 and K. 197, and it was later moved back into the doubtful appendix, a status that was sometimes reversed again . This pattern meant that one work could carry several numbers, which made cross-referencing difficult.
The 2024 edition, presented in Salzburg on 19 September 2024, takes a different approach. It was compiled by Neal Zaslaw, with the research team of the International Mozarteum Foundation under Dr. Ulrich Leisinger preparing it for printing. Its main decision was to simplify the numbering: all works in the main body of the catalog are now listed under the number under which they were first listed there, which for most compositions means the 1862 numbers and for the almost 100 Mozart fragments the numbers from the 1937 edition. 95 compositions, which had not received their own entry in any of the previous editions, are now numbered from KV 627 onwards. New discoveries are integrated in the same way. The first concerto movement, listed without an author's name in the so-called Nannerl-Notenbuch, is now recorded as K. 636. A previously ignored Trio in C major for two violins and bass is included as KV 648.
Attribution depends on weighing several kinds of evidence. Autograph manuscripts are generally treated as the most reliable witnesses, because most Mozart manuscript copies or printed editions are second or later generation sources, and autographs are therefore considered the primary and most reliable musical documents. The register supplies a second kind of evidence, and its importance mainly lies in the evidence it provides concerning the authenticity of Mozart's works. Even so, judgments change over time. The symphony K. 74g was accepted by Einstein in 1937, but the sixth edition gave the symphony the number "Anh.C 11.03", putting it into the spurious and doubtful works category for stylistic reasons. The ninth edition restored it to Einstein's number "74g", although it is still considered doubtful. Lost works and fragments remain a special problem, and the new entries of 2024 are largely of this kind, since they had been missing from earlier editions or mentioned only in passing. Despite these revisions, Mozart's works are still universally known by their K (or Kv) numbers.
Finances, publishing and patronage
After Mozart left the archbishop's service in 1781, he had no salaried post in Vienna. His move to Vienna in 1781 freed him from the constraints of aristocratic employment, allowing him to earn as an independent composer and performer. He combined private lessons, self-organised concerts and commissions to earn a living. Estimates of his total income vary. One account puts his peak annual income in the mid-1780s at around 3,000 florins, while an economic study by William and Hilda Baumol gives a figure of 2,500 florins a year. Scholarly estimates for 1791 range from 3,725 to 4,000 gulden. Popular accounts sometimes cite a far higher figure, as much as 10,000 florins a year, which is harder to reconcile with other evidence.
Subscription concerts were the most distinctive part of his Viennese income. Subscribers paid in advance for a series, which gave him an assured income. Because the large court theatres were rarely available for commercial use, he offered subscription series in smaller, unconventional venues, giving an unprecedented 18 subscription concerts between 1784 and 1786. Subscribers received printed music as well. The engraved versions of his piano concertos were issued in arrangements for orchestra and for smaller ensembles, so that they could be performed as chamber music at home. Receipts from these concerts were substantial: one account gives at least 2,025 florins from subscription concerts in 1784 alone. Teaching was also lucrative. One source records six ducats, equivalent to 27 florins, for twelve lessons, well above the usual rate. Operatic fees were irregular: for Così fan tutte, he expected 200 ducats, twice the usual payment for a new opera.
Income was less stable than these figures suggest. After 1787 the subscription series ended, and apparently because he was suffering from a painful inflammation of his hands, which reduced his public activity. By 1789 he complained in a letter to Puchberg that he could not earn money in Vienna, and only one name had signed a subscription list he had circulated for two weeks. Wider economic conditions also weighed on him. The Habsburg court was reforming and centralising culture, the monarchy was diverting resources to the war with the Ottomans, and rising taxes and inflation reduced local spending. Court appointments did not compensate for this. When he succeeded Gluck as court composer, he received half the pay of his predecessor.
From 1788 his finances deteriorated sharply. Around 1788 his financial situation worsened, during a poor period for musicians in Vienna, and biographers also often point to imprudent spending decisions in the household. His letters to Michael Puchberg, a Viennese merchant and fellow Freemason, began in June 1788 and continued for several years. Puchberg responded with a series of loans, ranging from 30 to 300 florins and totalling about 1400 florins. A larger loan came in autumn 1790, when Mozart obtained 1000 gulden over two years at 20% interest from the Viennese merchant Heinrich Lackenbacher. Some debts were kept private: a letter of April 1790 refers to a matter that is believed by scholars to have been a gambling debt, considered a debt of honour. Historians differ on the cause. One view holds that the difficulties were not the result of systematic neglect but of economic volatility and personal choices. Another emphasises that contemporary records and modern research suggest he suffered not from a lack of income but from a lack of financial prudence. The records also show that creditors were not always pressing: after his death, Puchberg did not press his claim to 1000 gulden owed by Mozart, requesting repayment only at a later time.
Publishing provided a further, independent source of income. The publisher Artaria was the chief Viennese publisher of Mozart's works during his lifetime and issued forty-nine publications by him between 1778 and 1791. After his death, the principal publishing role passed to the German house of Breitkopf & Härtel, which had been founded in Leipzig in 1719. A second Viennese firm also emerged in these years. By 1785 Franz Anton Hoffmeister had established one of Vienna's first music publishing businesses, second only to Artaria, and he issued a chamber-music series that included Mozart's String Quartet K. 499. Its publication history is complicated: the outcome of a deal between Mozart and the publisher is not known, and neither Lackenbacher nor Hoffmeister appears among Mozart's creditors after his death. The market was also open to unauthorised copies. The Viennese dealer Johann Traeg first offered copies of the piano concertos K. 413–415 in 1783, after a Paris publisher had declined them. Whether these were simply pirated is disputed, and another scholar argues that at least some of Traeg's Mozart offerings were made from material Mozart supplied himself. This made the question of copyright and control over printed works central to his commercial position.
Taken together, these arrangements reflect a broader shift in the status of the composer. By the late eighteenth century, a transition was underway from private patronage to the free market. While composers still relied on aristocratic commissions, a growing bourgeoisie in Vienna provided an alternative source of revenue, and public concerts, subscription series and music publishing allowed composers to earn independent income. Mozart's financial record is therefore interpreted in different ways. Some accounts describe him as not a poor man in Vienna, but at times extremely well paid, whereas popular retellings present him as desperately broke despite great success. The surviving evidence supports elements of both views: his earnings were high by contemporary standards, but his expenditure, the volatility of the market and the limits of patronage made his finances precarious.
Personal relationships and contemporaries
Constanze Weber and the marriage
Mozart's wife, Constanze Weber, was the younger sister of Aloysia Weber, a singer with whom he had first been attached. Mozart married Aloysia's younger sister Constanze in Vienna in 1782, and thus became Lange's brother-in-law. The relationship began in the Weber household. Mozart had moved into the family's home in 1781, and Constanze's mother, Cäcilia, asked Mozart to move out when she realized that he had fallen in love with Constanze, for the sake of propriety. The couple married on 4 August 1782 at St. Stephen's Cathedral. Leopold Mozart had opposed the match, which had been discussed for some time before the wedding. They discussed marriage, but Wolfgang's father, Leopold, was firmly against it.
Their nine-year marriage is documented mainly through Mozart's letters, which express strong attachment. From the evidence of his letters, he was deeply in love with her throughout their nine-year marriage. Constanze's health was a recurring concern. Constanze was frequently ill and often with child. In nine years she gave birth to six children, only two of whom survived. Earlier popular accounts portrayed her as indifferent to music, but more recent scholarship has sought to correct this interpretation, highlighting the societal demands on the Mozarts to spend money on their home and clothes, evidence of great affection within their letters and Constanze's influence on Mozart's work. After 1791 she escaped poverty and supported her family through concertizing and promotion of her husband's memory; she was responsible in part for the extensive posthumous publication of her husband's works.
Leopold Mozart and the letters
The father–son relationship is the best-documented in Mozart's life. Leopold, a violinist and composer, was the father and principal teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The correspondence is large. The Mozarteum's online edition now contains 1128 letters and documents, and it complements earlier publications that include 247 other letters by Leopold Mozart already published earlier and 375 letters by his son Wolfgang Amadé from the years 1769 to 1791. Anderson's 1963 edition, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, is the standard English-language selection.
The letters show a relationship that was affectionate but often strained. This two-sided, voluminous correspondence shows the close and sometimes conflicting relationship between father and son. Many letters are a struggle for control of Wolfgang's life and career, making some letters weapons as much as news accounts. Leopold was also financially entangled with his son. Although Leopold was often criticized for exploiting his son and commercializing his talents, he believed sincerely in the duty to develop and display those gifts. In the later years, he was, to a degree, financially dependent on his son and so many of the letters show his frustration with how carelessly Mozart was spending his money. Mozart's December 1781 letter announcing his intention to marry, in which he argued that domestic life suited his temperament, was written against this background. On December 15, 1781, he wrote again to his father revealing his plans to marry.
Leopold's wife Anna, and his daughter Maria Anna ("Nannerl"), are less visible in the record. Nannerl, herself an accomplished clavierist, remained in Salzburg during several of the family's journeys, and some of the letters are in Anna's own voice. Several letters in Anna's own voice are written to her husband and talented daughter, Nannerl, who stayed behind in Salzburg when Wolfgang went with his mother to Munich, Mannheim and Paris in 1777-78.
Haydn and other musical contacts
Mozart's friendship with Joseph Haydn is the most significant professional relationship of his mature years. Mozart dedicated the six string quartets of 1785 to Haydn, and Haydn in turn told Leopold, who was visiting Vienna, that Wolfgang was the greatest composer he knew personally. Haydn's connection to Mozart is discussed in the sections on quartets and symphonies, and this section records it mainly as a personal bond. Mozart's contemporaries in Vienna also included court musicians, singers and Masonic acquaintances. The Langes, for example, are documented as friends who socialized together, as did Wolfgang and Joseph individually. Goethe belongs to the same decades of European culture, and the link is one of chronology and literary context rather than of a documented personal circle.
The rivalry with Salieri: the documentary record
The rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri is the most persistent claim about his relationships, and the record for it is thinner than the legend. Salieri was the court composer of Emperor Joseph II and was already known for his operatic achievements when Mozart arrived in Vienna. Rumors of a rivalry between the composers has swirled since they first brushed elbows in the 1770s. The clearest documented point of competition came in 1786, when Mozart's "Der Schauspieldirektor" and Salieri's "Prima la musica e poi le parole" were performed on the same evening as part of a competition organized by the emperor. The event has often been cited as evidence of the rivalry, although both works were well received.
The most frequently cited source for hostility is a reported conversation from Constanze, and historians treat it with caution. One of the earliest sources of the rivalry narrative is a conversation reported by Mozart's widow, Constanze, in which Mozart allegedly expressed concerns about Salieri's intentions. However, this account is ambiguous and lacks substantial corroboration. Other contemporaries did not record significant enmity. Many of Mozart's contemporaries, including his sister Nannerl and his friend Gottfried von Jacquin, did not report any significant enmity between the two composers. The two men also collaborated: Salieri and Mozart jointly composed a cantata, "Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia," in 1785 to celebrate the recovery of the singer Nancy Storace. Later evidence points the same way. Salieri tutored Mozart's son Franz in music after his father's death.
Historians generally accept that there may have been some occasional antipathy between the two men but the idea that Salieri was the instigator of Mozart's demise is not taken seriously by scholars of the men's lives and careers. The dramatic version was a later construction. The myth of Salieri's murderous envy toward Mozart originated in Alexander Pushkin's 1830 play "Mozart and Salieri." Peter Shaffer's play and Miloš Forman's 1984 film brings to life the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, but they should be separated from the documentary record discussed here.
Death, burial and the completion of the Requiem
Mozart died in his Vienna apartment on 5 December 1791, at the age of 35. He had fallen ill in late November, and the illness lasted about fifteen days. Accounts of the final days come mainly from family members and the people who attended him, and some were written down years later. His wife Constanze and her sister Sophie Weber nursed him, and friends noted his declining strength. According to later reports, he continued to work on the Requiem from his bed, dictating ideas and passages to his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Some accounts say that in his last hours he tried to sing a drum part to Süssmayr. The reports that he believed he was composing his own funeral music come largely from Constanze's later recollections, and historians treat them with caution.
The illness and the death record
The attending physician, Franz Closset, recorded the cause of death as hitziges Frieselfieber ("acute miliary fever"), a common diagnosis at the time for a feverish illness with a skin rash. This vague label is the only official explanation. No autopsy was performed. Later accounts describe fever, swelling of the limbs and body, vomiting and delirium, followed by a coma. The absence of a post-mortem and the generic wording of the record are the main reasons the cause of death remains disputed.
Burial and the grave
After a funeral service at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Mozart was buried on 6 December 1791 in St. Marx Cemetery on the outskirts of Vienna. Under the reforms of Emperor Joseph II, burials had been moved beyond the city walls and were generally simple. Mozart's interment therefore followed the regulations of the day, and it did not indicate poverty, although the idea that he received a "pauper's" burial has persisted. The exact spot was not marked, and later attempts to find it, including one by Constanze some years afterwards, failed. A monument by Hanns Gasser was placed in 1859 at an approximate location. Sources differ on what later happened to the monument and the remains: some describe the monument being moved to the Central Cemetery in 1891, while others state that the remains themselves were reinterred there. Scholars generally agree that the precise burial site is unknown.
The Requiem and its completion
The Requiem was commissioned in the summer of 1791 through an anonymous intermediary. The commission is usually linked to Count Franz von Walsegg, who wanted a mass for his late wife, although the story of an anonymous "grey messenger" became part of the legend. Mozart had begun serious work in September, and when he died he had completed roughly two-thirds of the score. The Introit and the Kyrie were fully orchestrated in his hand, and detailed sketches survived for the Sequence, including the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa, and for the Offertorium. Constanze, who needed the outstanding fee, first asked Joseph von Eybler to complete the work. Eybler orchestrated the music after the Kyrie but could not continue, and the score was returned.
Süssmayr, who had assisted Mozart with copying in his final months, then finished the work. He completed the Lacrimosa, supplied the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, and orchestrated the sections left in sketch form. The completed score was delivered to Walsegg, who had it performed in February 1792. Parts of the work had been heard at St. Michael's Church in Vienna within days of Mozart's death, and the first complete performance took place on 2 January 1793, arranged by Baron Gottfried van Swieten as a benefit for his widow. The score was published in 1800.
Questions of authorship
The extent of Süssmayr's contribution is still discussed. Scholars have debated how much of the orchestration and the later movements reflects Mozart's own ideas, with some views treating Süssmayr's role as that of a loyal assistant and others as a more substantial authorship. Constanze's motives and her later accounts also form part of the discussion, because early biographers gave conflicting versions of the commission and the completion. Modern editions and performances generally use the Süssmayr completion, while acknowledging its mixed origins.
Causes of death
Explanations for the death have ranged from natural illnesses to foul play. A panel of physicians and Mozart scholars convened at Cornell in 2000 concluded that rheumatic fever was the likely cause and rejected poisoning by Salieri. Other proposals include nephritis or kidney failure, Henoch-Schönlein purpura, chronic renal failure, infective endocarditis, and an infection linked to a contemporary epidemic in Vienna. Some of these hypotheses rely on Leopold Mozart's letters about his son's childhood illnesses, which describe symptoms that some physicians read as rheumatic fever. Historians stress that the evidence is incomplete: there was no autopsy, the official diagnosis is vague, and retrospective diagnoses rest on second-hand descriptions. No single explanation is generally accepted.
Nineteenth-century reception and the Mozart cult
Mozart's standing in the nineteenth century developed along two lines that often overlapped: admiration for works heard as the summit of an art, and a scholarly effort to establish what he had written and how his life had unfolded. Romantic-era commentators tended to place him alongside Bach and Beethoven as a composer of the first rank. The complete-edition movement that shaped this view was already under way before Mozart's cult took hold. The Leipzig firm Breitkopf & Härtel had started publishing Gesamtausgaben (Complete Works Editions) in 1850 with Bach, and it was this model that made a complete Mozart edition thinkable.
The first major scholarly biography came from Otto Jahn. The project was sparked during the funeral of Mendelssohn in 1847, and the first edition appeared in four volumes between 1856 and 1859, timed to the centenary of Mozart's birth. Jahn's approach set it apart from earlier writing. Earlier biographies were often described as pleasant, gossipy accounts of the composer's outward life, while Jahn relied on original material, much of it new, and applied a critical method that predated modern musicology. He also collected Mozart manuscripts and letters from 1852 and copied many others, and when he learned that Köchel was preparing a catalogue of the works, he passed this material on to him. The second edition of 1867 drew on Köchel's 1862 catalogue, and later revisions, including those by Hermann Deiters, extended the book's life into the twentieth century. An English translation by Pauline D. Townsend followed in 1882.
The first complete edition of the music was the work of Breitkopf & Härtel, issued as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Werke. It was published from January 1877 to December 1883, with supplements appearing until 1910. The title later used for it, Alte Mozart-Ausgabe, is a modern label that distinguishes it from its successor, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. The edition's organisation reflected Köchel's work: Köchel had arranged Mozart's works into twenty-four categories, which Breitkopf & Härtel used for the edition, and he partly funded the venture. The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, which appeared between 1956 and 2007, was later described as an advance on this older edition.
Institutional memorialisation took shape in Salzburg. In 1841, on the fiftieth anniversary of Mozart's death, music-loving citizens of Salzburg, with the support of the Prince-Archbishop, founded the "Dommusikverein und Mozarteum" as a conservatory for the cultivation of sophisticated church music. Its founding also included collecting old Mozart documents. In 1844, Mozart's son Franz Xaver authorised that the manuscripts and fragments in his estate, the clavichord, and the entire library should be bequeathed to the Mozarteum. Mozart's widow Constanze, who had lived in Salzburg from 1824, also donated the majority of his personal belongings and memorabilia to the association. A commemorative exhibition followed in 1856, held in the composer's birthplace, and in 1880 the association was founded as the 'International Mozarteum Foundation'. Today's Mozarteum institutions, including the Mozarteum university, trace their origins to this 1841 foundation.
Nineteenth-century criticism also debated how to describe Mozart's music. One strand praised it as natural and spontaneous, as if its beauty arose without visible labour, while another stressed the balance, proportion and formal discipline associated with the Viennese Classical style. These two views sometimes competed within the same writing about him. The historical record of this debate is uneven, and later accounts often read it through the categories of their own period, so the terms "natural" and "classical" should be understood as contested labels rather than settled descriptions of his art.
Performance practice and modern scholarship
Much of today's Mozart performance rests on historically informed performance (HIP). This approach aims to stay faithful to the manner and style of the era in which a work was first conceived. It combines the study of period performance conventions with instruments that may be reproductions of those in use at the time, and which usually differ in timbre and temperament from modern equivalents. Because no sound recordings exist of music from before the late nineteenth century, reconstruction depends on evidence from texts. Historical treatises, pedagogical tutor books and concert reviews are used to gain insight into the performance practice of a given era. For Mozart, the violin method published by Leopold Mozart in 1756 is among the key sources, alongside Quantz's flute treatise.
Several questions remain contested. Tempo is one. After his time at Mannheim (1777–1778), Mozart moved away from the slower courtly dance toward a faster type of minuet in his symphonic works. Eighteenth-century theorists tied tempo to note values, so that the shorter the notes, the slower the piece was to be performed. Because Mozart's works predate the metronome, performers must infer tempo from such conventions rather than from numerical markings. Pitch is another issue: modern orchestras typically tune to A=440 Hz or slightly above, while period ensembles often tune to around A=415 Hz, which changes the sound of the whole performance.
Ornamentation raises the most debate. Before the twentieth century, composers certainly expected that expressive decorations would be added by performers. Some scholars argue that Mozart's own embellishments provide the model for judging other ornamentation, and that notated ornaments should not be altered, particularly when the composer oversaw the publication of the work. Others stress that an informed reading of the score can produce convincing performances regardless of the instruments used.
The modern scholarly edition is the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA). Published by Bärenreiter between 1956 and 2007, it presents a scholarly musical text based on all available sources, principally Mozart's manuscripts. It comprises 132 volumes in 35 work groups, arranged in ten series. Within the work groups, the completed works appear in chronological order, and sketches, drafts and fragments are included in the appendix of each volume. It succeeded the earlier Breitkopf & Härtel complete edition, which was published from January 1877 to December 1883, with supplements published until 1910. Its goal was to serve both scholars and performers wishing to undertake authentic performances.
The Mozarteum in Salzburg is central to research access. For decades, the International Mozarteum Foundation has been systematically collecting and evaluating information on musical sources and historical documents. Its holdings include the world's largest collection of letters from the Mozart family, many autographs and other music manuscripts, and first and early editions. The Digital Mozart Edition (DME), a project of the Mozarteum with the Packard Humanities Institute, presents the works in new digital formats and is dedicated to online editions of letters and documents as well as textual sources for Mozart's vocal works. It is a meta-search engine that can be accessed worldwide free of charge for scholarly, private and educational purposes. Related projects include the online edition of Mozart's letters, which covers all letters and documents related to the Mozart family as well as related letters and documents spanning from 1740 to 1880. Manuscripts are also indexed through the RISM catalogue under the Salzburg library siglum, and the portal "Mozartiana Digital" helps users find the digitized treasures, view them and, if necessary, download them as PDF files.
Recordings form a further strand of the performance record. Discographies of works such as the Requiem show that ensembles playing on period instruments in historically informed performance are marked in the table, which allows listeners to compare approaches across decades. Today Mozart's operas and symphonies are performed worldwide by both period and modern ensembles, and the tension between the two approaches continues to shape each new production.
Cultural legacy and popular representation
Film, fiction and the Salieri legend
Mozart's image in film and theatre owes much to Miloš Forman's Amadeus (1984), which won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture. The screenplay was written by Peter Shaffer, whose stage play was its source. The film's core storyline is the one least supported by the historical record. The idea that Antonio Salieri was consumed by jealous hatred and actively sabotaged Mozart's career is almost certainly fiction. Salieri's secure position at court gave him few obvious reasons for resentment, since he was a leading composer in Vienna with a steady stream of work (Salieri was one of the most respected composers in Vienna, a successful court composer who had plenty of work and recognition.).
Several specific scenes also diverge from the documents. In the film, Salieri blocks Mozart from a teaching post with the Princess of Württemberg. The records show that Mozart did apply for the position, and Salieri was given the appointment instead, but the reasons for this choice are not known. The poisoning plot has no firm basis: there is virtually no credible evidence that Salieri poisoned Mozart. The rivalry narrative appears to descend from literature rather than archives, since the whole "deadly rivalry" narrative traces back to an 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin. The film's Mozart is also more dissolute than the sources allow: there is no evidence that he was an alcoholic in reality, and surviving documents show nothing to determine that Mozart behaved as Hulce plays him.
The prodigy as a cultural symbol
Mozart has become the reference point for the child prodigy. He is the most famous and influential child prodigy of all time. Popular anecdotes also contribute to this image. A familiar belief holds that he wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as a small child, but the melody was taken from a French folk song. Mozart did, however, write a dozen variations on it when he was 17.
Leopold's role in shaping this image is central to modern accounts. Leopold described his son in almost sacred terms, as a miracle granted to Salzburg. Maria Anna, the older sister, also contributed to the family's presentation of the boy: she would copy music that the young Mozart had yet to master. Recent scholarship therefore tends to explain his early achievements through training and environment as much as through innate gift. His genius was not a magic trick. It emerged from a rare combination of immense natural ability, remarkably early training, a rich musical environment, and a lifetime spent turning experience into craft.
The childhood image also outlived the adult composer's fame. His reputation relied so heavily on his childhood image that when he died, many people had to be reminded who had died, by recalling the child prodigy rather than the adult composer. After his death, burdened by debt and surrounded by myth, Mozart once again became a commercial product, this time as a young, tragic, dead composer.
The "Mozart effect" and education
Few claims about Mozart's music have reached public life as widely as the so-called "Mozart effect." It refers to a phenomenon initially described in a 1993 study in which listening to a Mozart sonata was found to temporarily enhance spatial-reasoning abilities in college students. The effect was brief: this improvement was short-lived, lasting approximately fifteen minutes, and later studies produced mixed results. Popular media turned the finding into a much broader claim, namely that listening to Mozart's music can increase your general intelligence, or IQ. Subsequent replication was weak: a 1999 review showed that over a dozen subsequent studies failed to verify the 1993 result.
The commercial response was large. The 1990s saw a surge in interest surrounding this concept, leading to the commercialization of classical music products aimed at boosting children's intelligence. Research on music instruction has been more consistent in a different direction: some studies found that music instruction in children was linked to more sustained cognitive benefits, such as improved spatial-reasoning, hand-eye coordination, and arithmetic skills. Passive listening and active training are therefore treated separately in the scholarly literature, a distinction that the popular version of the effect ignores.
Institutions and public memory
Mozart's manuscripts, letters and memorabilia are kept mainly by institutions in Salzburg and Vienna, of which the Mozarteum in Salzburg is the best known. These collections support exhibitions, research and performance, and they also shape the public version of Mozart's life that film, schools and advertising draw on. Through these channels his name remains a shorthand for musical genius, and the distinction between documented biography and popular legend is often most visible in them.
Historical debates and open questions
Authenticity and the limits of documentary evidence
Most disputes about Mozart's output begin with the catalogue that organises it. Köchel's 1862 list placed 626 works in a main chronology, with five appendices covering lost works, fragments, transcriptions, doubtful pieces and misattributions. Köchel had to estimate the dates of many works written before 1784, even though Leopold Mozart had compiled a partial list of his son's earlier works. Mozart's own catalogue, begun in February 1784, supports much more precise dating for the later works. The ninth edition of 2024 departs from the earlier practice: chronological ordering was abandoned and works were no longer renumbered.
Reclassification often depends on stylistic judgement, and that judgement has changed over time. A symphony now known as K. 74g was accepted by Alfred Einstein without doubt, then moved to the doubtful section in the sixth edition for stylistic reasons, and restored to its original number in the ninth edition while still considered doubtful. A similar swing affected the Sinfonia concertante for four winds. Einstein moved it into the main body, but scholarly opinion had swung the other way by the 1960s. The Violin Concerto No. 7 raises related problems. Ernest Hess pointed to compositional errors, un-Mozartian phrases, weaknesses in instrumentation, but Christoph-Hellmut Mahling, in 1978, suggested that another composer's work might have been copied by Mozart, and most questions regarding the work remained unsolved.
The early symphonies pose particular problems because the autograph scores are often missing. In some cases the main body of the work has been entirely lost, its identity being preserved only through an incipit recorded by the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. Dating can also rest on inference. Einstein placed one symphony in London in 1765 on the basis of its incipit and the style of Mozart's first surviving symphony, and only in 1982 was the complete symphony found as a copy, which shows how a work's status can change after the catalogue is printed.
The Salieri rivalry: documented contact and later legend
The documented record shows that the two men were active in Vienna at the same time, which made professional competition likely. A well-known event is the 1786 imperial contest, in which Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor and Salieri's Prima la musica e poi le parole were performed on the same evening. This episode has often been cited as evidence of the rivalry. The contacts also include cooperation. In 1785 the two jointly composed a cantata, Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, for the singer Nancy Storace. After Mozart's death, Salieri tutored Mozart's son Franz in music, and he probably conducted some of Mozart's works.
The hostile account rests on thin evidence. One of the earliest sources is a conversation Constanze Mozart later reported, in which her husband voiced concern about Salieri's intentions, but this account is ambiguous and lacks substantial corroboration. Rumours of poisoning appear to date from after 1791 (gossip that Salieri hated Mozart or even tried to poison him seems to have originated after Mozart's death in 1791). Historians have also suggested that friction may have originated with Mozart, who complained about the Italian influence in the court. The best-known "confession" is linked to Salieri's old age, when he had a particularly bad episode of dementia, and it was never substantiated by the staff who cared for him. The literary line runs from Alexander Pushkin's 1830 play "Mozart and Salieri" to the stage and film versions that followed.
Religious life, political views and place in Viennese society
Mozart left little explicit writing on religion, so his attitudes must be reconstructed from letters and from the recollections of others. Though Mozart never wrote at length on religion, some of his attitudes can be gleaned from letters and recollections of contemporaries. One of the most quoted accounts comes from Friedrich Rochlitz, whose journal was published in 1801 and recorded a visit to Leipzig in 1789. Rochlitz reported that Mozart said an "enlightened Protestant" could never understand what the Agnus Dei of the Catholic Mass meant to him. The report is second-hand and was written more than a decade after the conversation.
Freemasonry is the main point of debate. Mozart was admitted to the Viennese lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit in December 1784, although sources give 11 December for his initiation, while another gives 14 December. Scholars differ on how far he was committed. Peter Paul Fuchs noted that Mozart was a devout Catholic, a religion that threatened Freemasons with excommunication, and he described the tensions in Mozart's life as something There is little evidence that he found these tensions troubling. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn held that Mozart "merely belonged to a circle of intellectuals", while Jacques Henry, himself a Mason, argued that for the freemasons of the eighteenth century, these two sets of beliefs (Christianity and Masonry) were perfectly reconcilable. Each interpretation depends on the same limited sources.
Political views are the least documented aspect of Mozart's life. The rationalist lodges to which Mozart belonged drew on the humanist views proposed by the French philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, but this does not establish his own political position. Anti-clerical remarks attributed to him are more plausibly linked to the fashionable anti-clericalism of Febronian Catholicism favoured by those in power in Mozart's social ambit than to his Masonic ties. His social position is also unclear. He came from an ordinary Catholic family, and in Vienna he competed for patronage in a market where competition for patronage was fierce.
Gaps in the early works and open questions of chronology
The earliest period of Mozart's career is the least documented. Leopold's partial list and the estimated dates for works before 1784 leave many gaps, and some early works survive only in fragments or incipits. Attributions have also shifted over time. Some works in the appendix of Köchel's catalogue have been identified since 1965 as by Leopold Mozart, which shows that the family's shared compositional activity complicates the authorship of juvenile works. Sources also disagree on details of Mozart's own life, such as the exact date of his initiation. Historians therefore treat many dates as provisional and rely on internal evidence, stylistic comparison and the survival of manuscripts to revise them.
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- Amadeus: 5 Things That Were Dramaticized (& 5 That Actually Happened)screenrant.com
- Amadeus (1984)deepfocusreview.com
- Mozart: The Greatest Child Prodigytheepochtimes.com
- Mozart: child prodigy, melodic genius, Romantic forerunner... and our greatest composer?classical-music.com
- The Myth of Mozart’s Childhoodmozartrazom.com
- How Mozart Became a Genius: Talent, Practice, and the Truth Behind the Mythserenademagazine.com
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Genius of the Classical Era - Tunitemusictunitemusic.com
- Mozart effectebsco.com
- The Mozart effect: The truth behind the claimsparentingscience.com
- Discredited "Mozart Effect" Remains Music to American Earsgsb.stanford.edu
- Amadeus (film)en.wikipedia.org
- The Fabricated Childhood of Mozartmozartrazom.com
- Mozart effecten.wikipedia.org
- Sinfonia Concertante for Four Windsen.wikipedia.org
- Violin Concerto No. 7 (Mozart)en.wikipedia.org
- Mozart symphonies of spurious or doubtful authenticityen.wikipedia.org
- Symphony, K. Anh. C 11.18en.wikipedia.org
- Mozart, Masonry and Catholicismncronline.org
- Was Mozart a Freemason? - MusicaSacra Church Music Forumforum.musicasacra.com
- Mozart and Freemasonrythesquaremagazine.com
- Mozart and Freemasonryen.wikipedia.org
- Mozart: Requiem and Freemasonry - MOZART'S ROSESmozartsroses.com
- Mozart and the Catholic Churchen.wikipedia.org
- EAM: A MadAminA! Insert: Is It Really By Mozart?eamdc.com