Born Jan. 27, 1756, in Salzburg; died Dec. 5, 1791, in Vienna. Austrian composer.

One of the greatest music masters, Mozart was outstanding for a powerful, rich talent that flowered early and for the unusual course taken by his career, which began with the triumphs of a Wunderkind and developed into an arduous struggle for survival and recognition. He was distinguished for his unequaled daring as an artist who preferred the uncertain life of an independent master to demeaning service under a despotic great lord. Finally, he was unusual for the all-encompassing character of his creative work, which included almost all musical genres.

Mozart’s father, the violinist and composer Leopold Mozart, taught him to play several musical instruments and to compose. From the age of four Mozart played the harpsichord, and at age five or six he began to compose. He wrote his first symphonies at age eight or nine, and at age ten and 11, his first works for the musical theater. In 1762 he and his sister, the pianist Maria Anna Mozart, toured Germany and Austria. Later, they performed in France, England, and Switzerland. Mozart gave piano, violin, organ, and vocal recitals. From 1769 to 1777 he served as concertmaster, and from 1779 to 1781 as organist at the court of the prince-archbishop of Salzburg. Between 1769 and 1774 he traveled to Italy three times. In 1770 he was elected a member of the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna. He took lessons in composition from Padre Martini, the director of the academy. In 1770 he received the Order of the Golden Spur from the pope. In Milan, Mozart conducted his opera Mitridate, re di Ponto.

By the time he was 19, the composer had written ten works for the musical stage: the theatrical oratorio Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes (part 1, 1767, Salzburg), the Latin comedy Apollo et Hyacinthus (1767, the University of Salzburg), the German singspiel Bastien und Bastienne (1768, Vienna), the Italian opera buffa La finta semplice (1769, Salzburg) and La finta giardiniera (1775, Munich), the Italian opera seria Mitridate and Lucio Silla (1772, Milan), and the dramatic serenatas (pastorales) Ascanio in Alba (1771, Milan), II sogno di Scipione (1772, Salzburg), and II re pastore (1775, Salzburg). In addition, he had completed two cantatas, as well as many symphonies, concerti, quartets, sonatas, and other works. However, he failed in his attempts to establish himself in Paris or in any important musical center in Germany. Mozart wrote the music for J.-G. Noverre’s pantomime Les Petits Riens (1778) while he was in Paris. After staging the opera Idomeneo, re di Creta in Munich (1781), he left the service of the archbishop and settled in Vienna, where he earned a living by giving lessons and academy recitals.

The Abduction From the Seraglio, a singspiel staged in Vienna in 1782, was a milestone in the development of the national musical theater. In 1786, Mozart’s short musical comedy Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario) and the opera The Marriage of Figaro, which was based on Beaumarchais’s comedy, were performed for the first time. After its premiere in Vienna, The Marriage of Figaro was staged in Prague, where it met with a triumphant reception, as did the opera Don Giovanni (1787). At the end of 1787, Mozart became a chamber musician at the court of Emperor Joseph II, where it was his duty to compose dances for masquerades.

As a composer of operas Mozart was not successful in Vienna. He was commissioned to compose for the Vienna Imperial Theater only once—the merry, elegant opera Così fan tutte (So Do All the Women, 1790). The opera La clemenza di Tito (The Mercy of Titus), based on a classical plot and adapted for coronation ceremonies in Prague (1791), was received coldly. Mozart’s last opera, The Magic Flute, which was first staged in 1791 in a small theater in suburban Vienna, won recognition among the democratic public. Hardship, poverty, and disease hastened the tragic end of the composer’s life. He died before reaching the age of 36 and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Mozart is a representative of the Viennese classical school. His creative art is the musical apex of the 18th century, a reflection of the Enlightenment. In his work the rationalistic principles of classicism were combined with the influence of sentimentalist aesthetics as well as of the Sturm und Drang movement. An excited, nervous quality and passion are just as characteristic of his music as restraint, control, and a high degree of structure. Although Mozart retained the elegance and tenderness of the “courtly” style (galante stil) in his works, he overcame the mannered quality of the style, especially in his mature compositions. His creative thought focused on a more profound expression of the spiritual world and on a truthful depiction of the many aspects of reality. Conveyed with equal force in his music are a feeling of life’s fullness and the joy of being, as well as the sufferings of a man who experienced the oppression of an unjust social system and who strove passionately for happiness and joy. Although sorrow often attains a tragic quality in his work, a bright, harmonious, positive outlook prevails.

Mozart’s operas are a synthesis and revival of previous genres and forms. In them the music—the vocal foundation, the ensemble of voices, and a symphonic quality—is emphasized. Nevertheless, Mozart freely and flexibly subordinated musical composition to the logic of dramatic action, as well as to the characteristics of the players as individuals and as a group. Particularly in Idomeneo, he developed certain devices of Gluck’s musical drama in his own way.

Drawing on the Italian comic opera and, to some extent, on the “serious” opera, Mozart created the comic opera The Marriage of Figaro, which combines lyricism and merriment, lively action, and three-dimensional development of characters. The underlying idea of this social opera is the superiority of the common people to the aristocracy. The opera-drama (dramma giocoso) Don Giovanni combines comedy and tragedy, fantastic conventionality and everyday reality. In the opera the hero of an old legend, a seducer from Seville, embodies vital energy, youth, and freedom of feelings, but the willfulness of his personality encounters opposition from rigid moral principles.

The nationalistic opera-fairy tale The Magic Flute carries on the tradition of the Austro-German singspiel. Like The Abduction From the Seraglio, it combines musical forms with conversational dialogue, and it has a German text. (Most of Mozart’s other operas had Italian librettos.) But the music for The Magic Flute is enriched by various genres, ranging from operatic arias in the style of the opera buffa and opera seria to chorales and fugues and from the simple song to highly symbolic Masonic music. (The plot is permeated with borrowings from Masonic literature.) In this opera Mozart glorified brotherhood, love, and moral steadfastness.

Taking as his point of departure the classical norms of symphonic and chamber music developed by Haydn, Mozart perfected the structure of the symphony, the quintet, the quartet, and the sonata, deepening and individualizing their ideological and imagistic content, introducing a dramatic tension and sharpened internal contrasts, and intensifying the stylistic unity of the sonata-symphonic cycle. Subsequently, Haydn borrowed a great deal from Mozart. The essential principle of Mozartian instrumental composition is its expressive cantabile. Among Mozart’s symphonies, of which there are about 50, the most important are the last three (1788)—the Symphony in Eb major, which is imbued with the joy of life and combines lofty images with images from everyday life; the Symphony in G minor, which is permeated with powerful emotions, sorrow, tenderness, and courage; and the stately, magnificent, emotionally complex Symphony in C major, which was later called the “Jupiter.”

Of the seven string quintets, the most outstanding are the C major and G minor (1787). The most important of Mozart’s 23 string quartets are the six dedicated to Haydn, “father, teacher, and friend” (1782–85), and the three “Prussian quartets” (1789–90). The chamber music includes ensembles for various instrumental groups, including some with parts for piano and wind instruments.

Mozart was the creator of the classical concerto for solo instrument and orchestra. His concerti retained the broad accessibility essential to the genre but acquired symphonic scope and a diversity of individual expressiveness. His 21 concerti for piano and orchestra reflected the brilliant mastery and the inspired, singing quality of the composer’s own manner of performance, as well as his command of improvisation. Mozart wrote one concerto for two pianos and one for three pianos and orchestra, five (or six) concerti for violin and orchestra, and a number of concerti for various wind instruments, including a sinfonia concertante for four solo wind instruments (1788). For his own performances and for his pupils and acquaintances he composed 19 piano sonatas, as well as rondos, fantasias, variations, four-hand works for piano and for two pianos, and sonatas for piano and violin.

Of great aesthetic value is Mozart’s everyday (light or amusing) orchestral and ensemble music—divertimenti, serenades, cassations, and nocturnes, as well as marches and dances. His Masonic compositions for orchestra (Masonic Funeral Music, 1785) and for chorus and orchestra (including the little Cantata for the Freemasons, 1791), which are similar in spirit to The Magic Flute, make up a special group. Most of his ecclesiastical choral works and church sonatas for organ were composed in Salzburg. During the Vienna period he composed two major, unfinished works—the Mass in C minor (written parts of which were used in the cantata Davidde penitente, 1785) and the famous Requiem, one of his most profound works. Commissioned anonymously in 1791 by Count F. von Walsegg und Stuppach, the Requiem was completed by Mozart’s student, the composer F. X. Süssmayr.

Mozart was among the first Austrian composers to create classical examples of the chamber song (lied). Many of his arias are extant, as well as ensembles for voice and orchestra (almost all with Italian texts), vocal riddle canons, and 30 songs for voice and piano, including Das Veilchen, a setting of a text by Goethe (1785).

After his death Mozart won fame. His name became a symbol for the highest musical talent and creative genius, as well as for the unity of beauty and truth. The unsurpassed value of his creative work and its enormous role in mankind’s spiritual life has been underscored in statements by musicians, writers, philosophers, and scholars from Haydn, Beethoven, Goethe, and E. T. A. Hoffmann to A. Einstein, G. V. Chicherin, and various contemporary masters. In Mozart and Salieri, A. S. Pushkin characterized Mozart’s works in this pointed, pithy phrase: “Such depth! Such boldness, and such graceful form!” Tchaikovsky paid tribute to the “bright, shining genius” in a number of his compositions, including the orchestral suite Mozartiana. Mozart societies have been organized in many countries. In Salzburg, Mozart’s home city, a network of memorial, educational, research, and scholarly institutions has been established, headed by the Mozarteum, an international institution founded in 1880.

Mozart’s works were catalogued by L. von Köchel (Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke W. A. Mozarts, 6th ed. Edited by A. Einstein. Leipzig, 1969). Another, more complete, revised sixth edition was edited by F. Giegling, A. Weinmann, and G. Sievers (Wiesbaden, 1964; 7th ed., 1965).