WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

A Small Boy With a Very Busy Keyboard

I was born on 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, which was then the capital of an archbishopric inside the Holy Roman Empire, so please don't put me on an Austrian map just yet. My father Leopold was a violinist and composer at the Salzburg court, and my sister Nannerl was such a gifted pianist that I had a hard act to follow, even as the younger one. I wrote my first little pieces at five, and by eight I had written a symphony, which is about the age when most children are still working out their shoelaces. Between June 1763 and December 1766 my family dragged me around Europe, from Paris and London to The Hague and Switzerland, and that was really my schooling: new cities, new musicians and a great many bumpy carriages.

Goodbye, Archbishop

My first big step as a grown-up composer came when my opera Idomeneo was performed in Munich in January 1781. Two months later I was in Vienna, because I had quarreled with Archbishop Colloredo in Salzburg, and that argument finished any hope of staying on as his obedient musician. I decided to make my living as a freelance musician, which meant no steady salary and nobody telling me when to bow. It was a risky move, but I have never been able to write good music while someone stood over me checking my manners.

Vienna, My Noisy Workshop

Vienna was the place where an independent musician could find audiences, pupils and patrons, so I gave concerts, taught and wrote as fast as my pen would go. In August 1782 I married Constanze Weber at St Stephen's Cathedral, and from then on our home was full of music, visitors and the usual household chaos. The city also gave me stages for my operas, and Le nozze di Figaro was first heard there in May 1786, with Cosi fan tutte following in January 1790. If you want to picture my life in those years, imagine a very busy café where the owner keeps sneaking off to the back room to write another masterpiece.

The Greatest Hits, Roughly Speaking

If you only know a few of my works, Eine kleine Nachtmusik is probably one of them, a bright and graceful piece that sounds like a polite party where everyone is in a good mood. Le nozze di Figaro, first performed in Vienna in 1786, is a comic opera full of servants outsmarting their master, and Don Giovanni, first performed in Prague in October 1787, mixes seduction, humor and a truly frightening ghost. Die Zauberflöte, which opened on 30 September 1791, is a fairy tale with a bird-catcher, a magical flute and some of the highest notes ever given to a singer, while Piano Concerto No 21 and Symphony No 40 show my gentler and my more restless sides. Rondo Alla Turca is the cheerful, bouncing piano piece you've likely heard even if you didn't know it was mine, and the Requiem is the dark, solemn one I left unfinished.

The Sad Arithmetic of the Mozart Household

Constanze and I had six children, and only two of them survived: Karl Thomas and Franz Xaver Wolfgang. That is a grief I would rather not make jokes about, so I'll simply say that it hung over our home, however brightly the music rang out. I kept writing through it, because composing was how I made sense of the world and also how I paid the rent. Anyone who thinks my music is all sparkle should listen again, because the shadows are there too, tucked between the cheerful tunes.

A Mysterious Stranger Knocks

In 1791 I was busy with Die Zauberflöte, and then a commission for a Requiem arrived through an intermediary, with the person who ordered it keeping his name hidden. It was Count Franz von Walsegg, who wanted music to remember his dead wife, and the story goes that he may have wished to pass it off as his own, though nobody can say for sure. I died in Vienna on 5 December 1791, aged 35, and the Requiem was still unfinished. My pupil Franz Xaver Susmayr completed it, and how much of it is his and how much is mine is something people still argue about.

Where Exactly Did They Put Me?

I was buried on 6 December 1791 at St Marx cemetery in an unmarked grave, which sounds dismal but was simply the normal way of doing things in Vienna then. Communal graves were standard practice, so nobody knows today where exactly I lie, and I have long since made my peace with that. What matters more is that the music did not stay in the ground, because musicians kept playing it, teaching it and falling for it. Over the centuries my operas, concertos and symphonies have been performed all over the world, and I can only be pleased that people still want to hear them.

A Small Gift for You

What I'd most like to give you is a little time when you don't have to be anywhere else, just listening. You don't need to know any rules or names, because a tune that makes you smile or catches your breath is doing its job without any explanation from me. Start with something light like Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and if you feel adventurous, try the opera Don Giovanni or the Requiem later on. If my music keeps you company for even a few minutes, then I'm happy, and the cheerful and the sorrowful parts of my life will have been worth it.