Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

(1756–91)

   Composer.

   Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria; he was the son of Leopold Mozart, the Archbishop’s court composer. An extraordinary child prodigy, he embarked on extensive tours, playing in all the major courts of Europe. In 1782 he moved to Vienna, but dogged by debt and poverty, he died at the age of thirty- five. He is now recognised as one of the greatest musical geniuses who has ever lived. Among his Church music was his Coronation Mass, two settings for Vespers, the ‘Miseracordias Domini’, an unfinished Mass in C Minor and a Requiem. In the nineteenth century, his music was regarded as frivolous and inappropriate for sacred settings, but today his sacred music is as much played as his operas, symphonies and concerti.

   A.H. King, Mozart in Retrospect: Studies in Criticism and Bibliography (1955);

   H.C. Robbins Landon (ed.), The Mozart Compendium (1990);

   W. Hildesheimer, Mozart (1983).