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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
An extraordinary musical talent
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Europeana Foundation
One of the most popular classical composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756. From an early age, Mozart showed great interest and extraordinary talent in music. Already at five, he started composing his first pieces, and impressed European royalty with his masterful keyboard play.
His father, Leopold, a musician and a minor composer, played a crucial role in Mozart’s musical development. He was the one who taught Mozart his first minuets, wrote down Mozart’s first compositions and gave up his career to dedicate himself fully to his son.
In 1762, the six-year-old Mozart together with his sister and his father started touring across Europe. Munich, Vienna, Prague, Mannheim, Paris, London… During these travels, Mozart met many musicians and composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, and further mastered his skills.
After a short return to Salzburg, Mozart again travelled across Europe in search of better employment opportunities. He finally settled in Vienna in 1781, where a year later he married Constanze Weber.
Musically, Mozart’s life in Vienna was a period of outstanding creativity which saw the production of many of his best known symphonies, concertos and operas, and his final Requiem. Among the holdings of the National Library of Austria, you can find the original manuspcipt of this last great work, incomplete at his death in 1791.
