Classical Music: Mozart
Around the mid-1700s, the Baroque style of music began to seem old-fashioned. There was a growing interest in music due to the growth of the European middle class. Many people began to prefer a style of music that was more balanced, and this led to the classical style of music. The style was given its name because the characteristics that people preferred in music were very similar to those qualities exhibited in the art of ancient Greece and Rome. This style of music was dominant from about 1750 to 1820. The period is sometimes referred to as the era of Viennese Classic, because the best known composers from this period are Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, who worked at some time in Vienna.
Mozart was not only one of the greatest composers of the Classical period, but one of the greatest of all time.
Biography
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, though seldom remaining long in one place, he travelled extensively throughout Europe, where he performed or conducted many of his compositions. In his short life of only 35 years, Mozart wrote over 600 works in every kind of musical form available to him, including 22 operas. Son of the violinist and composer Leopold Mozart (1719 – 87) began to compose and gave his first public performance at age five. From 1763 Leopold toured throughout Europe with his children, showing off the “miracle that God allowed to be born in Salzburg.” The first round of touring (1763 – 69) took them as far as France and England, where Wolfgang met Johann Christian Bach and wrote his first symphonies (1764). Tours of Italy followed (1769 – 73); there he first saw the string quartets of Joseph Haydn and wrote his own first Italian opera. In 1775 – 77 he composed his violin concertos and his first piano sonatas. His mother died in 1778. He returned to Salzburg as cathedral organist and in 1781 wrote his opera seria Idomeneo. Chafing under the archbishop’s rule, he was released from his position in 1781; he moved in with his friends the Weber family and began his independent career in Vienna. He married Constanze Weber, gave piano lessons, and wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) and many of his great piano concertos. The later 1780s were the height of his success, with the string quartets dedicated to Haydn (who called Mozart the greatest living composer), the three great operas on Lorenzo Da Ponte’s librettos — The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Cosi fan tutte (1790) — and his superb late symphonies. In his last year he composed the opera The Magic Flute and his great Requiem (left unfinished). Despite his success, he always lacked money (possibly because of gambling debts and a fondness for fine clothes) and had to borrow heavily from friends. His death at age 35 may have resulted from a number of illnesses. Mozart was buried in a Vienna suburb, with little ceremony and in an unmarked grave, in accordance with prevailing custom.
Mozart’s music and its influence
Mozart is one of the founders of the classical style in music. The central characteristics of the classical music include clarity, balance and delicacy and can be seen in Mozart’s works clearly. But his music is characterised by new for that time psychological truthfulness. Surprisingly, he is not identified with radical formal or harmonic innovations, or with the profound kind of symbolism heard in some of Bach’s works. Mozart was in no respect a reformer. He was content to take forms as he found them and with consummate skill make them perfect models of their kind. But Mozart’s best music has a natural flow and irresistible charm, and can express humor, joy or sorrow with both conviction and mastery. Mozart’s music often has a child-like simplicity and innocence. That very simplicity makes performing his music a great challenge, as it exposes every lapse in rhythm, synchronization, and tuning. Mozart composed in all the major forms and styles of the day. Among his major works are the following: symphonies, operas, piano concertos, violin concertos, concertos for bassoon, clarinet, oboe and horn, piano sonatas, violin sonatas, string quartets, other chamber works, including the clarinet quintet, masses, including the final Requiem, divertimentos, lieder, serenades. Of all the forms, though, Mozart esteemed opera above all others.
Mozart’s influence on other composers was immense. Ludwig van Beethoven was so impressed by his work that he traveled to Vienna in 1787 in order to study with the composer. A number of composers have paid tribute to him, by writing variations on his themes, and his intense, eventful life has prompted authors and filmmakers alike to turn it into books or movies. Without question, Mozart’s influence on all subsequent Western music is fundamental. He remains one of the greatest and most popular composers of all time. His influence over modern composers cannot be exaggerated; without him the work of Weber and Wagner would have been impossible. To modern ears, accustomed to rich and highly-colored harmonies, Mozart’s orchestration sounds thin and often monotonous, and he never allowed expression to interfere with the conventional form in which he clothed his beautiful melody. But he stands as the highest type of the purely classical composer; in his style we see a blending of German depth, Italian beauty and French truth to facts. Mozart’s legacy is inestimable. Mozart made complexity sound simple and pushed symphonic, chamber and operatic forms to new levels; the profound, sublime Mozart of the late operas, late symphonies and the requiem, whose music lays bare the human soul. A master of every form in which he worked, he set standards of excellence that have inspired generations of composers.
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