Mozart

 
The incomparable and inimitable Mozart, who signed himself W.A. or Wolfgang Amadé (never "Amadeus" except in jest after 1773), was the lone surviving son of a proud, shrewd, exploitative father. Leopold toured the boy and his sister, Nannerl, as prodigies between 1762 and 1773, from London to Italy via Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and, of course, Vienna, the Hapsburg capital. Mozart, although frequently and seriously ill, including with typhus and smallpox, spent less than four years at home in Salzburg before 1773. The arrival of a haughty, stingy new archbishop in 1771 curtailed father-son travel time (Nannerl was dropped from the act in 1766). Grudgingly, Leopold sent his wife in 1777 to chaperone an ill-fated trip to Paris (where she died). En route, Mozart fell in love at Mannheim with Aloisia Weber, whose sister Constanze he happily married in 1783, without papa's approval. Mozart's reprieve from provincial Salzburg came from the Elector of Bavaria: a commission to compose Idomeneo for Munich's 1781 Carnival season. From there, the archbishop summoned Mozart to Vienna for the coronation of Joseph II, Maria Theresa's successor, where he dismissed his exasperating employee. From 1782 on, Mozart was his own man (although perpetually nagged by papa, whose funeral in 1787 Mozart boycotted). Vienna emancipated him from a stultifying routine, although before age 20 he had written nine operas, five violin concertos, at least 30 symphonies, a sheaf of divertimentos and serenades, a ream of liturgical pieces, six sonatas, and six concertos for klavier. Several startlingly individual works were not the result of Leopold's tutelage, his son's first and strictest teacher, but came after instruction by Johann Christian, the "London Bach," in 1764-65; Padre Martini in Italy after 1769; and frequent advice from Michael Haydn, Franz Josef's younger brother, appointed musical director at Salzburg in 1762 and indubitably influential after 1771. Although Mozart achieved celebrity in Vienna early on, Emperor Joseph II never formally employed him despite a high regard for Mozart's genius. Mozart began presenting solo concerts with orchestra, which produced a trove of sublime klavier concertos between 1782 and 1786 with Nos. 12 to 25. Only two more followed before his death five years later. After the successful singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Harem) in 1782, he wrote just two operatic fragments and the single-act Der Schauspieldirektor before five final and uniquely brilliant operas. La nozze di Figaro offended many aristocratic sponsors, as the Emperor intended when he suggested the subject to librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (although Beaumarchais' original play was banned in Vienna). Prague, however, loved Figaro and immediately commissioned Don Giovanni. In 1784, Mozart joined the Freemasons, whose ideas would infuse many of his works. The Ottoman War of 1788-90 shuttered Vienna's theaters for two years: ergo, the belated creation of Così fan tutte, which Joseph's sudden death suspended after just five performances. When Constanze became chronically ill (six pregnancies in as many years), the family coffers that had been well-filled since 1783 emptied quickly as Mozart had no sense of money management whatsoever. In 1791, however, the Die Zauberflöte commission materialized and prospered greatly, followed by a Prague commission for Tito to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II (the son whom Maria Theresa had advised, when he was still King of Lombardy, not to engage Mozart as court composer because she considered his father vulgar and greedy). All debts were repaid before Mozart's untimely death, except 1000 kroner owed a fellow mason, which Constanze settled posthumously. In his last year, Mozart earned the equivalent of 80,000 U.S. dollars, including his fee for the unfinished Requiem, completed by a pupil.