Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In 1802, Beethoven became depressed and thought a lot about suicide. He went to a small village in Germany where he stayed for a few years. The next couple of years Beethoven created his most impressing masterpieces. In 1812 he had completed over twelve of his best works and he was known worldwide. But after this Beethoven did not release any music for awhile and he got in trouble with the law over some royalties to songs.

Mozart and his older sister Maria Anna "Nannerl" were the couple's only surviving children and their musical education began at a very young age. The archbishop of the Salzburg court, Sigismund von Schrattenbach was very supportive of the Mozart children's remarkable activities. By the time Mozart was five years old, he began composing minuets. The next year, he and his sister were taken to Munich and Vienna to play a series of concert tours. Both children played the harpsichord, but Mozart had also mastered the violin.

In 1762, Mozart and his elder sister Maria Anna (best known as Nannerl) who was also a gifted keyboard player, were taken by their father on a short performing tour, of the courts at Vienna and Munich. Encouraged by their reception, they embarked the next year on a longer tour, including two weeks at Versailles, where the children enchanted Louis XV. In 1764 they arrived in London. Here Mozart wrote his first three symphonies, under the influence of Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian, who lived in the city. In Paris, Mozart published his first works:four sonatas for clavier: with accompanying violin in 1764.

Reutter scouted Haydn as a choirboy and took him to Vienna, where he stayed for the next nine years and earned himself tuition in violin, clavier, and in singing. Haydn’s voice naturally “broke” around 1749 and was consequently dismissed by St. Stephens, leaving him penniless and homeless in the streets of Vienna. He couldn’t have been any place better in the world being a broke musician than in Vienna, where aristocratic families demanded fine musicians for their courts. He freelanced taking several odd jobs to scrape by; he mentored children, played violin for street bands and took the time to teach himself composition. He made a name for himself and first caught the attention of Count Ferdinand Maximillian von Morzin in 1759 and thus gained steady employment at his court.

He met very famous orchestras and style of Mannheim, French music in Paris, and the gallant style Johann Christian Bach and Johann Sebastian Bach’s youngest son. The trips were so long that they had to stop frequently; Wolfgang and other members of the family fell so ill that they had to cut their performance schedule. At age 13, Wolfgang and his father departed to Italy in December, leaving his mother and his sister at home. Nannerl’s professional music career was over, she was in a marriageable age and because of the period of time she couldn’t perform her artistic talent in public. In Rome, Wol... ... middle of paper ... ...ozart was falling into serious financial difficulties.

He supposedly died of typhoid fever, in Vienna on December 5, 1791. His funeral was attended by a few friends. Mozart died young and had an unsuccessful career, but he ranks as one of the greatest composer of all time. With more than six hundred works it shows that even as a child he had a feel of the resources of musical composition as well as an original

Wolfgang Amadeus was not his original birth name it was shortened to this from Joannes Chrisostomos Wolfgangus Gottlieb. It is little wonder even two of the children survived; “Given Leopolds insistence that they be brought up on a diet of water and gruel, the wonder is that any survived at all.” (Siepmann, Mozart His life and Music) Leopold Mozart was very musical himself and was a skilled violinist, composer and an author. He wrote a well received publication on the art of playing the violin. He began teaching Nannerl music when Mozart was 3 years old. Mozart would play after his sister’s lessons were finished and by the time he was four he could play pieces from memory.

His father taught him what he knew with the piano and violin. Beethoven was a child prodigy, just like Motzart, only Beethoven never traveled until he was seventeen. He traveled with his piano teacher by the name of Neefe, who studied under Johann Sebastian Bach's son. He went to Vienna. While he was there he had received one or two lessons from Motzart and then got a letter stating that his mother was dying, so he had to go back to Bonn.

This would be the composers last visit to Bonn. After his mother's death on July 17, 1787, Beethoven went back to Vienna to study with Hayden in November of 1792, where he lived for 35 years (Tames, 14). He was unsatisfied with Hayden because he was preoccupied and commonly missed many mistakes made by Beethoven (Schmit, 17). Beethoven, then, went to Neffe who himself started composing at the age of 12. In the late 1700's, Beethoven began to suffer from early symptoms of deafness, and by 1802, Beethoven was convinced that the condition was not only permanent but was getting much worse.

During this period, there were hundreds of composers, but the three main composers of the time were Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Josef Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 in Rohrau, Austria. As a child, he was in a choir, but as he grew up his voice changed and he was later dismissed from the school when he turned 18 years old. In his early adult hood, he was a freelance musician so he could earn a living, but by his middle years he grew close with a very wealthy family and became a very popular musician. His last years were spent composing music in London where he made most of his money and he died of old age in 1809.