The Life and Times of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart is truly the most remarkable composer who ever lived. He composed in the classical style and there is no other composer to fairly compare him with. Although he died at the age of 35, he left the world with more than 600 of the most amazing compositions ever written. Throughout his life, he composed with an ease of melody and a blend of grace and precision that arguable no one has ever excelled (Duiker 478). He was an amazing musician and composer whose legend continues to grow more than two and a half centuries after his death.
Mozart was a musical child-prodigy, writing his first minuet at the age of five. At the age of six, he began composing complicated and serious musical works and in the same year gave his first harpsichord concert. His first symphony was written when he was only eight years old and his first opera when he was twelve.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria in January of 1756 to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl. Leopold Mozart was a respected and successful violinist and composer for the Archbishop of Salzburg. He was also an experienced teacher and taught young Wolfgang to play the clavier at the tender age of three. By the age of four, he had developed such an amazing talent for remembering musical pieces, that Leopold began teaching him to play the harpsichord. Wolfgang was a quick learner and within a year he was composing serious pieces of music.
Beginning in 1762, Wolfgang and his sister Maria Anna, affectionately nicknamed Nannerl, went on a musical tour throughout Europe with their parents. They visited some of Europe's largest and most culture-rich cities and performed small concerts for groups of royalty and nobility.