Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture".
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, violinist, and music theorist. He is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756).
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia "Marianne" Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl, was a highly regarded musician from Salzburg, Austria. In her childhood, she made tremendous progress as a keyboard player under the tutelage of her father Leopold, to the point that she became a celebrated child prodigy, touring much of Europe with her parents and her younger brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At age 17, her career as a touring musician was discontinued by her father, though she continued to work at home teaching piano. She eventually married and had a family, continuing her teaching career. She is known to have composed works of music, though no manuscripts are extant. In her later years she contributed to the biographical study of her late brother.
Anna Maria Walburga Mozart was the mother of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Maria Anna Mozart.
Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, called Marianne, known as Bäsle, was the cousin and friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Getreidegasse is a busy shopping street in the historic Altstadt of Salzburg, Austria, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. It is known for the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at No. 9, where he lived until the age of 17. The narrow street is characterised by numerous high townhouses side by side with its wrought iron guild signs.
Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni was an Austrian painter who is believed to have painted several portraits of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his family: "The Boy Mozart" (1763), his sister Maria Anna Mozart in "Nannerl as a Child" (1763) and a portrait of their father Leopold Mozart. He arrived in Salzburg, Austria in the 1740s and first wanted to paint Wolfgang and Nannerl. His protégé, Johann Nepomuk della Croce, painted a Mozart family portrait in 1780.
Joseph Lange was an actor and amateur painter of the 18th century. Through his marriage to Aloysia Weber, he was the brother-in-law of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
DoraStock was a German artist of the 18th and 19th centuries who specialized in portraiture. She was at the center of a highly cultivated household in which a great number of artists, musicians, and writers were guests; and her friends and acquaintances included some of the most eminent figures of her day, such as Goethe, Schiller and Mozart.
Johann Georg Mozart was a bookbinder who lived in Augsburg in the 17th and 18th centuries. He was the father of Leopold Mozart and the paternal grandfather of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The Mozart family grand tour was a journey through western Europe, undertaken by Leopold Mozart, his wife Anna Maria, and their children Maria Anna (Nannerl) and Wolfgang Theophilus (Wolferl) from 1763 to 1766. At the start of the tour the children were aged eleven and seven respectively. Their extraordinary skills had been demonstrated during a visit to Vienna in 1762, when they had played before the Empress Maria Theresa at the Imperial Court. Sensing the social and pecuniary opportunities that might accrue from a prolonged trip embracing the capitals and main cultural centres of Europe, Leopold obtained an extended leave of absence from his post as deputy Kapellmeister to the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg. Throughout the subsequent tour, the children's Wunderkind status was confirmed as their precocious performances consistently amazed and gratified their audiences.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's first four sonatas for keyboard and violin, K. 6–9 are among his earliest works, composed between 1762 and 1764. They encompass several of Mozart's firsts as a composer: for example, his first works incorporating the violin, his first works with more than a single instrument, his first works in more than one movement and his first works in sonata form. In fact, previous to this, all his works had been short solo-pieces for the harpsichord.
Gabriel Anton Walter was a builder of pianos. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes him as "the most famous Viennese piano maker of his time". Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert all owned and played on Walter's pianos.
Johann Nepomuk della Croce was an Austrian painter, known in Italy as Giovanni Nepomuceno della Croce. He was active in both Germany and Trentino in a late-Baroque style, depicting portraits and religious subjects.
Mozart's birthplace is the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at No. 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Austria. The Mozart family resided on the third floor from 1747 to 1773. Mozart himself was born here on 27 January 1756. He was the seventh child of Leopold Mozart, who was a musician of the Salzburg Royal Chamber.
Maria Barbara Krafft was an Austrian painter, best remembered today for her widely reproduced posthumous portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The appearance and character of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are the subject of multiple investigations at present. The fact that it has not been possible to exhume Mozart's remains – due to the exact location of the community grave in which he was buried being unknown – nor are masks or mortuary casts preserved, lends a degree of uncertainty to the composer's physical appearance. Although an alleged skull of Mozart exists, its authenticity, more than questionable, has not been verified to date. This skull has been subjected to various DNA tests, comparing it with those of his alleged niece and maternal grandmother, but not only did they find that the former's DNA did not match those of his two relatives, but also that theirs did not match each other either. Also, an alleged lock of his hair of dubious legitimacy has been preserved. However, there are reliable sources and references concerning both his appearance and clothing as well as his personality. This information is found in artworks, descriptions, and testimonies of the time, which allow us to get a more or less accurate idea of what Mozart was like physically and psychologically.
The Tanzmeisterhaus, also known as the Mozart-Wohnhaus, was the Salzburg home of Leopold Mozart and his family from 1773 to 1787. It was the home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart between the ages of 17 and 25.
Numerous historical paintings and other works of art purport to depict the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Of these, only a fraction can be shown by historical evidence to be authentic portrayals. They exist amid a great number of inauthentic ones, which are either fraudulent or else sentimental works of the imagination. Of the authentic portraits, the posthumous 1819 painting by Barbara Krafft is the best known. The task of distinguishing authentic from inauthentic portraits has occupied Mozart scholars for many years.
