Essay on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria. He was a multi instrument musician who started playing music at the age of six. Mozart was married to Constanze Weber on August 4, 1782 and they had four children.

Mozart was the sole surviving son of Leopold and Maria Pertl Mozart. Mozart’s father was a very successful musician, composer, violinist, and assistant concertmaster at the Salzburg Court. Wolfgang’s mother, Anna Maria Pertl, was born to a middle-class family of local community leaders.

His only sister was Maria Anna nicknamed Nannerl. With their father’s encouragement and guidance, they were introduced to music at an early age. Leopold started Nannerl on keyboard when she was seven, as three year old Wolfgang looked on. Mimicking her playing, Wolfgang quickly began to show a strong understanding of chords, tonality, and tempo. Soon, he was being tutored by his father.

Although Mozart’s parents were musically oriented there is nothing in their history to account for the amazing prosperity of Wolfgang and his rapid development or his later ability to impress music lovers around the world.

Wolfgang’s father, Leopold was more down to earth. For him, music how he made his quiet reputation as a reliable music servant. Over the years, Mozart collaborated with a variety of European venues and patrons, composing hundreds of works that included sonatas, symphonies, masses, chamber music, concertos and operas, marked by vivid emotion and sophisticated textures. Mozart compiled a great number of achievements in his short life, none more spectacular than the composition of his last three symphonies in 1788, in little more than six weeks.

Mozart completed his Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, on 10 August 1788. It was the last symphony that he composed. The work is nicknamed the Jupiter Symphony. This name stems not from Mozart, but rather was likely named by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in an early arrangement for piano. The symphony is scored for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns in C, two trumpets in C, timpani in C and G, and strings.

The 41st Symphony is the last of a set of three that Mozart composed in succession during the summer of 1788. The 39th was completed June 26th and the 40th on July 15th. Around the same time, Mozart was writing his piano trios in E and C major, his sonata facile, and a violin sonatina. It is not known whether the 41st Symphony was ever performed in the composer’s lifetime. According to Otto Erich Deutsch, around this time Mozart was preparing to hold a series of “Concerts in the Casino” in a new casino in the Spiegelgasse owned by Philipp Otto. Mozart even sent a pair of tickets for this series to his friend Michael Puchberg.

But it seems impossible to determine whether the concert series was held, or was cancelled for lack of interest. The four movements are arranged in the traditional symphonic form of the Classical era: 1. Allegro vivace, 4/4 2. Andante cantabile, 3/4 in F major 3. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio, 3/4 4. Molto allegro, 2/2. In an article about the Jupiter Symphony, Sir George Grove wrote that “it is for the finale that Mozart has reserved all the resources of his science, and all the power, which no one seems to have possessed to the same degree with himself, of concealing that science, and making it the vehicle for music as pleasing as it is learned.

Nowhere has he achieved more.” Of the piece as a whole, he wrote that “It is the greatest orchestral work of the world which preceded the French Revolution.” Scholars are certain Mozart studied Michael Haydn’s Symphony No. 28 in C major, which also has a fugato in its finale. Charles Sherman speculates that Mozart also studied the younger Haydn’s Symphony No. 39 in C major because he “often requested his father Leopold to send him the latest fugue that Haydn had written.”

The Michael Haydn No. 39, written only a few weeks before Mozart’s, also has a fugato in the finale, the theme of which begins with two whole notes. Sherman has pointed out other similarities between the two perfectly contemporaneous works. The four-note motif is also the main theme of the contrapuntal finale of Michael’s elder brother Joseph’s Symphony No. 13 in D major (1764).

In spike of three brevity of his life Mozart produced more than twenty theatrical works over forty symphonies at least twenty seven piano concertos More of live of Mozart, is that on 14th of April 1784 Wolfgang became a freemason in Vienna, He joined the lodge Zur Wohhltatigheit at the level of an apprentice, on April 22nd he earned the rank of master mason. During his life Wolfgang had ongoing relations with many Freemasons. In Mannheim in 1778 he had begun to set music to text, Semiramis, by Otto von Gemmingen, e Freemason who may have played the role of Wolfgang’s sponsor when he was admitted to the Beneficent lodge, given” FROM – MOZART BIOGRAPHY – Piero Melograni

The symphony no 41 in C was completed on August 10/1788, and reestablished Mozart’s supreme confidence after the emotional dilemma he had faced so courageously in no. 40. The tonal ambiguities of that works are replaced with the least Problematical of all keys, and the scoring has no room for the mellowness of the clarinets that were added to no. 40. There is no slow introduction to the first movement, but the opening triplet gestures suggest that such opening addigo statements as the found in the prague symphony are already being assimilated into the structure of the opening allegro vivace theme.
In answer to these triplets comes a structurally important phrase marked that strives upwards,
Here is the examaple,

“From; music of wolfgang amadeus mozart book
to george de sain saintfoix (18741954)a pioneer of eighteen centry musical research”

As I mentioned above this Movement has been celebrated over 200 years as one of the quintessential examples of craftsmanship in western music, moving forward in this analyses, I am going to discuss it many incredible contrapuntal passages culminating in the coda during each five of the previously introduced themes, the sonata form movement begins with a simple homophonic statement of theme number one which consist of four whole notes, for the remainder of the movement it is answered by a frequently recurring rhythmic motif since it does not play a role in of the future contrapuntal passages, theme number two immediately follows this and consists of a dotted figure followed.

• By descending configuration of eighth notes.
• By descending configuration of eighth notes.

The First Significantly contrapuntal passage occurs when theme number one at least the first three notes of it enters as the subject of a few capacity short underlined figure acting as the counter subject.

After this forceful statement of the theme number one, the theme number Three consist of three staccato notes followed by a trill dotted figure makes it first appearance as a Stretto between the violin and the cellos and Basses. Stretto is a use term for when the entries of the subject are squeezed together such that the second enters before the first finished.

Although it does not strictly apply to any in this movement I am going to analyze it to describe moment when the themes enter in such close succession. The Stretto involving the theme three begins the modulation to the dominant to key and immediately followed by a stretto involving them number. In this case entry occurs on beat after the first, with a third abbreviated entry in the horns of just the dotted rhythm giving the appearance of three part of imitation. With a dominant key of G major now firmly established, this is a moment when old or new thematic material would enter in the new key. On this movement it consists of fourth played by the first violins

The stretto involving theme number four begins with imitation of just its three notes, with entries separated by space if in measure. The entirety if theme number four us played in a remarkable four part stretto, with each entry.

The symphony ends with statement of recurring motif and theme number two, in a majestic in conclusion of one the most magnificent in the symphonic literature.
Conclusion, Considering Mozarts’s total symphony achievement, compassion will inevitable be drawn with the music of his contemporaries and ultimately his status….