Mozart Quotes

“Another of Mozart’s achievements was the technical advancement of established musical forms. He composed a prolific number of piano concertos and single-handedly managed to bring them back into mass popularity, largely due to his ability to infuse what was considered an old-fashioned form with new life and increased emotional reach. He dabbled in nearly every major genre, including the aforementioned popular operas he composed, as well as symphonies and even liturgical music. These genres were among the more serious and sophisticated genres with which he tinkered—Mozart also composed many forms of what would be considered light entertainment: serenades and court dances among them.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“A popular piece of common knowledge that is frequently misquoted is that Mozart was buried in a “common grave,” a horrifying injustice when his genius was taken into account. But this term does not mean a communal grave, or the grave of a pauper, but rather the grave of a common man, which is a distinction that separates him from the aristocracy. It was still a modest burial, despite the fact that memorial services and concerts held in his honor in both Vienna and Prague were extremely well-attended.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“The rumor of homicide which circulated following Mozart’s death seemed to focus on rival musician Antonio Salieri as the culprit—this rivalry is also explored in Peter Shaffer’s stage play, as well as the film adaptation. The rumors were so pervasive (though unfounded) that they negatively affected Salieri’s career and contributed to the nervous breakdown he would suffer later in life.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“In the months leading up to his death, Mozart composed some of his most recognizable work, including the opera The Magic Flute, his final piano and clarinet concertos, the liturgical motetAve verum corpus, and perhaps most ominously, his unfinished Requiem.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“In particular, he was deeply fond of scatological humor—“toilet humor”—which is documented not only in letters to his cousins and his sister but even in some of his more obscure and less popular musical compositions.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“Another extraordinary talent of Mozart’s was his ability to absorb and understand the musical compositions of his peers and allow them to influence his creations without venturing into imitation or outright plagiarism.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“Mozart began composing highly intricate pieces of music in a period of time when the most popular genre of music was style galant—an elegant genre to be sure, but defined by the simplicity of its structure. The style galant was in and of itself a reaction to the musical style that had come directly before it, commonly referred to as the Baroque period. Music in the Baroque style was highly embellished, defined by the use of ornamentation, or unnecessarily complicated measures inserted throughout the piece of music. Critics of the period were quick to say that the Baroque style lacked a coherent melody and was largely dissonant, even to the trained ear. Popular musical forms in the Baroque period included sonatas and cantatas, the former of which Mozart would return to and utilize toward the end of his career. Baroque music was defined by its seriousness—it was often cited as being largely unpleasant to listen to unless one was a musician oneself. The style galant, in response, depended on its light-heartedness and its wide range of appeal to a variety of audiences. The Classical style, which Mozart and his peers pioneered, was another response to the oversimplification of popular music that the style galant characterized. As previously discussed, Mozart spent a great deal of his early years in Paris studying the works of Baroque masters Bach and Handel, and that period of music greatly influenced many of his most recognizable works. Mozart, however, had the talent (and the distance from the period when Baroque music was at its height) to study the most valid criticisms of the Baroque style and pick and choose the intricacies of the style that worked, while discarding the ones that did not. He was able to adapt the dated style to form a completely new aesthetic while steering popular music back toward the trend of compositions that were more complex than the style galant afforded.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“Several months after the death of his father, in December of 1787, Mozart’s primary ambition came to fruition: he obtained an appointment from Emperor Joseph II, as the emperor’s chamber composer. The position itself was not as lofty as Mozart would have hoped: it was part-time, with a salary of just over 800 florins a year. Mozart’s sole duty as chamber composer was to craft dances for the annual balls at Hofburg Palace. It is a matter of court record that the emperor offered this appointment to Mozart to discourage the musician from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects in the future, which suggests the emperor perhaps had other plans for Mozart to come, though they never materialized.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“The Marriage of Figaro debuted first in Vienna in 1786 to great success (Mozart was becoming accustomed to such a reaction, no doubt), but it received an even more fevered positive reaction when it toured to Prague later the same year. Jumping off such a successful collaboration, Mozart and Da Ponte immediately set to work on their second collaboration, Don Giovanni, and produced it in Prague in 1787. It was also well received by critics and the public alike, but the public reaction cooled when it opened in Vienna in 1788.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“At the end of 1785, Mozart once again shifted his focus. He moved away from the rapid and voluminous composition of piano concertos and longed to return to writing operas. He had written Die Entführung aus dem Serail only three years prior, but despite its raging success throughout Europe, he had little motivation to return to operatic writing until he met Lorenzo Da Ponte. Da Ponte was a true Renaissance Man—not only was he a Roman Catholic priest, he was a successful poet, and most importantly, an opera librettist. Throughout Da Ponte’s life, he would write the libretti for 28 operas from 11 different composers, Mozart among them. Da Ponte was responsible for the libretti for three of Mozart’s most prolific opera in the modern era—The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“In 1784, Mozart was also admitted to the Freemasons, and the guild became an important institution to him for the remainder of his life. Many in his social circle were also Masons, he regularly attended meetings at his local lodge, and even composed several pieces of Masonic music, the most famous being a funerary piece he composed on the occasion of the deaths of two close friends.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“Between 1782 and 1785, Mozart worked prolifically as a solo artist, composing and performing primarily piano concertos. At his most productive, he would produce three or four new concertos in a season. But access to theatrical space so frequently was difficult to manage in Vienna, so Mozart took to booking unconventional spaces for his performances, including restaurants and apartment buildings. It is through these popular concerts, with himself as the central fixture, that Mozart perfected his persona as a performer and artist in the public eye. His youth, charm, and eagerness to please delighted audiences of the time, who were also more than aware they were watching a musical savant hone and perfect his abilities and set the tone for the period’s most influential musical genres.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“Upon the couple’s return to Vienna, Mozart met Joseph Haydn for the first time in early 1784. The two formed a close friendship and frequently collaborated, utilizing friendly competition to fuel the composition of numerous works from both composers. When Haydn would visit Vienna, it was routine that he and Mozart would play together in a hastily assembled string quartet. Mozart wrote six quartets that were specifically dedicated to Haydn, and many scholars group them as a set of compositions created in response to Haydn’s Opus 33 set, providing further evidence that both composers drew inspiration from each other.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“The early to mid-1780s were years of exponential growth for Mozart, not only in terms of his family and career but in his style and exposure as a composer and musician. He met Gottfried van Swieten, a Viennese government official who was a keen patron of musicians at this time. He gave Mozart access to his formidable library of compositions, and Mozart delved into study of the works of some famous predecessors, most notably Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Access to the breadth of their work highly influenced many of Mozart’s works in the year to come, as he shifted to a more Baroque style in many of his compositions. This influence can most clearly be heard in his opera The Magic Flute, as well as Symphony No. 41. It was also at this time, and perhaps influenced by his study of the greats that came so recently before him, that Mozart wrote one of his greatest liturgical pieces, Mass in C minor. It was performed for the first time in 1783 when Wolfgang and Constanze traveled to Salzburg in order to visit Mozart’s father and sister.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“Eventually, Leopold did give his consent for the union to take place, but it was too little, too late—the letter detailing his approval arrived by post the day after Wolfgang and Constanze were already wed on August 4, 1782. Over the next nine years of their marriage, Constanze would give birth to six children. As was frequent in that period, only two of those children survived infancy, both sons: Karl Thomas Mozart was born in September 1784, and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart in July 1791.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“At the age of 17, Mozart was hired as a court musician to the current ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. During his time touring as a young man, Mozart had gained quite a following among the court in his home province of Salzburg, and his appointment found him surrounded by admirers, as well as friends among the other court musicians. During his four years of employment with the court in Salzburg, Mozart had the opportunity to explore new genres of music and wrote several violin concertos (a genre he would never touch again after this period).”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End

“Wolfgang was the youngest of seven children, but only he and one sister made it past infancy.”
― Hourly History, Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End