Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Dates

Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria
Died December 5, 1791 in Vienna, Austria

Nationality

Austrian

Style/Period

Classical 1750-1820

Bio

Mozart a great child star. He was traveling and playing concerts by the time he was six.

He wrote his first sonata for the piano when he was four and composed his first opera when he was twelve! He composed very fast and wrote huge amounts of music in a short amount of time. It would take over 8 days to play all of his music, one piece after the next, without stopping. One famous piece that he wrote was Variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

During his lifetime, Mozart was very well-known but spent money faster than he could earn it. He was poor and in debt when he died of kidney failure at the age of 35. Mozart is considered by some to be the greatest composer who ever lived. While most composers specialize in certain kinds of pieces, Mozart composed fabulous pieces for almost every category of music – vocal music, concertos, chamber music, symphonies, sonatas, and opera.