Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
photo: barbara krafft · public domain ↗Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a Salzburg-born child prodigy who toured the courts of Europe before settling in Vienna, where he produced a vast body of symphonies, concertos, operas, and chamber works that came to define the Classical style. His music balanced formal clarity and melodic grace with sudden chromatic depth and operatic drama, and by his death at 35 he had reshaped nearly every genre he touched. He remains the archetype of the Classical-era composer.
Mozart and Haydn were friends and mutual admirers; Mozart dedicated a set of six string quartets to the older composer, absorbing Haydn's conversational four-part writing and motif-driven development.
listen forThe 'Dissonance' Quartet opens with a famously murky, clashing slow introduction before it resolves into bright, Haydn-style thematic give-and-take among the four instruments.
As a boy Mozart met Johann Christian Bach in London in 1764-65 and later arranged three of Bach's Op. 5 keyboard sonatas into concertos (K. 107); Bach's singing, galant melodic manner shaped Mozart's own concerto writing.
listen forThe Andante of the 'Elvira Madigan' Piano Concerto floats a serene, vocal melody over gently pulsing strings - the graceful, songful galant style Mozart took from J.C. Bach.
In his Vienna years Mozart studied Bach's fugues and counterpoint, encountered through Baron van Swieten's salon of old scores, and folded that learned, contrapuntal writing into his late works.
listen forThe finale of the 'Jupiter' Symphony stacks its themes into a dizzying multi-voice fugato - Bachian counterpoint driving a Classical symphony to an exhilarating close.