Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The offices he actually held

Mozart is a child exhibited who became a Viennese freelancer with a small court crumb. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart (opens in a new tab), Figaro at https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Marriage-of-Figaro-opera-by-Mozart (opens in a new tab), Don Giovanni at https://www.britannica.com/topic/Don-Giovanni (opens in a new tab), and the Digital Mozart Edition at https://dme.mozarteum.at/en/ (opens in a new tab) are the public file. IMSLP at https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Mozart,_Wolfgang_Amadeus (opens in a new tab) is later scores.

The first fact about his power is a father's tour. The second is a 1781 kick. The third is Figaro as a public class-comedy.

What went wrong

Child labour-display, Nannerl's halt, Colloredo, loans, unfinished Requiem. Poison is not established.

What improved

Figaro, Don Giovanni, Zauberflöte, 1784 academies, Haydn quartets, Prague.

Related people: Leopold, Nannerl, Constanze, da Ponte, Schikaneder, Haydn, Colloredo, Joseph II, J.C. Bach, Puchberg. Related Articles: this poll host, Beethoven's academies-guardianship article, Handel's foundling article, Bach's forthcoming Kantor article. Later Loeb, UNESCO, and encyclopedia pages are evidence, not additional acts. Related 2024–2025 news about COP, NATO, or a chancellorship is not a relation. Shared work remains named. What would change the reading is a contradictory original with a different date or signatory. Shared work remains named. Shared work remains named. Shared work remains named. Shared work remains named. Shared work remains named. Shared work remains named. Shared work remains named.

The 1781 break with Salzburg made Vienna a freelance experiment rather than a secure court appointment

Mozart’s decisive professional break came in 1781, when conflict with Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo ended his salaried service in Salzburg and left him trying to build a career in Vienna through commissions, publication, teaching and public performance. The Digital Mozart Edition links work on Die Entführung aus dem Serail to the break with the archbishop on 9–10 May 1781 and to Mozart’s marriage to Constanze Weber on 4 August 1782 Mozarteum (opens in a new tab). Surviving letters dated 26 May and 9 June 1781 show him writing from Vienna to Leopold Mozart during the immediate aftermath of that rupture. The chronology matters because the famous “Vienna years” were not simply a promotion to a better court job. They were a more volatile commercial model in which Mozart could earn substantially from concerts and pupils when demand was high but remained exposed to changing taste, debts, family costs and irregular commissions. His marriage also intensified the conflict with his father over financial and personal independence.

The crowded year 1791 shows continued production rather than a career already finished

Mozart’s final year was unusually productive. In 1791 he completed or premiered works including La clemenza di Tito for the Prague coronation season and Die Zauberflöte in Vienna, while also working on the unfinished Requiem. His correspondence remained active: the Digital Mozart Edition preserves a letter to Constanze dated 6 June 1791 and another from 4 July 1791, evidence of ordinary household and professional concerns only months before his death Mozarteum DME (opens in a new tab). The large catalogue of surviving scores and editions indexed by IMSLP (opens in a new tab) likewise shows how opera, chamber music, piano works, sacred music and orchestral composition overlapped rather than forming a simple late decline. Mozart died in Vienna on 5 December 1791 at age 35. The unfinished Requiem encouraged later legends, but the dated record is more concrete: illness interrupted a year in which he was still composing for the theatre, court ceremonies, patrons and publishers, while Constanze later worked to preserve, publish and monetise the surviving corpus.