Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Classical Period
Anonymous, attributed to Saverio Dalla Rosa or Giambettino Cignaroli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
On April 13, 1770, a 14-year-old boy on a trip to Rome with his father attended Good Friday mass in the Sistine Chapel. There, he heard Gregorio Allegri's "Miserere Mei, Deus," the mysterious piece only performed once a year and never allowed to be copied. That evening, the boy went home and wrote a complete transcription of the piece from memory. When Pope Clement XIV learned of this, he was so impressed that, instead of excommunicating the boy, he knighted him.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is easily the apotheosis of the Classical Period, and always in the running for "greatest composer of all time." In his short life, he composed over 600 works of music. His career began as a child prodigy. His father, Leopold Mozart, who was himself an accomplished musician, taught his son from a very young age and as early as 1769 was touring him around Europe.
In 1772, Mozart worked as the court composer for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, where he composed many of his early symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and liturgical music. However, he was very unsatisfied with the life of a servant, due to his low salary and subservience that he felt amounted to a lack of appreciation for his talent. It is also possible Mozart's free spirit and well-documented sense of scatological humor may have contributed to an antagonistic relationship with the elder churchman. (For example, he once composed a four-part canon, K. 231, entitled "Leck Mich im Arsch," German for "Kiss my ass.") In 1781, Mozart was kicked out of Salzburg and moved to Vienna.
Barbara Krafft, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Without his father's consent, he married Constanze Weber, the daughter of his landlady, with whom he had six children, although four of them died in infancy. Mozart accepted a few commissions from Austrian Emperor Joseph II, and otherwise tried to pursue a career as a "freelance" composer. He met and befriended Joseph Haydn during this time, and it was in Vienna that most of his greatest works were composed, including the operas Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Die Zauberflöte.
Mozart was prolific in every genre of the time. He composed over 650 different works, including twenty-three operas and forty-one symphonies. Despite his immature sense of humor, he was no less capable composing works of deep profundity and religious fervor as he was of writing lighthearted extemporania. Mozart died suddenly at the age of 35, probably of rheumatic fever. An urban legend developed in Vienna that he was murdered by a jealous Antonio Salieri, which is almost certainly not true. However, this legend was turned into a stage play in 1830 by the Russian playwright Alexander Pushkin, and became popularized by Peter Shaffer's 1979 play "Amadeus."
Ironically, he had been composing the music for a funeral mass, the Requiem in D Minor, which he was not able to finish.
Mozart's greatness was recognized immediately and his music has remained enduringly popular ever since.