The Mozart Family

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Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was born in 1719 to a respectable Augsburg family. He received his basic musical and humanistic education at the St. Salvator Jesuit College in Augsburg. In 1737 he went to Salzburg to study philosophy and law at the Benedictine University. He was hired into the service of Johann Baptist, Count of Thurn-Valsassina and Taxis, as valet and musician in 1740 at the latest. In the fall of 1743 he obtained a position as the fourth violinist in the Court Orchestra of the Princely Archbishop of Salzburg. He took over violin instruction at the Kapellhaus in 1756 and, in 1758, moved up to the position of second violinist. In 1763, following the death of the Court Music Director, Johann Eberlin, and the appointment of Giuseppe Lolli as his successor, he advanced to Assistant Court Music Director. However, his lifelong desire to become Music Director of the Court Orchestra was never fulfilled. After Wolfgang moved to Vienna in 1781, Leopold Mozart led a reclusive life in the so-called “dancing master’s” house (“Mozart’s House” on Makartplatz today), dedicated himself to teaching and, in his final years, to raising his grandson. Leopold Mozart died in Salzburg on 28 May 1787. Personal details

As the son of the deputy Kapellmeister to the Salzburg Prince-Archbishop, Mozart was constantly surrounded by church music in his youth. On his travels Mozart became familiar with Italian church music, and later in Vienna he studied the works of Bach and Handel. After moving to Vienna he was faced with the new challenges of composing opera and piano concertos, and significantly the “C Minor Mass” KV 427, the greatest sacred work of the first Vienna years, remained unfinished. The last period of his life again shows a change of direction to church music: Mozart successfully applied to succeed the terminally ill Leopold Hoffmann as Kapellmeister at St Stephen's Cathedral, but he was unable to take up the position as he died before Hoffmann. A gem such as the “Ave verum” KV 618 and the incomplete Requiem KV 626 give us an idea of what Mozart might have achieved as a composer of sacred music if he had taken up this important position. Personal details

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