Timeline

Mozart biography.

c.  1600             -   Renaissance music fades out  and the Baroque era begins.  Opera is invented.

c.  1700             -   The late-Baroque era of Antonio Vivaldi, Domenico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel
                               and J.S. Bach begins. 

                               Bartolomeo Christofori invents the piano, but it isn't reliable.  Few composers will use it 
                                before the 1770s. 

c.  1730             -   A new, simpler, homophonic, musical style, galant, challenges the popularity of the 
                               complex, polyphonic, late-Baroque music of Bach and Handel.

c.  1732             -   Joseph Haydn is born. 

     1740s           -   The first symphonies appear.

                              Francis I (with Maria Theresia) is the monarch of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor until 1765.

c.  1750             -   Johann Sebastian Bach dies, the Baroque era comes to an end.

     1756             -   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born in Salzburg, Austria on January 27.  

     1756 - 1762  -   The Seven Years' War

     1759             -   Haydn writes his first symphony.

     1762             -   Christoph Willibald Gluck begins the reform of opera with Orfeo et Euridice. 

     1762 - 1773  -   Mozart's father, Leopold takes Wolfgang to many European cities to promote his son's talent.  

     1768 - 1772  -   Haydn's Sturm und Drang period of minor key symphonies and the
                               ground breaking "Sun" string quartets of 1772.

     1764              -   Mozart, age 8, writes his first symphony while in London. 

     1765              -   Joseph II becomes Archduke of Austria.  

     1767              -   Mozart, 11, writes his first opera Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots.

c.  1770              -   The Enlightenment which began decades ago, becomes more radical.

     1770              -   Ludwig van Beethoven is born in Bonn, Germany on December 16.

     1771              -   Mozart, almost 16, composes his 14th symphony in December.  It marks his emergence 
                                as a fully matured composer.  Seven more symphonies follow in 1772.

     1777 - 1778   -   Mozart travels looking for employment.  In 1778, while in Paris, his mother who is
                                traveling with him, dies.  Mozart writes the A minor piano sonata, K. 310/300d
                                and the "Paris" Symphony (No. 31), which were performed in Paris on June 12 and 18.

     1781 - 1791   -    Mozart lives the last 11 years of his life in Vienna, Austria.  This is the era of 
                                 his greatest operas, masses, symphonies, piano concertos and more.

     1782              -    Mozart marries Constanze Weber on Aug 6.  Only two of their six children will 
                                survive childhood. 

     1782 - 1783   -   Mozart does an in-depth study of the music of Handel and J.S. Bach.

     1782 - 1785   -   Mozart, free-lancing, plays a series of new piano concertos in public venues in Vienna.  
                                He has his greatest financial success, but it does not last long. 

     1784              -    Haydn and Mozart meet and become friends.  The next year Mozart dedicates
                                 six new string quartets to Haydn.

     1786              -   Mozart sets aside piano composing, begins his famous association with librettist 
                                Lorenzo Da Ponte, and writes The Marriage of Figaro, the first of his last five operas.

     1788              -   Mozart writes his final three symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, and 41) that summer.   

                                Mozart and Ponte write Don Giovanni.

     1789              -   The French Revolution begins.

     1790              -   Joseph II of Austria dies. 

     1791              -    Mozart composes heavily, producing many of his most admired works: 
                                 the opera The Magic Flute, the final piano concerto (No. 27), the Clarinet Concerto,
                                the last in his great series of 6 string quintets, the motet Ave verum corpus. 

                                Mozart dies on December 5,  a month before his 36th birthday, leaving his
                                Requiem Mass unfinished.

     1792               -   Beethoven, just turning 22, moves from Bonn to Vienna in December.