Mozart's Childhood to his 16th Birthday  (1756 - 1771)


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

c.  1700             -   The late-Baroque era of Antonio VivaldiDomenico ScarlattiGeorge 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.

     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 to 
                               Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) and Anna Maria, née Pertl (1720–1778).

     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

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

                                1762 -  From the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich  to the 
                                Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague.

                                June 1763  -  Dec 1766  -  A long concert tour taking the family to the courts of Munich, 
                                Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again 
                                 to Paris, and back home via Zurich, Donaueschingen, and Munich.  During the 16 month 
                                 stay in London, Wolfgang met J.C. Bach.  In the Hague, Wolfgang and Nannerl got 
                                 typhoid fever(?).  It was predicted they would die.

                                 Late 1767 - December 1768 -   Return to Vienna.  Wolfgang and Nannerl get small pox.

                                 December 1769 to March 1771 -  Italy, where Wolfgang plays in almost 40 cities and towns.  
                                 He was a huge success.

                                 August - December, 1771, and October, 1772 to March, 1773:  Back to Milan to premier 
                                 commissioned operas.
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      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.




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