Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time.

During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the Great Mass in C minor, the "Haydn" Quartets and a number of symphonies.

[10] His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold,[11] who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.

[16] They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764),[17] then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765).

The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg[23] and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas.

Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication.

[27] In August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg[29][f] and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.

[45] The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne.

[g] He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service;[47] for example, he wrote to his father: My main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me.

The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally "with a kick in the arse", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco.

Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer.

[50] He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success.

[52] After failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.

[56] The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:[57] In 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters.

Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute") and the finale of Symphony No. 41.

Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created "a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre".

[69] Despite the great success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act Der Schauspieldirektor.

Around this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.

[85] Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6 September 1791, of his opera La clemenza di Tito, which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities.

[89] The New Grove describes his funeral: Mozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7 December.

If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present.

The official record of hitziges Frieselfieber ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis.

Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever,[92][93] streptococcal infection,[94][95] trichinosis,[96][97] influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.

[98] Mozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his Reminiscences: "a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain".

[103] He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents.

He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written "You are an ass" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.

Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu.

Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No.

In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements.

"[120] His most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel,[121] a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child.