Rock Me Amadeus!

I can’t think of a time in my life when I didn’t know the name Mozart. Mozart is to classical music what Elvis Presley is to rock n’ roll, and yet for the longest time I knew next to nothing about the man and his music. His music is practically inescapable in our pop-culture world and I wouldn’t have been able to name one of his symphonies a year ago if you’d asked me. It’s sad, but although I’m a huge music fan I’ve never taken a real interest in composers until just recently. I think this is probably true of a lot of people in my generation, we can tell you the high school nickname of Kurt Cobain, but our musical knowledge of the time before the late 1950’s is seriously lacking. This is why I’m going to introduce you readers to the great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

To fill in a few blanks Mozart was born in December of 1755 in Salzburg, Austria to extremely devoted parents. His father, Leopold, was a musician who worked for the archbishop of Salzburg and encouraged his son from an extremely young age to pursue a musical career. Amadeus was a child prodigy, a genius if you will, who composed from the age of five. In his short life-time (he only lived to 35) Mozart composed an astounding number of works large and small, including the famous operas Le Nozze di Figaro (the Marriage of Figaro) and Don Giovanni.

Musicians at the time were not expected to write music to express themselves, they were expected to write entertaining pieces that captured the spirit of emotion. I don’t believe that Mozart always wrote music coldly, as a way to capture emotion instead of expressing it, especially since his pieces can soar happily or be completely heart-wrenching, yet he was not expected by his peers to express his own emotions. We can never truly know what Mozart felt while he was writing, but it is fun to speculate as you listen to his music.


A few of my favorite Mozart pieces are:

Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, KV 183 (173 dB): Allegro con Brio

Figaros Hochzeit KV 492 (The Marriage of Figaro): Overture

Serenade No. 13 in G Major, KV 525

Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, KV 550: I. Allegro molto

Sonata for Piano No. 11 in A Major, KV 331: Alla Turca, Allegretto

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 21 in C Major, KV 467

Sonata for Piano No. 16 KV 545: Allegro


These are all popular pieces and you might be surprised by how many you’ve heard before. If you’re really intrigued by Mozart’s music you should also watch the movie Amadeus. It’s a gorgeous movie and there is some truth to it, but much of the story told in the movie is unreliable as a biography. Just watch and listen for fun. Even if you aren’t a big classical music fan, I swear you’ll have fun listening to Mozart.