01
In the west of Austria, in the northern foothills of the Alps, near the German border there is a historic city of Salzburg. This beautiful town has a population of just over 150,000 points, but it has given birth to many famous people.
Among them were the 19th-century mathematician and physicist, Christian Doppler, the discoverer of the Doppler effect, the famous conductor of the 20th century, herbert von Karajan, principal conductor of the Berliner Philharmonic, and others. Hermann Goering, the number two figure in Nazi Germany during World War II, also spent his childhood outside Salzburg.
However, Salzburg's most famous figure is the 18th-century Austrian composer mozart, the representative of the Viennese classical music school. Every July, the 5-week Mozart Festival in Salzburg commemorates the great musician.
In Salzburg's Old Town, there is a small European medieval street: the grain alley, and the walls of each building on the street clearly indicate the date of construction. There are a variety of shops on both sides of the street, and the common feature is that they all hang metal signs.
Today it is the liveliest street in Salzburg's Old Town, as Grain Alley 9 is the former home of the musical genius Mozart. Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 in a 3-room apartment on the third floor of this beige building, where he spent his childhood, where a strand of Mozart's golden hair is preserved.
02
Mozart was born into a musical family, and his father, Leopold Mozart, was a well-known composer, conductor and court violinist. Mozart's 4-year-old sister, Nanaire, is also a gifted pianist.
Under the influence of such a family atmosphere, Mozart showed extraordinary musical talent from an early age. He was able to play simple harmonics on the piano at the age of 3 and small steps at the age of 4.
Once, his father returned home with a friend and saw 4-year-old Mozart intently scribbling on stave paper. In the face of his father's inquiry, Mozart replied that he was composing music. When the father and his friend saw the crooked notes drawn on the paper, they couldn't help but laugh dumbly, thinking that it was just the child's casual graffiti.
But when his father took a closer look at Mozart's score, he found that it was not just a child's unintentional simple scribble. He saw his son's musical potential in it and believed that Mozart could become a rare and excellent composer. So his father began to train him, directing 5-year-old Mozart to compose music.
When Mozart was 6 years old, the family went to Vienna for a concert and was received by Queen Maria Theresia, Grand Duke of Austria, and the young Mozart played the piano in the palace. Then his father took him and his sister on a tour of other countries in central and western Europe.
One evening in the autumn of that year, a grand court ball was being held in frankfurt. In the golden hall, a fair-skinned and clear-eyed boy sat by the huge piano, playing with full concentration, and the beautiful sound of the piano flowed from his young fingers.
After the song was played, the applause in the hall was suddenly thunderous and endless. People can't believe that the 6-year-old in front of them has such outstanding musical achievements. This musical prodigy was none other than Mozart, whose name soon spread throughout Europe.
In the years that followed, Mozart traveled to major European cities under his father's arrangement, traveling to Italy, Germany, Austria, France and England, and was welcomed by the royal family everywhere.
They came to Paris, visited the French royal family at versailles, and then arrived in London, where they were received several times by the Queen of England. In Italy, they have traveled to Milan, Florence, Rome and other major cities.
While traveling through Europe to perform, Mozart began his compositions. Mozart's first collection of works, the Violin Sonata, was published in 1764, when he was only an 8-year-old child.
03
In 1772, Mozart returned to his hometown and was appointed by the new Prince and Archbishop of Salzburg, Hironimos Corloreddo, as principal violinist of the Salzburg Court Orchestra, receiving a higher salary and a stable life. During that time he composed symphonies, operas and many other pieces.
But in the society of that time, musicians were only used as a tool for the nobility to provide entertainment, and kept pets in the magnificent halls. As an artist of high moral character, Mozart was born with a passion for freedom and the pursuit of equality. He could not bear to be a slave court musician who was bound and imprisoned, and from time to time humiliated by the archbishop.
After several years of humiliation, in 1781 Mozart resolutely broke with the court and offered to resign. Became the first musician in European history to shed his court and pursue free development.
He moved to Vienna, where he taught and gave concerts to support his new family. Mozart was able to display his musical genius and compose freely, and immortal songs such as "The Magic Flute", "The Marriage of Figaro", and "Don Juan" were born.
However, Mozart, who had lost his regular source of livelihood, soon fell into poverty. Due to financial constraints, the family's life is becoming increasingly difficult. To make matters worse, Mozart's physical condition deteriorated due to long-term exertion. By 1791, at the age of 35, Mozart was already suffering from illness.
One night, a messenger in a black cloak came to visit his home. Commissioned by an earl who did not want to reveal his identity, he paid half of the honorarium first, and Mozart composed a Requiem for him in honor of his deceased wife. The man's dress caused the terminally ill Mozart to be extremely uncomfortable, so that an ominous sense of fatalism developed in the darkness.
In a trance, he told his wife that the requiem would eventually be composed for himself. Unexpectedly, Mozart's premonition really became a reality, and the Requiem was only halfway written before he passed away.
Mozart can be said to have lived for music, he only lived for 35 years, but he has a 30-year history of music creation.
The prolific composer left behind more than 600 outstanding musical compositions of various forms from the original piano pieces in G major to the unfinished Requiem in D minor, including 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, 26 string quartets, 21 operas, 17 piano sonatas and 15 Masses.
A generation of musical geniusEsque Mozart ended up in music, but his funeral was extremely simple. Because his wife was bedridden, only a few relatives and friends transported him in a simple hearse to St. Marks Cemetery, an ordinary civilian cemetery, where he was hastily buried.
It was not until 1891, on the 100th anniversary of Mozart's death, that the citizens of Vienna, believing that Mozart, the great musician, deserved a place in the cemetery of celebrities, moved his tombstone from St. Marks Cemetery to the Vienna Central Cemetery, accompanied by Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Strauss, Brahms and other world-famous musicians.
04
A generation of superstars has long since passed away, but the cause of his death has always been the subject of controversy and research, and there are different theories about the reason for Mozart's untimely death.
One theory is that Mozart died of rheumatic fever, based on Mozart's symptoms before his death. In November of that year, Mozart suddenly fell ill, developing symptoms of a high fever, swelling and pain all over his body, and his temper became irritable. A few days later, he began to vomit up and down diarrhea, the swelling turned into a generalized edema, and he died after only 10 days.
The course of the development of the disease coincides with rheumatic fever. Antibiotics had not been developed more than 200 years ago, and there was nothing that could be done about rheumatic fever, a disease caused by hemolytic streptococcal infections.
Another theory is that Mozart died of a trichinella infection. Trichinella is a worm that parasitizes the muscles of animals, and when people eat unburned meat with trichinella, they will be infected, and their symptoms are also high fever and edema of the limbs, and muscle pain. Sischman, an American physician who held this view, is said to have made this judgment after reading a family letter from Mozart.
45 days before Mozart's death, he wrote in his family letter that he was going to eat pork chops, and the incubation period of trichinellosis was exactly 45 to 50 days. The doctor concluded that Mozart had died of illness by eating uncooked pork with trichinella.
However, his claim has been strongly questioned, because it is too far-fetched after all.
Just decades after Mozart's death, his cemetery was confirmed, when experts collected Mozart's skull. The skull was later tested and studied, and Hitu unveiled the mystery of Mozart's death.
A French scholar found a break in the left sideburn of the skull, inferring that it was likely that he accidentally injured his head and caused inflammation. Due to the medical conditions at the time, the internal injury could not be detected in time, and the treatment period was missed, resulting in Mozart's death. He thinks his judgment is consistent with the literature that Mozart suffered from headaches for a year before his death.
05
Another type of claim is even more frightening, some people think that Mozart died of murder, and there are different theories.
An American geologist, a big fan of Mozart, used the information he had collected over the years, combined with Mozart's last years of work, to analyze and study, and on a whim, he argued that Mozart died of love killing. The reason is that on the day of Mozart's death, a person living near his house killed his wife and then committed suicide, and the wife's piano teacher was Mozart.
The geologist speculated that she might have been in a relationship with Mozart, and believed that mozart's later works revealed his extramarital affair with a schoolgirl. So it is boldly speculated that Mozart was poisoned by this angry husband, and that Mozart's swollen body at the time of his death was a manifestation of a poisoning attack.
Another version of the theory of murder is that Mozart was poisoned by a jealous colleague, the Austrian court musician and Italian composer Salieri.
Salieri was an outstanding musician of Mozart's contemporaries, and the two were also old enemies in the music industry for more than a decade. Salieri was less talented than Mozart and was jealous. He had committed such bad behaviors as harassing Mozart, preventing his opera performances, and stirring up discord in the court, and finally he designed to kill Mozart.
Many people believe this statement, and the famous Russian literary scholar Pushkin was able to write a long and tragic poem "Mozart and Salieri" for this purpose, which made Salieri confirm the identity of the murderer of geniuses. For years, salily, notorious Salieri has been so reviled that his history as Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt has been forgotten.
However, all these claims are speculations and inconclusive. What has not changed is that for 200 years, all over the world, whether in concert halls, opera houses, or in the classrooms of music academies, Mozart's music, the eternal melody, can always be heard.
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