MOZART

The composer whom we call Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was called Wolferl when he was a little boy.

He had a sister, Maria Anna, who was called Nannerl.

Nannerl was five years older than her brother. She had lessons from her father on a kind of piano called a harpsichord.

When Wolferl was three years old he used to listen to Nannerl’s playing. He always watched and listened when Papa Mozart gave her a harpsichord lesson.

Little as he was, he would often go to the harpsichord and try to pick out tunes with his chubby fingers. His father noticed that Wolferl could remember quite a little of the music that Nannerl was practising.

When Wolferl was four years old he began to take lessons.

While he practised no one ever spoke to him because he was so serious about it. If other children came to play with Nannerl he would make music for their games and marching; playing in strict time all the while.

Father Mozart loved both of his children deeply and often played with them. The violin was the instrument he liked best and little Mozart had daily lessons in his home.

When Wolferl was nearly six his father took him and Nannerl on a concert tour. Everybody wanted to hear them play and they gave many concerts.

Wolferl spent all his boyhood with his music. He went to many places to play, even as far from Salzburg, in Austria (where he was born), as to Paris and London.

Everywhere he went people were happy to see him and his sister and to hear them play. And they, too, were happy to play because they loved the music so much.

When they reached Vienna they played for the Emperor and Empress.

When Wolferl was presented to the Empress he jumped up into her lap and kissed her.

Wolferl was always busy composing music. But he played games and had a good time just like any other boy. When he was busy with his music, however, he never let his thoughts go to anything else.

But we must not go too fast, for we want to see how Wolferl is growing up.

Everybody in Paris wanted to hear Wolferl play when they knew that he had come, so they asked him to read at sight; to play the bass part to a melody and to accompany a song without seeing the music.

People also took great delight in asking him to play on the harpsichord with a cloth stretched over the keyboard so that he could not see the keys.

They all went to London to play for the King.  The King wanted to see for himself how skilful little Mozart was, so he gave him pieces by Bach and Handel to play at sight.  Mozart read them off at once.

It must have been very fine for a little boy of seven to play for kings and queens. But Wolferl was not spoiled by it all. He was just a happy hearted boy all the time.

He always made it a rule to put his mind on what he was doing and do it the very best he knew how.

It is just as good a rule now as it was when he was alive.

It is time now that we learned the birthday of Mozart. If we think of it every year on the 27th of January, it will be easy to remember it.

In what year was he born?

When anyone is always busy at one thing he soon gets a lot done. As Wolferl grew and kept on writing music all the time he made a great many pieces. Some were short like a song, others were long like an opera. He wrote for the piano, the violin and the voice. And he composed operas, symphonies and ever so many other kinds of music.

Mozart liked to be alone when he was working upon his compositions. He used to go to a little house on the edge of Vienna and lock himself in. The people of the city of Salzburg, in Austria, took this house long after Mozart’s death and moved it to a park where all may go to see it, just as we in America go to see the houses of William Penn, Lincoln and Washington.

Can you remember, without turning back, the year in which Mozart was born?

Some other great musicians were alive at that time. And during his lifetime some were born who became great men.

In the year when Mozart was born both Handel and Haydn were living. And Haydn lived eighteen years after Mozart’s death.

You can remember it by these lines:

1732         The years of Haydn’s life         

1756         The years of Mozart’s life        

When Mozart was fourteen years old Beethoven was born. Mozart knew him and he knew Papa Haydn also, and they were very good friends.

In our own country there lived in Mozart’s lifetime Benjamin Franklin and three Presidents of the United States George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

I wonder if Washington ever heard of Mozart?

Perhaps we can best keep all these names together by looking at this page now and again.

Isn’t it fine to think of Mozart writing so much music, so many operas, symphonies and sonatas; traveling so much, meeting so many people and never being spoiled by it all.

While he wrote many very great pieces of music, here is something he composed when he was five years old. He made up the pieces at the piano and his father wrote them down note for note in a little copy book.