Musicians - Leopold Mozart

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	Musicians - Leopold Mozart

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (November 14, 1719 – May 28, 1787) was a composer, music teacher and violinist. He was born in the city of Augsburg (today Germany), and was legally a citizen of the Diocese of Salzburg, but spent a lot of time in Vienna, Austria, (all within the Holy Roman Empire of Germany). He is best known today for being the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but was a well-known figure himself in his own time.

Biography

Leopold Mozart was the son of a bookbinder. He studied theology at Salzburg University, but was more interested in music, becoming a violinist and valet to one of the university's canons, Count Thurn und Taxis, in 1740. In 1747 he married Anna Maria Pertl, who bore him seven children, although only two of them survived: Maria Anna Wallburga Ignatia (called "Nannerl") and Wolfgang Amadeus. In 1756, the same year as Wolfgang Amadeus' birth, Leopold wrote his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, a comprehensive treatise on violin playing. Today it is one of the main sources on performance practice in the 18th century, along with Johann Joachim Quantz's Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversière zu spielen (on flute playing) and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (on keyboard playing). He devoted much of his later life to developing and supporting the talents of his two surviving children, at the expense of his own work.

Musical works

Leopold Mozart's music is inevitably overshadowed by the work of his son Wolfgang, but his Cassation in G for Orchestra and Toys (Toy Symphony), once attributed to Joseph Haydn, remains popular, and a number of symphonies, a trumpet concerto, and other works also survive. He was much concerned with a naturalistic feel to his compositions, his Jagdsinfonie (or Sinfonia da Caccia for 4 horns and Strings) calls for dogs and shotguns, and his Bauernhochzeit (Peasant Wedding) includes bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, whoops and whistles (ad. lib.), and pistol shots.

His oeuvre was extensive and but it is hard to establish either the scope or the quality of it; much is lost and it is not known how representative the surviving works are of his overall output. Some of his work was erroneously attributed to Wolfgang and some pieces attributed to Leopold were subsequently being show to be the work of Wolfgang. Much of what survives is light music but some more significant work survives including his Sacrament Litany in D (1762) and three piano sonatas, all published in his lifetime.

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