1719–1787
Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) was a German violinist and composer in the service of the Salzburg archbishop. He taught his son Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and wrote a violin treatise, printed in 1756, that was reissued and translated. Among his sheet music on the site is the Notenbüch für Wolfgang, for solo piano.
Leopold Mozart was born in Augsburg on 14 November 1719. His father, Johann Georg Mozart, was a bookbinder, and his mother, Anna Maria Sulzer, was the father's second wife. There were builders among the family's forebears, but Leopold chose music. As a boy he sang in a choir.
He studied at a local Jesuit school, where he learned logic, science and theology, and in 1735 he graduated with distinction. He then continued at the lyceum. During his schooling Leopold took part in student plays as an actor and singer, and grew into a capable violinist and organist. He also kept a lasting interest in microscopes and telescopes.
His parents apparently planned a career in the priesthood for him, but he did not want it himself. Many years later, in 1777, an old school friend of Leopold told this to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Leopold left the lyceum after less than a year. After a pause of a year he moved to Salzburg and in November 1737 enrolled at the university run by the Benedictines (today the University of Salzburg), where he studied philosophy and law. Salzburg was then the capital of an independent state, an archbishopric within the Holy Roman Empire; today it lies in Austria.
Leopold took a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1738, but in September 1739 the university expelled him because he had attended too seldom. Aside from his travels, he stayed in Salzburg for good.
Leopold's working life as a musician began in 1740, when he became violinist and valet to Count Johann Baptist of Thurn-Valsassina and Taxis, a canon of the university. The same year saw his first printed work, six trio sonatas (Opus 1) called Sonate sei da chiesa e da camera, and he engraved the copper plates himself. He kept composing and wrote a series of German Passion cantatas.
In 1743 Leopold took a post as fourth violinist in the court music of Leopold Anton von Firmian, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. His duties included composing and teaching violin (and later keyboard) to the cathedral choirboys. In 1758 he became second violinist, and in 1763 deputy Kapellmeister. He rose no higher: other men were appointed to the post of Kapellmeister again and again.
In 1755 Leopold completed an extensive guide to playing the violin, the Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule. It appeared in print in Augsburg in 1756, the same year Wolfgang was born; it was reissued and translated into Dutch (1766) and French (1770). Players interested in how music was performed in the 18th century still turn to it. The book made Leopold's name known across Europe, and he began to be listed in music dictionaries and other books on teaching music. Scholars agree that Leopold was a successful teacher.
On 21 November 1747 Leopold married Anna Maria Pertl. The young couple settled in a third-floor apartment at Getreidegasse 9. Their landlord was Lorenz Hagenauer, a close friend of Leopold, with whom the family later corresponded often during their travels.
The couple had seven children in just under eight years, but only two survived. They were Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia, known as Nannerl (born 30 July 1751), and Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Theophilus (born 27 January 1756), the future composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
In about 1759 Leopold started teaching Nannerl, then seven, to play the keyboard, and realised that both of his children had exceptional talent. Wolfgang, still a toddler, at once copied his sister, picking out thirds and then advancing fast with his father's teaching.
By 1762 the children were ready to appear in public, so Leopold took the family on extended tours of central and western Europe, playing for nobles and ordinary audiences alike. The family called at Munich and Vienna, at Pressburg (now Bratislava), Paris and The Hague, and stayed for a long while in London.
Teaching and touring took up so much time that Leopold scaled back his other work. From 1762 he seems merely to have revised earlier pieces, and by 1771 he had given up composing entirely. Journeys went on into the early 1770s, the last three of them to Italy, with only Leopold travelling with Wolfgang. The longest trip lasted about three and a half years. When the final return from Italy came in 1773, he was still not named Kapellmeister in Salzburg.
In 1773 the family moved from the house in the Getreidegasse to the Tanzmeisterhaus, the 'dancing master's house'. The Mozarts had eight rooms there, including a very large one that had earlier been used for dance lessons. They used it for teaching, for concerts at home, and for storing keyboard instruments that Leopold sold, and also for shooting airguns at paper targets, a pastime called Bölzlschiessen.
One of Leopold's main preoccupations became a drawn-out, wearisome search for a steady post for his son. In 1778 his wife died in Paris, where she was accompanying Wolfgang, who was looking for work.
In 1781 Wolfgang left home for good. While serving Archbishop Colloredo, he chose to remain in Vienna instead of going back, and started working as an independent musician. Leopold firmly disapproved and wanted his son back in Salzburg, and a fairly bitter family quarrel followed. He also opposed Wolfgang's 1782 marriage to Constanze Weber, giving his consent late, reluctantly and under duress.
In 1785 Leopold went to Vienna to see Wolfgang and Constanze. On 12 February he was present when Joseph Haydn spoke well of the string quartets that Wolfgang had dedicated to Haydn. Father and son never met again, although they kept writing, and now and then Wolfgang posted him his piano concertos and string quartets in copies, so that Leopold and Nannerl could play them with friends.
In August 1784 Nannerl married Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg and moved to the small town of St. Gilgen, about six hours' journey east of Salzburg. Leopold went on helping her a great deal from a distance. He passed on news from Salzburg, Munich and Vienna, looked after the upkeep of her fortepiano, and paid for Wolfgang's music to be copied so that she could receive it.
In July 1785 Nannerl travelled to Salzburg for the birth of her first child, a boy. After she returned home, the baby remained with his grandfather, and Leopold brought him up with the help of servants. He sent Nannerl letters at least weekly with detailed news of the boy, and they usually opened with the words that little Leopold was well. The child stayed in Salzburg until his grandfather died in May 1787.
From around the end of 1786 and through the first part of 1787 Leopold's health was failing. By 4 April he was seriously ill, and on that day Wolfgang wrote him an alarmed letter but did not travel to Salzburg. Leopold Mozart died on 28 May 1787. Wolfgang could not attend the funeral because the journey to Salzburg took too long.
Among Leopold Mozart's surviving works, the Toy Symphony, a cassation in G for orchestra and toy instruments, remains popular to this day. Its authorship is attributed both to Leopold and to other composers; several symphonies and a trumpet concerto survive too, along with other pieces.
According to a report written in his own time, before 1757 Leopold had produced a great deal: church music, symphonies, over thirty big serenades with solo parts, concertos for flute, oboe, bassoon, horn and trumpet, and trios and divertimentos. The same report lists twelve oratorios and stage works, among them pantomimes, as well as occasional pieces such as military and Turkish music and a musical sleigh ride, plus marches, night pieces and hundreds of minuets. His works are also said to include masses, cantatas and many harpsichord and organ pieces. Much is lost, and nobody knows how representative the surviving pieces are of everything he composed.
Leopold liked music that imitates real sounds. His Jagdsinfonie, also known as Sinfonia da Caccia, is scored for four horns and strings and includes shotgun blasts. In the Bauernhochzeit ('peasant wedding') the players use a bagpipe, a hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, optional whoops and whistles, and pistol shots. The Musikalische Schlittenfahrt ('musical sleigh ride') adds bells and whips to a large orchestra.
For those learning to play, Leopold is also of interest as a teacher. At the archbishop's court he taught the cathedral choirboys the violin and later keyboard, and he began keyboard lessons with his own children around 1759. Musicians interested in the performance practice of the 18th century read his violin treatise of 1756 today.
Parts of his output were wrongly credited to Wolfgang, and certain works once taken for Leopold's were later shown to be by Wolfgang. Most of what survives is light music, yet some pieces are weightier: a Sacramental Litany in D major from 1762, and three fortepiano sonatas. Each of these appeared in print while he was alive.
The site has the Notenbüch für Wolfgang for solo piano, at the level 'Intermediate+'. It is the only edition of Leopold Mozart in the catalogue, and a place to begin getting to know his music.