About
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844), also known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jr., was the youngest child of six born to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his wife Constanze. He was the younger of his parents' two surviving children. He was a composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher of the late classical period whose musical style was of an early Romanticism, heavily influenced by his father's mature style.
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart was born in Vienna, five months before his father's death. Although he was baptized Franz Xaver Mozart, he was always called Wolfgang by his family. He received excellent musical instruction from Antonio Salieri and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and studied composition with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Sigismund von Neukomm. He learned to play both the piano and violin. Like his father, he started to compose at an early age. "In April 1805, the thirteen-year-old Wolfgang Mozart made his debut in Vienna in a concert in the Theater an der Wien."
Wolfgang became a professional musician and enjoyed moderate success both as a teacher and a performer. Unlike his father, he was introverted and given to self-deprecation. He constantly underrated his talent and feared that whatever he produced would be compared with what his father had been.
Needing money, in 1808 he traveled to Lemberg (now Lviv), where he gave music lessons to the daughters of the Polish count Wiktor Baworowski. Although the pay was good, Franz felt lonely in the town of Pidkamin, near Rohatyn, so in 1809 he accepted an offer from another Polish aristocrat, the imperial chamberlain, Count von Janiszewski, to teach his daughters music in the town of Burshtyn. Besides teaching, he gave local concerts, playing his own and his father's pieces. These concerts introduced him to the important people in Galicia.
After two years in Burshtyn he moved to Lemberg (Lwów) in 1813 where he spent 25 years teaching (with students including Julie von Webenau, née Baroni-Cavalcabò) and giving concerts. Between 1826 and 1829 he conducted the choir of Saint Cecilia which consisted of 400 amateur singers. In 1826 he conducted his father's Requiem during a concert at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic cathedral of St. George. From this choir he created the musical brotherhood of Saint Cecilia and thus the first school of music in Lemberg. He did not give up performing and in the years 1819 to 1821 traveled throughout Europe. In 1819 he gave concerts in Warsaw, Elbing and Danzig (Gdańsk).
In the 1820s, Mozart was one of 50 composers to write a variation on a theme of Anton Diabelli for part II of the Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Part I was devoted to the 33 variations supplied by Beethoven which have gained an independent identity as his Diabelli Variations Op. 120.
In 1838 Mozart left for Vienna, and then for Salzburg, where he was appointed as the Kapellmeister of the Mozarteum. From 1841 he taught the pianist Ernst Pauer. Mozart died from stomach cancer on 29 July 1844 in the town of Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary) where he was buried.
He never married nor did he have any children. His will was executed by Josephine de Baroni-Cavalcabò (1788–1860), a longtime patron to whom he dedicated his cello sonata. The shadow of his father loomed large over him even in death. The following epitaph was etched on his tombstone: "May the name of his father be his epitaph, as his veneration for him was the essence of his life."
Works by genre
Franz Xaver Wolfgang had a relatively small output (his opus numbers only go up to 30) and after 1820 he seems to have given up composing almost entirely; in particular, there is an 11-year gap (1828 to 1839) when he seems to have not written anything. Nevertheless, recordings of his music can be found today. He wrote mainly chamber music and piano music, with his largest compositions being the two piano concertos.
The two piano concertos differ somewhat. The first concerto could pass for one of his father's late (K. 550 and above) works, except for a youthful exuberance and the piano's tessitura which had been expanded in 1795, just after Mozart senior died. The second concerto is more contemporary to the 1810s with a more virtuosic piano part showing hints that the younger Mozart was developing his own style.