Mozart was born on January 27th, 1756. He was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart. He had a sister named Maria Anna Mozart, who was also musically talented. He was the seventh and last child born to musical author, composer and violinist, Leopold Mozart and his wife Anna Maria Pertl. Only Wolfgang and Maria Anna (whose nickname was 'Nannerl') survived infancy. He was born in a house in the Hagenauersches Haus in Salzburg, Austria, on the 27th of January, 1756. Mozart was a young boy who showed talent from the beginning of his life. Being that he did not begin to walk until he was three years old, Mozart displayed musical gifts at an extremely early age. At the age of four, he could reproduce on the piano a melody played to him; at five, he could play the violin with perfect intonation. In fact, with more recent evidence, Mozart is believed to have written his first composition just a few short days before his fourth birthday! These compositions, an Andante and Allegro K1a and K1b, were written, Leopold noted, early in 1760, as he approached his fourth birthday. They are very brief, and modeled on the little pieces that his sister had been given to play (and which he also learnt; the "Wolfgang Notenbuch" is a forgery).
As they survive only in his father's handwriting, it is impossible to determine how much of them are Mozart's own work. He never attended a proper school, which was a custom for children of that time. Instead of going to school, he was taught by his father who was a respectable man in Salzburg. His father held many professions such as concertmaster for the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg; violinist, composer and author. When he was about six years of age, Mozart had become a performer on the clavier, violin, and organ. He was also skilled in sight-reading and improvisation. There are have piano pieces that were composed by Mozart when he was six years old and are still frequently played today. One of the pieces are "Twinkle Twinkle." When his sister was the age of ten and he at the age of six, their father took them to Munich and Vienna to play a series of concerts.
In 1763, Leopold Mozart took a leave from his position at Salzburg court to take his family on a tour of Western Europe. Mozart and his sister performed in the major musical centers, including Stuttgart, Mannheim, Mainz, Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris, London, and Amsterdam. The family did not return to Salzburg until 1766. During that period of time touring, Mozart began to compose longer pieces with more structure and skill in them.
He completed his first symphony at the age of nine and publishing his first sonatas in the same year. In 1769, Mozart and his father left the rest of the family to tour Italy for more than a year. They spent sufficient time in Rome, Milan, Florence, Naples, and Bologna. Mozart got to experience the taste of another culture.
During those years, Wolfgang completed an opera called "Ro di Ponto," which was celebrated in Italy. The same year, Mozart was appointed concertmaster to the Archbishop of Salzburg, and later in the same here, the Pope made him a chevalier of the Order of the Golden Spur. He also completed his first German operetta called, "Bastien une Bastienne," in the same year. At the age of fourteen, Mozart was commissioned to write a serious opera. This work was called, "Mitridate, re di Ponto." While Mozart was touring in Italy, the Archbishop of Salzburg died, and Hieronymus, count von Colleredo.
Along with his great contributions in music also come big issues. Not much in the sense of them being called “big problems” but his music is something that created and opened doors for many people.
It has long been believed that music can evoke specific thoughts and feelings from the listener. But can music –specifically the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart- summon hidden intelligences within the human brain? That is the question scientists are trying to answer. In the mid-nineties, scientists, Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky, claimed that music could boost the listener’s intelligence up to 9 points (Steele 2).
To many, this allegation seemed a bit far-fetched and soon other researchers began recreating the Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky experiment in hopes of discrediting their findings. The conclusions that resulted confirmed that the skeptics were right: the evidence was inconclusive and revealed that music did not make the listener “smarter”. These findings, however, did not stop weary parents from stocking up on Baby Mozart CD’s in hopes that their little one will one day grow up to be the next Einstein. The original experiment of Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky was published in the 1993 issue of Nature. Thirty-six college students were to listen to ten minutes of Mozart’s Sonata in D major for Two Pianos, K488. After listening to the music, they were given a paper cutting and folding test. They were to look at a piece of paper that was folded several times and had pieces cut out of it.
The Mozart Effect is a study that shows listening to classical music can have positive effects on learning and attitude. This occurrence is called the Mozart Effect, and it has been proven in experiments by many scientists. This research has caused much controversy between believers and nonbelievers, because The Mozart Effect is said to enhance the brain and reasoning; it is also used to reduce stress, depression, or anxiety; it induces relaxation or sleep; and the Mozart Effect activates the body. It also claims to help in the brain development in babies and young children and in addition is thought to aid in the process of studying. Scientists and skeptics have different beliefs about the benefits of the Mozart Effect. Scientists found that Mozart “enhanced synchrony between the neural activity in the right frontal and left tempo-parietal cortical areas of the brain,” and that this effect continued for “over 12 minutes” (Rauscher & Shaw, 1998, p. 839).
Based on these results, Leng and Shaw speculated that “listening to Mozart could be stimulating the neural firing patterns in the parts of the cerebral cortex responsible for spatial-temporal skills, which subsequently enhances the spatial-temporal abilities that are housed in those parts of the cortex”[Dowd]. However nonbelievers suggest that the research is incomplete and misleading. The Irvine study that launched the phenomenon has been widely criticized. The Startling results announced by the initial paper were misleading. First, the researchers claimed that the undergraduates improved on all three spatial-reasoning tests. But as Shaw later clarified, the only enhancement came from one task—paper folding and cutting. Further, the researchers presented the data.
Besides being beneficial for young children, music is useful to many adolescents, especially to those with learning problems. Exposing music constantly to children with severe learning deficiencies has been known to show positive results. A study was done by the researchers at Irvine on a seven-year-old girl with an autistic condition, which caused her to use gestures and occasional words instead of full sentences. The young girl's speaking ability “improved remarkably” after she had lessons in a class that combined sounds from a piano with dialect.
In 1993, researchers at the University of California at Irvine discovered the so-called Mozart Effect – that college students “who listened to ten minutes of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D major K448 before taking an IQ test scored nine points higher” than when they had sat in silence or listened to relaxation tapes. Other studies have also indicated that it doesn’t matter the artist; people retain information better if they hear classical or baroque music while studying. The most easily influenced stage of human life is early childhood, therefore it is encouraged that children listen to classical music. It was concluded that students who listened to music had high a greater ability to think abstractly and to visualize. These tasks are necessary to understand difficult theorems and equations in math and engineering.
Although his life lasted half the length of a normal human, he most likely did more with his time than people do today. His greatness will unfortunately never be fully understood due to confusion on how his life was lived and even how he died, but everyone knows he had a gift. We don’t pay much attention to these artist that made a big impact then and haven’t been recognized now for what they did and the big things they accomplished back then. After much reading and researching, it shocks me how much we are missing and the history and all the stories that are told within the music and the musical works and all other aspects and techniques that’s are used to make this specific type of music as amazing and unique as possible.
Mozart was and for most people is someone who has reached and touched and helped understand this people who find this type of music interesting and are willing to continue to try to do things to make sure that most things that were done by him and most other artist known again. With all of his work and his nonstop creation of some of the greatest music pieces that classical music has known and the many ways his music helped children, parents, even students who were engaging in school activities whether it’d be school or class work or specific types of school. For most people or for some people I must say, his music helped them with the many obstacles they faced and without his music they wouldn’t have been able to achieve what they did or what they will.