Mozart Accomplishments

Throughout time, there have been many very successful composers to be known today. Many of these composers lived in the 1700s. The greatest of them all is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He lived from 1756-1791, living to be thirty-five years old. A majority of his life and career was spent in Vienna and Salzburg, Austria. Many people evaluate composers as being the best based on their music style. However, those judgments are quite subjective. To be the best, a composer has to impact the music genre itself, produce quality work, and have a history that is outstanding in comparison to others. Even though he had certain mental and drinking issues, Mozart was the greatest composer in European history because of his lead to fame, the amount and quality

Every issue that was in his life started out with his superstitions and irrational fears (Meerdter). In the beginning, Mozart was afraid of many mythical creatures, which later worsened to cause the composer to become afraid of the dark as well. After some time, those problems got so bad into Mozart’s adulthood, he developed a drinking problem (Meerdter). While this is only one reason for the alcoholism, it is a very prominent reason. This caused his family and himself to become greatly in debt, which further spiked intense depression within the musician’s life. Because of this debt, he was forced to ask for loans from friends and banks. In one of his journal entries, Mozart wrote, “If you have sufficient regard and friendship for me to succor me by the loan of one or two thousand gulden for a couple of years, at the usual rate of interest, you would extricate me from a mass of troubles” (Mozart Vol. 2, 288). Certainly, this caused many issues throughout Mozart’s life, however without affecting his music production too

Overall, Mozart was very influential towards classical music. What Mozart did was take the style from the area he was living in, along with other places, and he combined them to make his own musical style (“Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus”). Adding to this, Mozart combined the skills his father taught him with the new styles he learned from multiple places throughout Europe including Germany, Austria, and Italy. Not only was Mozart’s music style affected by various musical cultures, but also directly from other composers. Considering Mozart’s father was a composer, he has been connected to other composers since childhood. He grew up with the composer Haydn, and throughout the years they helped each others’ development in the music writing process (Meerdter). They affected each others’ music greatly. While Haydn mainly had the effect of Mozart and not many other influences, Mozart had many other factors that changed his style throughout his life. All of the different musical styles presented to Mozart created a whole new type of classical music. This was not accepted by all at first, but soon became very popular, forever changing the definition of classical music. No other composer’s style was ever quite like Mozart’s would be. Clearly, Mozart is the greatest composer partially because of his affect on the music genre