Mozart: Serenade No. 9, 'posthorn' / Notturno

Description

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)Serenade in D Major, K. 320 (PosthornSerenade) Notturno in D Major for four orchestras,K. 286Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born inSalzburg in 1756, the son of a court musician, Leopold Mozart, author in thesame year of an important book on violin-playing and later Vice-Kapellmeisterto the ruling Archbishop of Salzburg, in whose service he spent his entirecareer. Leopold Mozart was quick to perceive the exceptional musical gifts ofhis son and saw it as his god-given duty to devote himself to fostering them,providing him with sound musical training and a good general education.Mozart spent much of his childhoodtravelling to the major musical centres of Europe, where he amazed those whoheard him by his musical precocity, performing at the keyboard with his eldersister, Nannerl, the only other surviving child of his father's marriage.Journeys to Italy involved commissions for opera, but the death of the oldArchbishop and succession of a much less sympathetic prelate in 1772 curtailedtravel, while adolescence in Salzburg brought its own dissatisfactions. Mozartthought he deserved something better, an opinion in which his father heartilyconcurred.In an effort to find a more congenialposition, Mozart left Salzburg in 1777, spending time at Mannheim, where hemade friends with some of the musicians employed in what was then one of themost famous orchestras in Europe, and moving thereafter to the original goal ofhis journey, Paris. France, however, proved disappointing, and by the beginningof 1779 he was back again in Salzburg, reinstated in the service of theArchbishop, but chafing under the restrictions of his position and the lack ofwider opportunity.In the later months of 1780 Mozart waspermitted to travel to Munich for the preparation of a new opera, Idomeneo,commissioned through his Mannheim friends by the Elector of Bavaria, who nowheld court there. From Munich, after successful performances of the opera inJanuary 1781, Mozart was summoned by his patron to Vienna, where his positionin the household of the Archbishop seemed to deny him the manifoldopportunities of a brilliant career that Vienna appeared to offer. A quarrelwith his patron resulted in ignominious dismissal and a final career of tenyears in Vienna which brought initial success. Mozart established himself as acomposer of opera, at first for the new German opera and then for the Italianopera to which the Emperor had been compelled to return, with Le nozze diFigaro in 1786 and Don Giovanni in 1787, the year of his father's death. Heorganised subscription concerts, at many of which he appeared as soloist in newpiano concertos of his composition, and attracted many pupils. His marriage in1782 to an impecunious cousin of the future composer Carl Maria von Weberbrought its own problems and he was frequently in financial difficulty in hislast years, although there were signs of a change of fortune in the greatpopularity of his last German opera, Die Zauberflot