Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) - Fotografie eines Stiches von Johann Joseph Neidl nach einem Wachsrelief von Leonhard Posch, Wien, um 1910?

In 1781 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart relocated to Vienna to work as a freelance composer. At Baron Gottfried van Swieten (1733-1803) he had the opportunity to study the works of composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel. He became a friend of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809).

Initially, Mozart had great public success with performing his own piano concerts. He gathered a circle of students around himself, some of which belonged to the Vienna nobility and his reputation as a pianist was immense. (Especially after the musical comedy "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" (The Abduction from the Harem) was successfully performed in 1782.

When Ludwig van Beethoven travelled to Vienna for the first time in 1787, he did so to become a student of Mozart. The young musician from Bonn met Mozart but there are doubts as to whether he ever heard Mozart perform. Even though Mozart did not teach Beethoven pesonally, he became influential for Beethoven's life in two regards: Firstly, his music influenced Beethoven's style and secondly, Mozart had started a career as a free and self-dependent artist after working as a dependent musician and breaking with the Archbishop of Salzburg. Beethoven, too, should follow this path with self-confidence.(S.B.)