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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 -1791 )

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Austrian composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist and violinist and multi-instrumentalist, recognised in his short life (he died at 35) as one of the greatest in the history of western classical music but also as a bold and "difficult" personality.

He spent his first years of his life in a comfortable and happy home, much loved by his parents. He and his sister were the only two of the seven children to survive in his family. Mozart was a child prodigy: when he was 4 years old, he was playing short pieces and at 5 years he was composing music. His father had assigned himself the role of the general and musical educator of his children and was dedicated to promoting them, especially his son, by parading them around Europe. The siblings traveled to the courts of Paris, London, The Hague, and Zurich performing as child prodigies. When Mozart's sister had to stay at home as she was approaching the age of marriage, Mozart continued travelling with his father throughout Europe, meeting accomplished musicians and receiving music influences which later determined his music style.

Mozart's music combines melodic beauty, vividness and perfection, all coloured by his emotional complexity. Various biographies depict Mozart as a charming and self-infatuated short man, with intense and seductive blue-eyes who gave the impression of "not being entirely present" as if his mind was in another world, imagining music all the time. Mozart was an amazingly creative artist with over 600 music works, acute human insight and complex psychology although arrogant and tactless. It was therefore inevitable that he inspired writers, historians, scholars and film-makers to explore his life. His life tells us about prodigious talent, jealousy and mysterious death, cyclothymic moods linked with manic-depressive tendencies, which could explain not only his depression but also other aspects of his behaviour, including his hectic creativity but also arrogance. According to the rumours, once, when Mozart was improvising in front of an audience he considered insufficiently attentive, he suddenly stopped playing, executed a few cartwheels, dived under the table and abruptly left. This is almost unbelievable but it is indicative of his complex personality.

Mozart married Constanze Weber when he was 25, despite his father's objection to this marriage, and the couple had seven children, although only two of them survived their infancy.

He died suddenly at 35 years, at the peak of his career. Despite the rumours that he was poisoned by another musician, a new study suggests he might have died from a strep infection.