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Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (November 14, 1719 – May 28, 1787) was a German composer, violinist, and music theorist.Grove He is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756).
While a student in Augsburg, he appeared in student theater productions as an actor and singer, and became a skilled violinist and organist. He also developed an interest, which he retained, in microscopes and telescopes. Although his parents had planned a career for Leopold as a Catholic priest, this apparently was not Leopold's own wish. An old school friend told Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777, "Ah he Leopold was a great fellow. My father thought the world of him. And how he hoodwinked the clerics about becoming a priest!"
He withdrew from the St. Salvator Lyzeum after less than a year. Following a year's delay, he moved to Salzburg to resume his education, enrolling in November 1737 at the Benedictine University (now University of Salzburg) to study philosophy and jurisprudence. At the time Salzburg was the capital of an independent state within the Holy Roman Empire (the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg), now part of Austria. Except for periods of travel, Leopold spent the rest of his life there.
Leopold received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in 1738. However, in September 1739, he was expelled from the university for poor attendance, having "hardly attended Natural Science more than once or twice".From his expulsion record, quoted in
In 1747, he married Anna Maria Pertl, who bore him seven children, although only two of them survived past infancy:[1], GeneWeb by Daniel de Rauglaudre. (retrieved January 27, 2025)
In 1743, Leopold Mozart was appointed to a position (fourth violinist) in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. His duties included composition and the teaching of violin (later, piano) to the choirboys of the Salzburg cathedral. He was promoted to second violinist in 1758 and in 1763 to deputy Kapellmeister. He rose no further; others were repeatedly promoted over him to the head position of Kapellmeister.
The question of whether Leopold was successful as a composer (either in terms of artistic success or fame) is debated. The Grove Dictionary says that as of 1756, "Mozart was already well-known. His works circulated widely in German-speaking Europe." However, biographer Maynard Solomon asserts that he "failed to make his mark as a composer", and Alfred Einstein "judged him to be an undistinguished composer".
Scholars agree, however, that Leopold was successful as a pedagogue. In 1755, he wrote his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, a comprehensive treatise on violin playing. This work was published in 1756 (the year of Wolfgang's birth), and went through two further German editions (1769, 1787), as well as being translated into Dutch (1766) and French (1770). Today, the work is consulted by musicians interested in 18th-century performance practice; see Historically informed performance. This work made a reputation in Europe for Leopold, and his name begins to appear around this time in music dictionaries and other works of musical pedagogy.
The discovery of his children's talent is considered to have been a life-transforming event for Mozart. He once referred to his son as the "miracle which God let be born in Salzburg". Of Leopold's attitude, the Grove Dictionary says:
By "missionary", the Grove Dictionary refers to the family's concert tours.
Scholars differ on whether the tours made substantial profits. To be sure, often the children performed before large audiences and took in large sums, but the expenses of travel were also very high, and no money at all was made during the various times that Mozart and the children suffered serious illnesses. Mozart biographer Maynard takes the view that the tours were lucrative and produced long-term profits for Leopold; Ruth states to the contrary that their income generally only covered their travel and living expenses.
Since the instruction took much of his time, and the touring kept him away from Salzburg for long periods, Mozart cut down his activities in other areas. Nannerl later claimed that he "entirely gave up both violin instruction and composition in order to direct that time not claimed in service to the prince to the education of his two children". After 1762, his compositional efforts seem to have been limited to revising his earlier work, and by 1771 he had ceased composing altogether.Sources: Wolfgang Plath and Cliff Eisen, cited in
The touring continued into the early 1770s. The last three trips were to Italy, with only the father accompanying Wolfgang. Leopold Mozart's failure to advance above his Vice-Kapellmeister position at Salzburg is attributed by the Grove Dictionary to the great amount of time that the journeys kept him away from Salzburg (the longest journey was about three-and-a-half years). After the final return from Italy in 1773, Leopold was repeatedly passed over for the Kapellmeister post.
Starting around this time, a major preoccupation was the lengthy and frustrating struggle to find a professional position for his son. His wife died in 1778 in Paris while accompanying Wolfgang on a job-hunting tour.
During his remaining years, Mozart spent a fair amount of his time trying to help Nannerl at a distance, as her new marriage situation, involving five apparently ill-educated stepchildren, was apparently not easy. According to Halliwell, Nannerl depended on him in many ways: he did "shopping and the engagement of servants. ... He relayed news from Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna to divert her, did his best to organize the maintenance of her fortepiano, paid for Wolfgang's music to be copied and arranged for her to receive it; collected musicians together when she had visited him so that she could play it with most of the parts; .. tried to look after her health; and encouraged her to stand up to her husband when he was being unreasonable."; verb tenses changed Following Leopold's death in 1787, Nannerl had to do without this support, and Halliwell asserts that "there is every reason to believe that Leopold's death was devastating" to her."
Maynard Solomon suggests that in keeping his grandson in his home, Mozart may have hoped to train yet another musical prodigy. Halliwell notes a different possibility: that conditions for child-rearing in the Berchtold household were distinctly suboptimal.
As indicated by Mozart's return letters (which alone survive), his father was strongly opposed to the Vienna move, wanting Wolfgang to return to Salzburg. A fairly harsh family quarrel resulted. He was also strongly opposed to Wolfgang's marriage to Constanze Mozart in 1782, and gave his permission late, reluctantly, and under duress. Biographers differ on the extent that Constanze was later snubbed by Leopold, if at all, during her visit with Wolfgang (July – October 1783) to Salzburg; the Grove Dictionary calls the visit "not entirely happy".
In 1785, he visited Wolfgang and Constanze in Vienna, at a time when his son's career success was at its peak. He witnessed first hand his son's success as a performer, and on February 12 heard Joseph Haydn's widely quoted words of praise, upon hearing the string quartets Wolfgang dedicated to him, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name: He has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition." The visit was the last time that Leopold saw his son, though they continued to correspond, and Wolfgang sometimes sent copies of his piano concertos and string quartets for Leopold and Nannerl to perform with friends.
Later in 1785, when Leopold Mozart took in Nannerl's child, Wolfgang was not informed. However, in the following year Wolfgang found this out from a mutual acquaintance in Vienna. At this time, Wolfgang wrote to Leopold to ask if he would be willing to take care of his own two children while he and Constanze went on concert tour. Leopold turned him down, probably with harsh words. His letter to Wolfgang does not survive, but his summary to Nannerl of it does (November 17, 1786):
For interpretations of this letter, see , which takes a viewpoint sympathetic to Leopold, and , which takes a viewpoint sympathetic to Wolfgang.
Starting around the time he wrote this letter and continuing through the first part of 1787, his health was failing. He had become seriously ill by April 4. On this day, Wolfgang wrote to him in alarm at the news, though he did not travel to Salzburg to see him. When Leopold Mozart died on 28 May (see below), Wolfgang was unable to attend the funeral, the travel time to Salzburg being too long., notes: "mail from Salzburg took at least three days. Leopold Mozart was already buried by the time his son learned of his death. Mozart could not have arrived in Salzburg for at least six or seven days."
Little information is available on how Wolfgang took his father's death, but a postscript he included in a letter to his friend Gottfried von Jacquin suggests that, despite the quarrels and partial estrangement, his father's death was a blow to him: "I inform you that on returning home today I received the sad news of my most beloved father's death. You can imagine the state I am in."
A contemporary report described what he had composed prior to 1757:Title: Nachricht von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der Musik Sr. Hochfürstl. Gnaden des Erzbischoffs zu Salzburg, "Report on the present state of music at his Princely Grace the Archbishop of Salzburg';
Leopold Mozart was much concerned with a naturalistic feel to his compositions, his Jagdsinfonie (or Sinfonia da Caccia for four horns and strings) calls for shotguns, and his Bauernhochzeit (Peasant Wedding) includes bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, whoops and whistles (ad. lib.), and pistol shots. (musical sleigh ride) calls for bells and whips in addition to a rich orchestra.
His oeuvre was extensive, but only recently have scholars begun to assess the scope or the quality of it; much is lost, and it is not known how representative the surviving works are of his overall output. Cliff Eisen, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on Leopold Mozart's symphonies, finds in a Symphony in G major examples of his "sensitivity to orchestral colour" and a work that "compares favourably with those of virtually any of Mozart's immediate contemporaries".Cliff Eisen, "About this Recording" Catalogue No.: 8.570499 Naxos.com
Some of his work was erroneously attributed to Wolfgang and some pieces attributed to Leopold were subsequently shown to be the work of Wolfgang. Much of what survives is light music but there is some more substantial work including his Sacramental Litany in D major (1762) and three fortepiano sonatas, all published in his lifetime.
Other scholars have taken a harsher view. Solomon portrays Mozart as a man who loved his children but was unwilling to grant them their independence when they reached adulthood, resulting in considerable hardship for them. Daniel Steptoe makes a similar assessment, and particularly faults Leopold for having blamed Wolfgang for his mother's early death – not just immediately following the death in 1778 ("a crushing reply to a young man grieving for his mother"), but even later on in 1780.See .
Robert Spaethling, who translated Mozart's letters, typically takes a position strongly sympathetic to Wolfgang in his struggles with his father; he describes Wolfgang's resignation of his Salzburg position and marriage to Constanze as a two-act "drama of liberation from Salzburg, specially Wolfgang's liberation from Leopold Mozart".See .
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