Biographies of Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died after a short illness on 5 December 1791, aged 35. His reputation as a composer, already strong during his lifetime, rose rapidly in the years after his death, and he became (as he has remained to this day) one of the most celebrated of all composers.

Shortly after Mozart's death, biographers began to piece together accounts of his life, relying on the testimony of those still living who knew him, as well as surviving correspondence. The creation of Mozart biographies has been an activity of scholars ever since.

Friedrich Schlichtegroll was a teacher and a scholar who published Mozart's obituary in 1793. The obituary was part of a volume of obituaries referred to as Nekrolog. The two had never met. Most of the information was obtained from Nannerl, Mozart's sister, and Johann Andreas Schachtner, a friend of the family in Mozart's early years. Therefore, what Schlichtegroll knew and wrote about was the period before Vienna.

Franz Xaver Niemetschek was a citizen of Prague, a teacher and writer. Niemetschek allegedly met with Mozart and claimed to have been acquainted with Mozart's friends in Prague. After Mozart's death, his widow Constanze sent Carl, the elder son, to live with him from 1792-97. Through these relationships with the family, Niemetschek gathered the information needed to write a biography of Mozart. His main source was Constanze and Mozart's friends in Prague. Therefore, his emphasis was on Mozart's years in Vienna and his many trips to Prague. Based on research by Austrian scholar Walther Brauneis, much doubt has recently been cast on the veracity of Niemetschek's claim that he actually made Mozart's personal acquaintance.

Friedrich Rochlitz was the editor of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (AMZ), a journal published by Breitkopf & Hartel. Motivated by the wish to publicize the company's edition in progress of the composer's works, he published a number of anecdotes about Mozart, many of them vivid and entertaining. However, since the research of Solomon 1991, Mozart scholars have considered Rochlitz's stories so contaminated by Rochlitz's own fictional additions that they must be considered completely unreliable. They continue to play a role in forming the popular image of the composer.

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Wikipedia