Classicism: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Born: January 27, 1756
Died: December 5, 1791
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer. He is considered one of the most gifted figures in the history if Western music. According to his father, Wolfgang was already composing minuets at the age of four, and he was barely six when he performed on the harpsichord for the Habsburg imperial family in Vienna. Scholars have sometimes blamed Mozart's financial insecurity on his wife Constanze (née Weber), the daughter of a Mannheim court musician, whom Mozart had married in 1782.The causes of his death in 1791 remain a subject of speculation, with rheumatic fever the most widely accepted explanationHe was poisoned by another composer, Antonio Salieri.