Leopold Mozart gave up composing to manage the miracle born in Salzburg
In 1756 Leopold Mozart published a violin method that made his name across Europe. The same year his son Wolfgang was born. Within a few years he had stopped teaching violin, then stopped composing altogether, pouring everything into two prodigy children and the long tours that showed them off.
Leopold was born in Augsburg on 14 November 1719, a bookbinder's son who sang as a choirboy, acted in school plays and kept a lifelong fascination with microscopes and telescopes. His parents wanted him in the priesthood; a school friend later joked that he had fooled the clergy about it. He moved to Salzburg in 1737 to study philosophy and law, earned a bachelor's degree, and was expelled in 1739 for barely showing up to natural science lectures.
Music became his living from 1740, first as violinist and valet to a canon, then in the Prince-Archbishop's orchestra, where he climbed from fourth violinist to deputy Kapellmeister and stopped there, passed over again and again for the top job. He engraved the copper plates for his first published sonatas himself. Whether he was a good composer is still argued, but everyone agrees about his teaching: his violin treatise went through several editions, was translated into Dutch and French, and is still consulted by players of historical performance.
He married Anna Maria Pertl in 1747, said to be the handsomest couple in Salzburg. Of their seven children, only two survived infancy. Around 1759 he began keyboard lessons for seven-year-old Nannerl, and her toddler brother started copying her. From 1762 the family toured Munich, Vienna, Paris, The Hague and London. Leopold called his son a miracle God had let be born in Salzburg, and one journey lasted about three and a half years. Scholars still disagree over whether the tours made money.
Biographers are just as divided on him as a father. Maynard Solomon paints him as possessive and deceitful; Ruth Halliwell sees sensible guidance of an irresponsible son. His last years were gentler: he raised his infant grandson Leopoldl, writing to Nannerl at least weekly, until his death in May 1787.
Source: Leopold Mozart
