This single volume contains all the string quartets of the little-known early quartets in an Italianate manner composed between 1770 and 1773: the six quartets dedicated to Franz Josef Haydn (1782–85); the D Major Quartet (K.499) composed in 1786; and the last three quartets (1789-90) written for the King of Prussia. In addition to the 23 string quartets, the volume contains an alternate slow movement to the G Major Quartet, K. 156. The music is photographically reprinted from the Breitkopf & Härtel printed score, still considered the standard, authoritative edition for the Mozart quartets. Noteheads in this edition have been reproduced in a size large enough to be read easily from a music stand or the keyboard, and margins and spaces between staves are conveniently wide to permit written notes, harmonic analysis, fingerings, and running measure numbers. This edition is practical for study, reference, enjoyment — virtually any use.
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart, the Austrian composer, toured Europe with his son, child prodigy, noted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who gracefully and imaginatively refined the classical style with symphonies, concertos, operas, Masses, sonatas, and chambers among his 626 numbered works.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart prolifically influenced the era. Many persons acknowledged this pinnacle of piano and choral music. His popularity most endures.
Mozart showed earliest ability. From the age of five years in 1761 already competently on keyboard and violin performed before royalty. At seventeen years in 1773, a court musician in Salzburg engaged him, who restlessly traveled always abundantly in search of a better position.
Mozard visited Vienna in 1781; Salzburg dismissed his position, and he chose to stay in the capital and achieved fame but little financial security over the rest of life. The final years in Vienna yielded his many best-known Requiem. People much mythologized the circumstances of his early death. Constanze Mozart, his wife, two sons survived him.
Mozart always learned voraciously and developed a brilliance and maturity that encompassed the light alongside the dark and passionate; a vision of humanity, "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute," informed the whole. He profoundly influenced all subsequent western art music. Ludwig van Beethoven wrote on his own early in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Franz Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."