Even so, when we feel inclined to split hairs it’s maybe correct to say that Beethoven was arguably the greater composer of string quartets, symphonies and piano sonatas while Mozart was the better opera composer and his piano concertos are maybe the most impressive string of instrumental works of any composer in any …

Andreas Wawruch

The compositions on this list come from this period.

• Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Symphony in F sharp major, op.
• César Franck: Symphony in D minor.
• Franz Schubert: Symphony No.
• Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No.
• Gustav Mahler: Symphony No.
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No.
• Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is popularly acclaimed as the greatest musical genius of all time.

Other composers in the Top 5 include Russian iconoclast Igor Stravinsky in second place; Ludwig van Beethoven, hugely influential composer of the most famous piece of classical music ever written, is positioned third, ahead of the prodigious and prolific Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at four; Claude Debussy, famed …

While it cannot be determined whether Beethoven actually met Mozart, it is more probable that he heard Mozart play. Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny told Otto Jahn that Beethoven had told him that Mozart (whom Beethoven could only have heard in 1787) “had a fine but choppy [German zerhacktes] way of playing, no ligato.”

In 1764 Bach met with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was aged eight at the time and had been brought to London by his father. Bach then spent five months teaching Mozart in composition. Upon hearing of Bach’s death in 1782, Mozart commented, “What a loss to the musical world!”

The IQs of 301 Eminent Geniuses according to Cox (1926) along with their Flynn Effect corrections.

Gossip that Salieri hated Mozart or even tried to poison him seems to have originated after Mozart’s death in 1791. Though Salieri mourned Mozart at his funeral and even later taught Mozart’s son, he was soon linked with ugly accusations that he had caused the composer’s demise.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) didn’t play the flute, and once suggested he didn’t even like it. But as WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, he went on to write music that makes the instrument sing…and dance!

Quote by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “What’s even worse than a flute? – Two flutes!”

Vienna, Austria

Sophie insisted that Mozart remained conscious until about two hours before his death. A team of intrepid scholars from Amsterdam, Vienna, and London collected reports of all the recorded deaths in Vienna between December 1791 and January 1792, as well as the corresponding periods in 1790 to 1791 and 1792 to 1793.

The shares of which only a few friends and his brother knew were the main part of Beethoven’s inheritance (73 %). The composer led a rather frugal life and spent only minor sums on luxury articles, died as a rich man.

5 December 1791

German

Beethoven struggled financially through much of his career but there is no indication that he died poor; by the time of his death, he had found…

For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was, however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano. In the end, Beethoven won the boy’s custody, though hardly his affection.

Christian Gottlob Neefe

As it was common in those times, Beethoven was a piano and violin player, although what hardly anyone knows is that he also played the viola and in this page you’ll read about his life, his works and how he used the viola in his chamber music and symphonic works.

Haydn, bless him, never said a disparaging thing about Beethoven except to refer to him as “that great Mogul” – “that great barbarian”. As for Beethoven, it took him a while, but he managed eventually obtain Haydn’s pardon.

Perhaps the most important relationship in Beethoven’s early life, and certainly the most famous, was the young pianist’s tutorship under the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn. Beethoven studied with a number of composers and teachers in the period 1792–95, including Antonio Salieri and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger.

Ludwig van Beethoven, her son, became one of the greatest composers of his time. Years later, while Mozart was facing a rough time after his return from Prague and was in dire need of money once again, Ludwig van Beethoven came to Vienna in 1787. He was sixteen and wanted to take lessons from Haydn and Mozart.