Mozart vs Beethoven

Who were Mozart and Beethoven?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756. His father Leopold, a court violinist and teacher, toured him and his sister Nannerl around Europe as child prodigies: Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, Italy. As a young man he served the Archbishop of Salzburg, broke with him in 1781 and became a freelance musician in Vienna, earning from teaching, concerts, publishing and opera commissions. He died in Vienna on 5 December 1791, aged 35, leaving the Requiem unfinished.

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised in Bonn on 17 December 1770, into a family of court musicians. His father, a singer with a drinking problem, pushed him hard as a child performer. He moved to Vienna in November 1792 to study with Joseph Haydn and stayed there for the rest of his life. Hearing loss began in his late twenties; by 1818 he was using written conversation books. He died in Vienna on 26 March 1827, aged 56.

Mozart vs Beethoven at a glance

Did Mozart and Beethoven meet in 1787?

Beethoven certainly travelled from Bonn to Vienna in the spring of 1787, aged 16, apparently hoping to study with Mozart. He stayed only about two weeks. News that his mother was seriously ill called him home, and she died in July 1787.

Whether he met Mozart is not known. No letter, diary or document from 1787 records a meeting. Mozart's letters, which are full of names, never mention Beethoven. The famous story, in which Mozart hears the teenager improvise and tells people in the next room to watch him because he will make a name in the world, first appears in print in Otto Jahn's biography of Mozart in the 1850s, almost seventy years later and at second hand. Later recollections from Beethoven's circle, such as his pupil Carl Czerny's, are also secondhand. The honest answer is that a meeting is possible, even likely, but the evidence is anecdotal.

What is documented is the hope that Beethoven would inherit Mozart's place. When he left Bonn in 1792, his patron Count Ferdinand Waldstein wrote in his album that through hard work he would receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands. Mozart had died eleven months earlier.

How Beethoven learned from Mozart

Influence is easier to show than a meeting, because it is in the scores.

• Beethoven wrote variations on Mozart tunes: on “Se vuol ballare” from Figaro (WoO 40), on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from The Magic Flute (Op. 66) and on “Bei Männern” from the same opera (WoO 46).
• He wrote cadenzas for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, and played the concerto in public.
• His early works, such as the Op. 1 piano trios (1795), use the Classical forms Mozart and Haydn perfected: sonata form, minuet and trio, the four-movement symphony.
• Then he enlarged them. The Eroica Symphony (1803 to 1804) runs far longer than any Mozart symphony, and the Ninth (1824) adds voices and chorus to the finale.

The difference in temperament shows in their letters. Mozart wrote to his father about pitching concertos so that experts and ordinary listeners would both be pleased.

Beethoven, writing to his friend Franz Wegeler about his failing hearing, sounds like a man fighting.

Where they agreed and where they differed

Agreed: both were brilliant keyboard players who made their name improvising in Viennese salons. Both admired Haydn. Both wanted independence from a single employer, and Mozart's break with the Archbishop in 1781 (described in his letters of May and June that year) was the model of a musician leaving service. Both wrote for the new piano rather than the harpsichord.

Differed: Mozart thought of music as drama and song. He wrote to his father on 13 October 1781 that in an opera the words should serve the music, and he wrote opera all his life. Beethoven struggled with opera, wrote Fidelio in three versions (1805, 1806 and 1814), and put his drama into instrumental works. Mozart worked quickly; his catalogue of his own works, kept from 1784, lists piece after piece. Beethoven's sketchbooks show themes reworked for months or years.

They also lived differently. Mozart's last years were marked by debt and loans from friends such as the merchant Michael Puchberg. Beethoven, after 1809, had a yearly payment of 4,000 florins promised by Archduke Rudolph and Princes Lobkowitz and Kinsky to keep him in Vienna, though inflation and a death reduced it.

Myths cling to both. Read did Salieri poison Mozart and was Beethoven completely deaf before you repeat either story.

Questions to ask Mozart and Beethoven

1. Mozart: when you composed, did you hear a whole movement in your head before you wrote it down?
2. Mozart: why did you leave the Archbishop's service, and was freelance life worth the debts?
3. Mozart: what made Figaro and Don Giovanni different from the operas you grew up with?
4. Mozart: in spring 1787, did a teenager from Bonn play for you?
5. Beethoven: did you meet Mozart in 1787, and what did you hear him play?
6. Beethoven: what did you take from Mozart, and what did you refuse to copy?
7. Beethoven: how did you compose the Ninth Symphony when you could no longer hear an orchestra?
8. Beethoven: what did you write in the Heiligenstadt Testament in 1802, and why did you keep it hidden?

On Yuga you can put these questions by voice to Mozart and Beethoven. They are AI recreations built from their letters and the historical record. Ask both about 1787 and notice that an honest answer should admit what is not known. For homework, cite the letters and the Heiligenstadt Testament, not the app.

Which one for your project?

Pick Mozart for a project on child prodigies, opera, life as a freelance artist, or 18th-century Europe seen from a touring coach. His family letters are lively and easy to quote. Start with questions to ask Mozart.

Pick Beethoven for a project on disability and creativity, the turn from Classical to Romantic, or music and politics in the age of Napoleon. 2027 marks 200 years since his death: see Beethoven 200 years and questions to ask Beethoven.

Pick both to show how a style changes in one city across one generation. Play the opening of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 (1788) and Beethoven's Fifth (1808) side by side: both in minor keys, twenty years apart.