On 27 January 1756, in the snowy Austrian town of Salzburg, a baby boy named Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born - luckily, everyone just called him Wolfgang. His father Leopold was a court musician who taught his children to play. By age three, little Wolfgang was picking out tunes on the harpsichord with chubby fingers. By four he could repeat any piece he heard. By five he was composing his own. By six his father packed him into a horse-drawn carriage with his older sister Nannerl and took the children on tour across Europe.
They performed for the Empress of Austria, the King of France, and the King of England. Wolfgang would play with a cloth draped over the keys so he could not see them. He could play violin pieces he had never been shown. He could improvise an entire fugue on the spot. By age eight he had written his first symphony. By twelve he had written his first opera. People could not believe what they were hearing. Some scientists examined him to make sure he was real and not some clever trick.
Mozart lived only 35 years, but in that short time he wrote more than 600 pieces of music - symphonies, operas, piano concertos, choral works, and the famous tinkling 'Twinkle Twinkle' variations. He loved silly jokes, billiards, his pet starling, and his wife Constanze. When he died in 1791 he was buried in an ordinary grave, but his music never faded. Two and a half centuries later, his melodies still ring out in concert halls, films, video games, and the head of every kid learning their first piano scales.
