North Kingstown, Rhode Island
North Kingstown is a town in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States, and is part of the Providence metropolitan area. The population was 27,732 in the 2020 census. North Kingstown is home to the birthplace of American portraitist Gilbert Stuart, who was born in the village of Saunderstown. Within the town is Quonset Point, location of the former Naval Air Station Quonset Point, known for the invention of the Quonset hut, as well as the historic village of Wickford.
History.
The area was first settled by Roger Williams and Richard Smith who set up trading posts near Wickford where Smith's Castle is today. The town of Kings Towne was founded in 1674, by the colonial government, and included the present day towns of North Kingstown, South Kingstown, Exeter, and Narragansett. In 1723, Kings Towne was split into two parts, North Kingstown and South Kingstown, with North Kingstown, having the earliest settlements, retaining the 1674 establishment date. In 1742, the town of Exeter was taken from the western part of North Kingstown.
On September 17, 2024, the National Park Service announced that North Kingstown was named a World War II Heritage City.
Geography.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and (25.28%) is water. It is bordered on the east by Narragansett Bay.
Demographics.
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As of the 2020 census, there were 27,732 people and 11,338 households in the town. The population density was . There were 12,189 housing units in the town. The racial makeup of the town was 89.59% White, 1.27% African American, 0.57% American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.90% Asian, 1.19% from some other race other races, and 5.42% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.65% of the population.
There were 11,338 households, out of which 28.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.7% were married couples living together, 23.6% had a female householder with no spouse present and 14.2% had a male householder with no spouse present. 11.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 4.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.98.
In the town, the population was spread out, with 18.4% under the age of 18, 9.5% from 18 to 24, 22.6% from 25 to 44, 28.1% from 45 to 64, and 21.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years.
The median income for a household in the town was $120,565, and the median income for a family was $144,898. The per capita income for the town was $61,280. About 6.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.1% of those under age 18 and 6.6% of those age 65 or over.
Transportation.
Wickford Junction is a terminus station on the Providence/Stoughton Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail, providing weekday train service to Providence Station and Boston's South Station. At 63 miles from Boston, it is the most distant station in the MBTA's 135-station commuter-rail network, and the only one in its most expensive fare zone.
RIPTA also services in the town inbound to Providence and outbound to Narragansett or Newport.
North Kingstown is also served by a passenger ferry connecting to the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Education.
North Kingstown School Department is the municipal school district. It operates North Kingstown High School.
Other National Historic Places in North Kingstown.
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Augusto Grace
American politician
Augusto Francisco Grace (born April 9, 1954) is an American lawyer and politician who represented the 23rd Middlesex District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1987 to 1991 and the Burlington School Committee from 1977 to 1983.
He was born in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976 and from Boston College Law School with a Juris Doctor in 1984.
He practiced law in Boston until 2007. From 2007 to 2009 he served as the director of professional development for the Massachusetts Highway Department. From 2009 to 2015 he worked in the Talent Management and Professional Development Division of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation rising to the position of department manager. Since 2015 he has served as the deputy director of education and development at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. He is a former executive director, president, and treasurer of the National Guard Association of Massachusetts and National Guard Executive Directors Association.
Grace was defeated by Republican Marianne Brenton in the 1990 election. He was a candidate for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1994, but lost in the Democratic Primary to William F. Galvin.
References.
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W. G. Grace
English cricketer (1848–1915)
William Gilbert Grace (18 July 1848 – 23 October 1915) was an English cricketer who is widely considered one of the sport's all-time greatest players. Always known by his initials as "WG", his first-class career spanned a record-equalling 44 seasons from 1865 to 1908. Test cricket originated during his career, and he represented England in 22 matches from 1880 to 1899. In domestic cricket, he was mostly associated with Gloucestershire, the Gentlemen, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), and the United South of England Eleven (USEE).
Right-handed as both batsman and bowler, Grace was an outstanding all-rounder who excelled at all the essential skills of batting, bowling, and fielding, though it is for his batting that he is most renowned, as he is held to have invented modern batsmanship. He dominated the sport during his career, and his technical innovations and enormous influence have left a lasting legacy. Usually opening the innings, he was particularly admired for his mastery of all strokes, and his level of expertise was said by contemporary reviewers to be unique. He generally captained the teams he played for at all levels because of his skill and tactical acumen. Grace nominally held amateur status as a player, but he was said to have made more money from his cricketing activities than any contemporary professional. He was an extremely competitive player and, though he was one of the most famous men in England, he was also one of the most controversial on account of his gamesmanship and moneymaking.
He came from a cricketing family which included his elder brother Edward ("EM"), and his younger brother Fred. In 1880, they were members of the same England team, the first time three brothers played together in a Test match. Grace took part in other sports—as a young man, he was a champion 440-yard hurdler, and played football for the Wanderers. In later life, he developed enthusiasm for golf, lawn bowls, and curling. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1879.
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Early years.
Family.
Grace was born in Downend, near Bristol, on 18 July 1848 at his parents' home, Downend House, and was baptised at the local church on 8 August. He was called Gilbert in the family circle, except by his mother, who apparently called him Willie, but otherwise, as "WG", he was universally known by his initials. His parents were Henry Mills Grace and Martha ("née" Pocock), who were married in Bristol on Thursday, 3 November 1831 and lived out their lives at Downend, where Henry Grace was the local GP. Downend is near Mangotsfield and, although it is now a suburb of Bristol, it was then a detached village surrounded by countryside, and about four miles from Bristol. Henry and Martha Grace had nine children in all. Biographer Simon Rae commented that this was "the same number as Victoria and Albert—and in every respect they were the typical Victorian family". Grace was the eighth child in the family; he had three older brothers, including Edward (always known as "EM"), and four older sisters. The ninth child was his younger brother Fred, born in 1850.
Education.
Grace was "notoriously unscholarly". His first schooling was with a Miss Trotman in Downend village and then with a Mr Curtis of Winterbourne. He subsequently attended a day school called Ridgway House, run by a Mr Malpas, until he was fourteen. One of his schoolmasters, David Bernard, later married Grace's sister Alice. In 1863, Grace was taken seriously ill with pneumonia and his father removed him from Ridgway House. After this illness, Grace grew rapidly to his full height of 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m). He continued his education at home where one of his tutors was the Reverend John Dann, the Downend parish church curate; like Mr Bernard before him, Mr Dann became Grace's brother-in-law, marrying Blanche Grace in 1869.
Grace never went to university because his father wanted him to pursue a medical career. Nevertheless, Grace received approaches from both Oxford University Cricket Club and Cambridge University Cricket Club. In 1866, when he played a match at Oxford, one of the Oxford players, Edmund Carter, tried to interest him in becoming an undergraduate. Then, in 1868, Grace received overtures from Caius College, Cambridge, which had a long medical tradition. Grace said he would have gone to either Oxford or Cambridge if his father had allowed it. Instead, he enrolled at Bristol Medical School in October 1868, when he was 20.
Grace's entire life, including his cricket and medical careers, is inseparable from his close-knit family background which was strongly influenced by his father, who set great store by qualifications and determination to succeed. Henry, whose medical qualifications were Licenciate of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA) in 1828 and Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 1830, passed this purposeful attitude on to each of his five sons. Therefore, like his father and his brothers, Grace chose a professional career in medicine—because of his cricketing commitments, however, he did not complete his qualification as a doctor until 1879, when he was 31 years old.
Development as a cricketer.
Grace began his "Cricketing Reminiscences" (1899) by answering a question he had frequently been asked—"was he born a cricketer"? His answer was in the negative because he believed that "cricketers are made by coaching and practice", though he added that if he was not born a cricketer, he was born "in the atmosphere of cricket". His father and mother were "full of enthusiasm for the game" and it was "a common theme of conversation at home". In 1850, when WG was two and Fred was expected, the family moved to a nearby house called "The Chesnuts" which had a sizeable orchard and Henry Grace organised clearance of this to establish a practice pitch. All nine children in the Grace family, including the four daughters, were encouraged to play cricket although the girls, along with the dogs, were required for fielding only. Grace claimed that he first handled a cricket bat at the age of two.
It was in the Downend orchard and as members of their local cricket clubs that he and his brothers developed their skills, mainly under the tutelage of their uncle, Alfred Pocock, who spent long hours coaching them at Downend. EM, who was seven years older than WG, had always played with a full size bat and so developed a tendency, that he never lost, to hit across the line, the bat being too big for him to "play straight". Pocock recognised this problem and determined that WG and Fred should not follow suit. He therefore fashioned smaller bats for them, to suit their sizes, and they were taught to play straight and "learn defence, with the left shoulder well forward", before attempting to hit. Apart from his cricket and his schooling, Grace lived the life of a country boy and roamed freely with the other village boys. One of his regular activities was stone throwing at birds in the fields and he later claimed that this was the source of his eventual skill as an outfielder.
Henry Grace founded Mangotsfield Cricket Club in 1845 to represent several neighbouring villages including Downend. In 1846, this club merged with the West Gloucestershire Cricket Club whose name was adopted until 1867; it has been said that the Grace family ran the West Gloucestershire "almost as a private club". Henry Grace managed to organise matches against Lansdown Cricket Club in Bath, which was the premier West Country club. West Gloucestershire fared poorly in these games and, sometime in the 1850s, Henry Grace and Alfred Pocock decided to join Lansdown, although they continued to run the West Gloucestershire and this remained their primary club.
Grace recorded in his "Reminiscences" that he saw his first "great" cricket match in 1854 when he was barely six years old, the occasion being a game between William Clarke's All-England Eleven (the AEE) and twenty-two of West Gloucestershire. He first played for the West Gloucestershire club himself as early as 1857, when he was nine years old, and he had eleven innings in 1859. The first time he made a substantial score was in July 1860 when he scored 51 for West Gloucestershire against Clifton—forty years later, he said no innings ever gave him more pleasure.
It was through Grace's elder brother EM, however, that the family name first became famous. Their mother, Martha, wrote the following in a letter to William Clarke's successor George Parr in 1860 or 1861:
I am writing to ask you to consider the inclusion of my son, E. M. Grace—a splendid hitter and most excellent catch—in your England XI. I am sure he would play very well and do the team much credit. It may interest you to learn that I have another son, now twelve years of age, who will in time be a much better player than his brother because his back stroke is sounder, and he always plays with a straight bat.
Grace was just short of his thirteenth birthday when, on 5 July 1861, he made his debut for Lansdown and played two matches that month. EM had made his debut in 1857, aged sixteen. In August 1862, aged 14, Grace played for West Gloucestershire against a Devonshire team. A year later, following the bout of pneumonia which had left him bed-ridden for several weeks, he scored 52 not out and took five wickets to help Gentlemen of Gloucestershire defeat Gentlemen of Somerset by 87 runs at the Sydenham Field ground in Bath. Soon afterwards, he was one of four family members who played for a Bristol and Didcot XVIII against the All-England Eleven. He scored 32 off the bowling of John Jackson, George Tarrant, Cris Tinley, and Ned Willsher—before Tinley bowled him. EM took ten wickets in the match, which Bristol and Didcot won by an innings, and as a result EM was invited to tour Australia a few months later with George Parr's England team.
EM did not return from Australia until July 1864 and his absence presented Grace with an opportunity to appear on cricket's greatest stages. He and his elder brother Henry were invited to play for the South Wales team which had arranged a series of matches in London and Sussex, though Grace wondered humorously how they were qualified to represent South Wales. It was the first time that Grace left the West Country and he made his debut appearances at both The Oval and Lord's.
Besides his cricketing skills, Grace was an outstanding athlete as a young man and took part in several meetings. He threw a cricket ball during a field event at Eastbourne. He won the hurdling title at the National Olympian Games at Crystal Palace in August 1866, and claimed the silver medal in the quarter-mile event at the 1869 AAC Championships. Also, Grace is known to have played football for the Wanderers, although he did not feature in any of their FA Cup-winning teams.
First-class career.
Gentlemen v Players.
Having scored 5 and 38 for South Wales in his first match at The Oval, Grace was outstanding in the next match, scoring 170 and 56* against Gentlemen of Sussex at the Royal Brunswick Ground in Hove. The innings of 170 was his first-ever century in a serious match. The third match, against Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was Grace's debut at Lord's, and he was joined there by EM who had just disembarked from his voyage. Grace scored 50 in the first innings, only three days after his sixteenth birthday.
His name now well known in cricketing circles, Grace played for Gentlemen of the South against Players of the South in June 1865, when he was still only 16 but already tall and weighing . This match is recognised as his first-class debut. Gentlemen of the South, batting first, won the match by an innings and 58 runs. Grace was out, stumped, without scoring but he bowled extremely well and had match figures of 13 for 84 to earn his first selection for the Gentlemen v Players fixture.
During this period, before the start of Test cricket in 1877, Gentlemen v Players was the most prestigious fixture in which a player could take part. This is apart from North v South, which was technically a fixture of higher quality given that the amateur Gentlemen were usually (until Grace took a hand) outclassed by the professional Players. Grace was to represent the Gentlemen in their matches against the Players from 1865 to 1906. It was he who enabled the amateurs to meet the paid professionals on level terms and to defeat them more often than not. His ability to master fast bowling was the key factor. Before Grace's debut in the fixture, the Gentlemen had lost 19 consecutive games; of the next 39 games, they won 27 and lost only 4. In seven consecutive innings against the Players from 1871 to 1873, Grace scored 217, 77, 112, 117, 163, 158 and 70. In his whole career, he scored a record 15 centuries in the fixture.
His 1865 debut for the Gentlemen did not turn the tide as the Players won at The Oval by 118 runs. He had been selected as a bowler and took seven wickets in the match. Batting late in the order, he scored 23 and 12*. In the second 1865 match, this time at Lord's, the Gentlemen finally ended their losing streak and won by 8 wickets, but it was EM who made the difference with 11 wickets in the match. Even so, Grace made his mark by scoring 34 out of 77/2 in the second innings to steer the Gentlemen to victory.
"The Champion".
Cricket in the 1860s underwent a revolution with the legalisation of overarm bowling in June 1864, and Grace himself said it was "no exaggeration to say that, between 1860 and 1870, English cricket passed through its most critical period" with the game in transition, and "it was quite a revolutionary period so far as its rules were concerned". He was still 15 when the 1864 season began and had turned 20 when he began his medical career by enrolling at Bristol Medical School on 7 October 1868. During those five seasons, and especially in 1866, he became widely recognised as the finest cricketer in England. Just after his eighteenth birthday in July 1866, he confirmed his potential with an innings of 224* for All-England against Surrey at The Oval. It was his maiden first-class century and, according to Harry Altham, he was "thenceforward the biggest name in cricket and the main spectator attraction with the successes (coming) thick and fast".
Two years later, Grace scored two centuries in a match, only the second time in cricket history that this is known to have been done, following William Lambert in 1817. Summarising the 1868 season, Simon Rae wrote that Grace was:
Now indisputably the cricketer of the age, the Champion.
Grace had numerous nicknames during his career including "The Doctor", after he achieved his medical qualification, and "The Old Man", as he reached the veteran stage. "The Champion" was the most auspicious—in the poem "At Lord's" by Francis Thompson, he was hailed as "The Champion of the Centuries". Grace was first acclaimed as the "Champion Cricketer" by "Lillywhite's Companion" in recognition of his exploits in 1871.
MCC membership.
Grace became a member of MCC in 1869 after being proposed by the treasurer, Thomas Burgoyne, and seconded by the secretary, Robert Allan Fitzgerald. Given an ongoing rift in the sport during the 1860s between the northern professionals and Surrey, MCC feared the loss of its authority should Grace "throw in his lot with the professionals" so it was considered vital for them and their interests to get him onside. As it happens, the dispute was nearly over but it has been said that "MCC regained its authority over the game by hanging onto WG's shirt-tails". Grace wore MCC colours for the rest of his career, playing for them on an irregular basis until 1904, and their red and yellow hooped cap became as synonymous with him as his large black beard. He played for MCC on an expenses only basis, but any hopes the club had of keeping him firmly within the amateur ranks would soon be disappointed for his services were much in demand.
Grace scored four centuries in July 1869, including an innings of 180 at The Oval. That was achieved as part of the highest wicket partnership involving Grace in his entire career: he shared 283 runs for the first wicket with Bransby Cooper. Later in the month, Grace scored 122 out of 173 in difficult batting conditions during a North v South match at Bramall Lane, prompting the laconic Tom Emmett to call him a "nonsuch" (without equal), and declare: "He ought to be made to play with a littler bat".
Gloucestershire.
It is generally understood that Gloucestershire County Cricket Club was formally constituted in 1870, having developed from Dr Henry Grace's West Gloucestershire club. Gloucestershire acquired first-class status when its team played against Surrey at Durdham Down on 2, 3 and 4 June 1870. With Grace and his brothers EM and Fred playing, Gloucestershire won by 51 runs. The club soon had one of the best teams in England and was unanimously rated Champion County in 1876 and 1877, as well as sharing the unofficial title in 1873 and staking a claim for it in 1874. Surrey and Gloucestershire played a return match at The Oval in July 1870, and Gloucestershire won it by an innings and 129 runs. Grace scored 143, sharing a second wicket partnership of 234 with Frank Townsend, who scored 89. The Grace family "ran the show" at Gloucestershire and EM was chosen as secretary which, as Derek Birley pointed out, "put him in charge of expenses, a source of scandal that was to surface before the end of the decade". WG, though aged only 21, was from the start the team captain and Birley put that down to his "commercial drawing power".
Grace, a medical student at the time, was first on the scene in June 1870, when George Summers received the blow on the head that caused his death four days later. This was in the MCC v Nottinghamshire match at Lord's. Grace was fielding nearby when Summers was struck, and took his pulse. Summers recovered consciousness and Grace advised him to leave the field. Summers did not go to hospital, but it transpired later that his skull had been fractured. The Lord's pitch had a poor reputation for being rough, uneven, and unpredictable all through the 19th century and many players including Grace considered it dangerous.
It was in 1870 that, as Birley put it, Grace "scorned the puny modern fashion of moustaches" and grew the enormous black beard that made him so recognisable. In addition, his "ample girth" had developed for he weighed 15 stone (95 kg) in his early twenties. Grace was a non-smoker but he enjoyed good food and wine; many years later, when discussing the overheads incurred during Lord Sheffield's profitless tour of Australia in 1891–92, Arthur Shrewsbury commented: "I told you what wine would be drunk by the amateurs; Grace himself would drink enough to swim a ship".
"Annus mirabilis".
According to Harry Altham, 1871 was Grace's "annus mirabilis". In all first-class matches in 1871, a total of seventeen centuries were scored and Grace accounted for ten of them, including the first in a first-class match at Trent Bridge. He averaged 78.25 runs per innings, and the next best average by a batsman playing more than a single innings was 39.57, barely more than half his figure. His aggregate for the season was 2,739 runs—the first time anyone had scored 2,000 first-class runs in a season—and the next highest was Harry Jupp with 1,068.
Grace produced two outstanding batting performances in the season. Playing for the Single against the Married at Lord's, Grace carried his bat to score 189*. He and his brother Fred shared a third wicket partnership of 108. The innings was played on a "sticky wicket" after rain, and many people considered it the finest of Grace's career, though Grace himself disagreed. He began cautiously and took fifteen minutes to score his first run but then, as Rae put it, he "scored at a cracking pace". MCC Secretary Harry Perkins had no doubts and insisted that it was Grace's greatest-ever performance with rain frequently stopping play and making the wicket at times "unplayable". Later, when he represented the South against the North at The Oval, he made his highest career score to date of 268, having been dismissed by Jem Shaw for nought in the first innings. It was to no avail as the match was drawn, but the occasion produced a memorable and oft-quoted comment by Shaw who ruefully said: "I puts the ball where I likes, and he puts it where he likes".
The United South and the first overseas tour.
1871 was a great year for Grace on the field, but it was marred by the death of his father in December. Grace and his younger brother Fred still lived with their mother, who had been left just enough to retain the family home in Downend. As medical students (Fred started his course in the autumn of 1872), the brothers faced considerable outlay in addition to their living expenses, and it became imperative for them to make what they could out of cricket, especially the United South of England Eleven (USEE).
USEE had been formed by Ned Willsher in 1865 but the heyday of the travelling teams was over and their organisers were desperate to feature new attractions. In 1872, USEE played six matches, including games in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Grace's first visit to Scotland.
The Graces had formally joined the club in 1870, playing for expenses only. As its match organisers, however, they also received wages. They had to find gaps in the first-class fixture list and then pull together a team to visit a location where a suitable profit could be made. It has been estimated that the standard fee paid to the USEE was £100 for a three-day match () with £5 (£) each going to the nine professionals in the team and the other £45 (£) to WG and Fred. Otherwise, Grace played for expenses but these were loaded as, for example, he is known to have claimed £15 per appearance for Gloucestershire and £20 for representing the Gentlemen. To put it in context, a domestic servant earned less than £50 a year.
1872 was a wet summer and Grace ended his season in early August so that he could join a tour of North America. He made three overseas tours during his career, and this first one was to the United States and Canada with R. A. Fitzgerald's team in August and September 1872. All expenses were paid by the Montreal Club who had written to Fitzgerald the previous winter and invited him to form a team. Grace and his all-amateur colleagues made short work of the weak teams they faced. The team included two other future England captains in A. N. Hornby, who became a rival of Grace in later years; and the Honourable George Harris, the future Lord Harris, who became a very close friend and a most useful ally. The team met in Liverpool on 8 August and sailed on the SS "Sarmatian", docking at Quebec on 17 August. Rae recounted that the bond between Grace and Harris was forged by their mutual sea-sickness. Matches were played in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, London, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. The team sailed back from Quebec on 27 September and arrived at Liverpool on 8 October. Grace wrote that the tour was "a high point of (his) early years" and he "retained fond memories of it" for the rest of his life, calling it "a prolonged and happy picnic" in his ghost-written "Reminiscences".
Towards a county championship.
1873 was the year that some semblance of organisation was brought into county cricket with the introduction of a residence qualification. This was aimed principally at England's outstanding bowler James Southerton who had been playing for both Surrey and Sussex, having been born in one county and living in the other. Southerton chose to play for his county of residence, Surrey, from then on but remained the country's top bowler. The counties agreed on residence but not on a means of deciding a County Championship and so the title, known as "Champion County", remained an unofficial award by newspapers until 1890. Grace's Gloucestershire had a very strong claim to this unofficial title in 1873 but consensus was that they shared it with Nottinghamshire. These two did not play each other and both were unbeaten in six matches, though Nottinghamshire won five and Gloucestershire won four.
Nottinghamshire and Gloucestershire were due to meet at the end of July, only for a row to erupt after Nottinghamshire requested a change of date. The Gloucestershire committee agreed to the new date, but Grace objected because he had promised to play in a benefit match at Sheffield for Yorkshire's Joseph Rowbotham. The clubs insisted on the change, so the Graces closed ranks and refused to play, and the match was cancelled. That caused uproar among the Gloucestershire committee, where EM as club secretary found himself defending the family against multiple complaints of "high-handedness". It changed nothing except that the entire committee boycotted the next meeting, so EM recorded himself as sole attendee in the minutes.
Grace had another outstanding season on the field in 1873, when he became the first player ever to complete the "double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season. He went on to do the double eight times in all from 1873 to 1886.
English cricket dishonoured.
On 9 October 1873, Grace was married to Agnes Nicholls Day (1853–1930), who was the daughter of his first cousin William Day. Two weeks later, they began their honeymoon by taking ship to Australia for Grace's 1873–74 tour. They returned from the tour in May 1874 with Agnes six months pregnant. Their eldest son William Gilbert junior (1874–1905) was born on 6 July. Grace had to catch up with his studies at Bristol Medical School, and he and his wife and son lived at Downend until February 1875 with his mother, brother Fred and sister Fanny.
The English team in Australia was called W. G. Grace's XI. On the morning of their departure from Southampton, Grace responded to well-wishers by saying that his team "had a duty to perform to maintain the honour of English cricket, and to uphold the high character of English cricketers". But both his and the team's performances fell well short of this goal. The tour was not a success and the only positive outcome was the fact of it having taken place, ten years after the previous one, as it "gave Australian cricket a much needed fillip". Most of the problems lay with Grace himself and his "overbearing personality", which quickly exhausted all personal goodwill towards him. There was also bad feeling within the team itself because Grace, who normally got on well with professional players, enforced the class divide throughout the tour.
Gloucestershire the Champion County.
Having toured Australia in the winter of 1873–74, Grace arrived in England on 18 May 1874 and was quickly back into domestic cricket. The 1874 season was very successful for him as he completed a second successive double. Gloucestershire again had a strong claim to the Champion County title although some sources have awarded it to Derbyshire, and Grace himself said that it should have gone to Yorkshire.
Another good season followed in 1875 when he again completed the double with 1,498 runs and 191 wickets, his most successful season as a bowler. The family moved to London in February 1875—after Grace was assigned to St Bartholomew's Hospital—and lived at Earl's Court, about five miles from the City. Their second son, Henry Edgar, was born there in July 1876.
One of the most outstanding phases of Grace's career occurred in the 1876 season, beginning with his career highest score of 344 for MCC against Kent at the St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury, in August. Two days after his innings at Canterbury, he made 177 for Gloucestershire against Nottinghamshire, and two days after that 318* for Gloucestershire v Yorkshire, these two innings against counties with exceptionally strong bowling attacks. Thus, in three consecutive innings, Grace scored 839 runs and was only out twice. His innings of 344 was the first triple century scored in first-class cricket and broke the record for the highest individual score in all classes of cricket, previously held by William Ward, who had scored 278 in 1820. Ward's record had stood for 56 years and, within a week, Grace bettered it twice. His 318* against Yorkshire was the record score in county cricket.
Gloucestershire were recognised as champions for the third and final time in 1877, largely thanks to another outstanding season by Grace who scored 1,474 runs and took 179 wickets. In the autumn of that year, the family


Piano Sonata No. 9 (Mozart)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 9 in D major, K. 311 / 284c, was written on the composer's stay in Augsburg and Mannheim in November-December 1777, and is contemporaneous with his Sonata No. 7 in C Major K. 309 (Mozart wrote his Sonata K. 310 in the summer of the following year, in Paris). The three sonatas K. 309–311 were published as a set 'Opus IV' in about 1782, by Franz Joseph Heina in Paris.
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The work has three movements:
A typical performance takes about 15 to 17 minutes.
The first movement is in sonata form. Its first subject has a quasi-orchestral opening, and its second subject in the dominant key (A major) is quieter. The development section is almost entirely based on the last four bars of the exposition.
The second movement has an episodic structure A–B–A–B–A–coda. The second theme's melody is gently decorated with syncopation, accompanied by broken chords in the left hand. This key is G major, the subdominant of D major.
Lastly, the most technically demanding movement of the three is a sonata rondo, with a short central episode in B minor (the main key's relative minor). A slow cadenza-like passage containing a rapid ascending chromatic scale leads back to the first theme. In this passage the beginnings of the main theme of the famous second movement of the Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467, can be heard emerging - 8 years before he wrote it in 1785.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Composer (1756–1791)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture".
Born in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet "Exsultate Jubilate", and the opera "Idomeneo," among other works.
While visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", the "Great Mass in C minor", the "Haydn" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the "Jupiter" Symphony, the serenade "Eine kleine Nachtmusik", his Clarinet Concerto, the operas "The Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni", "Così fan tutte" and "The Magic Flute" and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.
Life and career.
Early life.
Family and childhood.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, née Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed "Nannerl". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as "Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart". He generally called himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart" as an adult, but his name had many variants.
Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, "Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule", which achieved success.
When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:
He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.
These early pieces, K. 1–5, were recorded in the "Nannerl Notenbuch". There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.
In his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.
1762–73: Travel.
While Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.
The family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.
After one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Mysliveček and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's "Miserere" twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the "first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican". However, both the origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.
In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera "Mitridate, re di Ponto" (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August–December 1771; October 1772 – March 1773) for the composition and premieres of "Ascanio in Alba" (1771) and "Lucio Silla" (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ "useless people", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet "Exsultate, jubilate", K.165.
1773–77: Employment at the Salzburg court.
After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three—K. 216, K. 218, K. 219—are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E♭ concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.
Despite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.
Two long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera "La finta giardiniera".
1777–78: Journey to Paris.
In August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.
Mozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor—probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'Épinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin.
While Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.
Among the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K. 310/300d, the "Paris" Symphony (No. 31), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.
Vienna.
1781: Departure.
In January 1781, Mozart's opera "Idomeneo" premiered with "considerable success" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:
My main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.
Mozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.
In the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the "Tonkünstler-Societät", a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.
Colloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.
The quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally "with a kick in the arse", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.
The quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a "revolutionary step" that significantly altered the course of his life.
Early years.
Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.
Near the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.
Marriage and children.
After failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.
The courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.
The marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually, Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, "All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question." Heartz relates, "Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment]." On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldstätten, asking: "Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today."
The couple were finally married on 4August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze "assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden", with the total "to pass to the survivor". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both.
The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:
1782–87.
In 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in "Die Zauberflöte" ("The Magic Flute") and the finale of Symphony No. 41.
In 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.
Mozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."
From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created "a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre".
With substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.
On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit ("Beneficence"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.
1786–87: Return to opera.
Despite the great success of "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act "Der Schauspieldirektor". He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of "Le nozze di Figaro" in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera "Don Giovanni", which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.
In December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his "chamber composer", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see "Mozart and dance"). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.
In 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.
Later years.
1788–90.
Toward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. According to Solomon, in 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.
By mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; "a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, "Così fan tutte", premiered in 1790.
Around this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.
1791.
Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity—and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera "The Magic Flute"; the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B♭); the Clarinet Concerto K. 622; the last in his series of string quintets (K. 614 in E♭); the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618; and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
Mozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.
He experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably "The Magic Flute" (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, premiered on 17 November 1791.
Final illness and death.
Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6September 1791, of his opera "La clemenza di Tito", which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of "The Magic Flute" on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.
Mozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr is minimal.
Mozart died in his home on at 12:55 am. The "New Grove" describes his funeral:
Mozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.
The expression "common grave" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.
The cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.
Mozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.
Appearance and character.
Mozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his "Reminiscences": "a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, "there was nothing special about [his] physique... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius." His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it "was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic."
He loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: "[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra." Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions—researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.
Mozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.
Mozart lived at the centre of the Viennese musical world and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.
He enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having travelled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written "You are an ass" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.
Mozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.
Works, musical style, and innovations.
Style.
Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the "style galant", a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularised the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.
The central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491; the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550; and the opera "Don Giovanni". Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:
It is only through recognising the violence and sensuality at the centre of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterisation of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.
During his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his "String Quartet in C major", K. 465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the "Dissonance" quartet.
Mozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J. C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J. C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.
As Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A major K. 201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus 20 set. The influence of the "Sturm und Drang" ("Storm and Stress") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor K. 183 is another excellent example.
Mozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as "Le nozze di Figaro", "Don Giovanni", and "Così fan tutte"; opera seria, such as "Idomeneo"; and Singspiel, of which "Die Zauberflöte" is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.
Köchel catalogue.
For unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a "Köchel catalogue number" is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation "K." or "KV" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von Köchel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.
Instruments.
Although some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Späth. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: "It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house."
Influence.
His most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of a classical musician's training.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO 58) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K. 466.
Composers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op. 66, WoO 28, WoO 40, WoO 46). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera "The Magic Flute" (1822), Frédéric Chopin's Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" from "Don Giovanni" (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K. 331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No. 4 in G, "Mozartiana" (1887), as a tribute to him.
References.
Citations.
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Sources.
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Further reading.
"See for an extensive bibliography"
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External links.
Digitized documents
Sheet music