Mozart Snapshots
Each week Colorado pianist Katie Mahan takes us on a journey of Mozart's life in Salzburg. Katie has been following in Mozart's footsteps and takes us to places where Mozart lived, worked and played - places that helped shape him into the person and genius composer/musician that he was.
Check back every week for a new episode!
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a petite 5′ 4″, but his shadow looms large over his city of birth, Salzburg, Austria.
- Mozart lived to write opera, but he struggled with box office success. The initial run of “The Marriage of Figaro” in Vienna ran only nine times before closing.
- Fans of the movie “The Sound of Music” know the gardens of Salzburg’s Schloss Mirabell (Mirabell Palace) well.
- Mozart’s star shines so brightly in history that it overshadows nearly everyone around him, including his extraordinarily talented sister, Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart.
- The tiny St. Johanneskirche am Imberg is rumored to have been the favorite little hideaway of Wolfgang and Nannerl Mozart as children.
- A strong cup of coffee may be the cure you need in the morning to wake up and begin working, but in Mozart’s time it was thought to also cure
- Mozart didn’t have an ordinary childhood. He never went to school. And he didn’t live at home very much.
- Mozart had friends in high places, most notably his father who was one of the most important musicians in Salzburg.
- Mozart loved to dress well and spent large sums of money on extravagant clothes and the latest fashions. His sense of style was just another extension of his creativity.
- Mozart grew up in Salzburg, but over a third of his adolescence was spent traveling Europe showing off his extraordinary keyboard skills and learning from other composers and musicians.
- Wolfgang Mozart’s father, Leopold, often gets a bad rap in history as a domineering, fame-obsessed father who exploited his children’s talents.
- In this episode of Mozart Snapshots, Katie Mahan takes us into Mozart's Geburtshaus (birthplace) for a tourist-free walk through the house and shares a wealth of information about his early years.
- In this episode of Mozart Snapshots, Katie Mahan takes us inside the Salzburger Dom and gives us an exclusive tour of the organ Mozart played every week with the current organist of the cathedral.
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