Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart

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The two sons of Wolfgang Amadeus and Constanze Mozart: Carl Thomas (r) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (l) (painting of Hans Hansen, Vienna, 1800)

Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (July 26, 1791 – July 29, 1844), also known as F. X. Mozart and as W. A. Mozart Son (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jr.), is the youngest child of six born to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his wife Constanze. He was a composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher. He was named in honour of his father and his father's student and close friend, Franz Xaver Süssmayr.

Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart was born on July 26, 1791 in Vienna. Wolfgang Amadeus, Jr. was born five months before his father's death, but he spent his entire life in the shadow of the father he never knew.

He received excellent musical instruction from Antonio Salieri and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. He learned to play both the piano and violin. Like his father, he started to compose at an early age.

Franz Xaver became a professional musician and enjoyed moderate success both as a teacher and a performer. Unlike his father, he was introverted and given to self-deprecation. He constantly underrated his talent and feared that whatever he produced would be compared with what his father had done.

His first piano concert was in 1805, when he was 14. Needing some money, in 1808, he travelled to Lviv (then Lwów), where he gave music lessons to the daughters of the count Baworowski. Although the pay was good, Franz felt lonely in the town of Pidkamen' , near Rohatyn, so in 1809, he accepted an offer from the imperial representative, von Janiszewski to teach his daughters music in the town of Burshtyn. Besides teaching, he gave local concerts, playing his own and his father's pieces. These concerts introduced him to the important people in Galicia (Halychina).

After two years in Burshtyn, he moved to Lwów where he spent more than 20 years teaching (e.g. Julie von Webenau) and giving concerts. Between 1826 and 1829, he conducted the choir of Saint Cecilia, which consisted of 400 amateur singers. In 1826, he conducted his father's Requiem during a concert at the Greek Catholic cathedral of Saint George. From this choir, he created the musical brotherhood of Saint Cecilia, and thus the first school of music in Lviv. He travelled throughout what is now Ukraine.

In the 1820s, Franz Xaver Mozart was one of 50 composers to write a Variation on a theme of Antonio Diabelli.

In 1838, he left for Vienna, and then for Salzburg, where he was chosen the Kapellmeister of the Mozarteum. From 1841, he taught the pianist Ernst Pauer. He died on July 29, 1844 in the town of Karlsbad, where he was buried.

He never married nor did he have any children.

His musical style was an early Romanticism.

The shadow of his father loomed large over him even in death. The following epitaph was etched on his tombstone:

"May the name of his father be his epitaph, as his veneration for him was the essence of his life."