Leopold Mozart

Leopold Mozart, born in Augsburg in 1719, is remembered above all as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but he was a considerable musician in his own right. He came to Salzburg as a student, joined the orchestra of the Prince-Archbishop as a violinist in 1743 and rose to become deputy Kapellmeister, a rank he never exceeded. In 1756, the year Wolfgang was born, he published his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, a treatise on violin playing that was reprinted and translated for decades. He and his wife Anna Maria Pertl had seven children, of whom only Wolfgang and his sister Maria Anna, known as Nannerl, survived infancy. He died in Salzburg in 1787.