Happy Deathday Mr. Mozart!

In honour of today being 211 years since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died, here are 16 facts which you may or may not have known about him.

1) Although he was wildly famous from a very young age, Mozart was actually bankrupt when he died, and had to have a pauper's funeral. He was buried in an unmarked grave, the location of which remains a mystery. However, he has ended up with a rather snazzy statue in the Burrgarten in Vienna, so if you want to go and pay your respects, it's not wholly impossible to do so.

2) Mozart wrote his first minuet at the age of six, his first symphony at eight (No. 1 in E flat) and his first opera at 11. In contrast, by the age of 11, I had just about figured out which way round to hold my flute...

3) Legend has it, that at the age of 2, he identified a pig's squeal as being in the key of G sharp. As a historian, I normally have an intense disliking for legends, but that is such an adorable story that I couldn't resist. And by 'adorable' I mean 'insanely-jealous making' of course, because I'm pretty sure having perfect pitch is unnatural. Also, why on earth was he around a squealing pig anyway? Was mini-Mozart into animal abuse? Questions, questions...

4) Whilst on tour with his mother 1777, Mozart met and fell in love with Aloysia Weber. He composed music for her, but as he was still fairly poor at that time, he asked her to wait for him whilst he toured around France and became financially better off. When he returned a couple of years later, his one true love had married an actor, so Mozart wooed and married her sister, Constance, despite his father's disapproval. (Which I promise is not the EastEnders' Christmas plot...)

5) Originally, Mozart's older sister, Nannerl was seen as the more talented of the siblings, so Mozart's father took them both on a tour of Austria in 1762, when Mozart was a mere six years old. The two played and sang for aristocratic classes, including the Empress Maria Theresa, with whom Mozart shocked the court by climbing into her lap to give her a kiss, instead of bowing respectfully towards her. The Empress was merely amused by his childlish impulsiveness, and showered him with gifts after he had played for her.

6) In Munich in 1981, Mozart's Symphony in F was discovered amongst some private family papers. It is thought to be his third symphony, written when he was nine years old.

7) The film Amadeus, whilst making for entertaining viewing, is almost entirely fictionalized - well, the conflict between Mozart and Salieri is, at any rate. Though there may have been some rivalry between them, Mozart was not poisoned by his supposed enemy; he died of what is most likely to have been a kidney infection, aged 35. 

8) The famous composer Haydn once said to Mozart's father, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me." Mozart jr remained good friends with Haydn, and dedicated six of his quartets to him.

9) Mozart composed the opera Don Giovanni about a fictional womanizer named Don Juan, who gets his 'just desserts' in the end. He is not the only one who was inspired by the Spanish tale - in 1665, the playwright Moliere based one of his dramas on him; Lord Byron wrote an epic poem about his adventures in 1821 and he was also an inspiration in the twentieth century, for the author George Bernard Shaw.

10) In 1769, the Mozart family went on another tour, this time to Italy. There, the Pope bestowed upon him the title of 'The Golden Spur' for his services to music, which gave him the title of Cavalier. 

11) Mozart's first official job was as Concertmaster and Conductor of the Salzburg Chapel Orchestra. He quit after only a couple of years, however, saying that he didn't get on with the new Archbishop - though a more likely reason is that he knew he could make more money through touring.

12) Though everyone today knows him as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, only one official document from his lifetime survives which calls him by this name. He was in fact baptized as "Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart", which makes me want a Latin name. Except I'm a bit worried that 'Anna' might translate as 'Annus'...

13) The Marriage of Figaro, today one of his most famous operas, was initially not received very well at all by the crowds in Vienna. Undaunted by this, Mozart took it to Prague, where it performed much better and was the storming success it remains today. 

14) Mozart's life was blighted by tragedy. His mother died when on tour with him when he was a teenager, and only two of his six children survived infancy (though this was not uncommon at the time). He wrote his very famous ringtone Symphony in G Minor for his first daughter, who died in June 1788 six months after she was born.

15) After Mozart died, there were several attempts to catalog all the pieces he wrote. However, as their number exceeds 600, this was not an easy task. In 1862, Ludwig von Kochel finally succeeded in doing so, creating the Kochel catalog. This lists every piece of music he wrote in chronological order, with a 'K' in front - for example, his final piece, the Requiem in D Minor, is K. 626.  Between 1937 and 1964, this catalog was edited by Alfred Einstein, who's claim to fame is that he wasn't related to Albert Einstein. 

16) I am going to see my opera-loving friend Charlotte perform in her university's production of The Marriage of Figaro in January, and I will be sure to be more excited about this than the Viennese were.