"What are you doing?!" Leopold burst in on the boy.

"I am writing a concerto. It will be done soon," replied Wolfgang calmly, already sure of himself. Both men laughed and winked at each other. How cute, they thought... the boy imitating his father, the court composer for the Archbishop of Salzburg, Austria. But when Leopold read the notes, he began to cry for joy. His tiny son had indeed written a complicated and well-organized concerto!

This ink-stained beginning was the first of over 600 pieces of music Mozart wrote, many of them complex symphonies he created in one sitting. He said that before he wrote a single note, he heard the entire piece in his head, sometimes with as many as twelve different instruments. He wrote feverishly, perfectly, with no revising. Many people then and now consider him to be the greatest composer the world has ever known.

Mozart's full name was Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart.
Gottlieb, in German, means "God-loved". After dropping the first two
names and changing Gottlieb to its Latin synonym (ama=love; deus=God),
he was known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Unlike today, when geniuses like Sachin Tendulkar earn big money from competitions and endorsements, in Mozart's day talented people could only find success if they won the favour of royalty. Instead of being seen as artists, they were seen merely as craftsmen, like a good carpenter or tailor.

Mozart's dad, knowing that he had a child prodigy on his hands, saw young Wolfgang as the family's ticket to fame and fortune. So when Wolfgang was six, his father took him and his sister Nannerl, who was also talented, on a three-year tour of Europe. Dressed up as a miniature adult complete with a powdered white wig, Wolfgang performed musical tricks like instantly playing any new piece given to him or playing the harpsichord with the keys hidden under a cloth.

Wolfgang and Nannerl played for the kings and queens of Austria, France and England and everyone loved them. Love, however, did not pay the bills and Wolfgang's father was constantly frustrated by the stinginess of the royal families. They often would reward his children with nothing more than a golden snuffbox or some other small trinket.

When the family returned to Salzburg, the archbishop there accused Mozart's father of writing all the music his young son had supposedly composed. He locked Wolfgang in a palace room for seven days and ordered him to write some music for the church. It took Wolfgang less than seven days to produce a musical score of 208 sheets of paper. The archbishop was convinced. When he was just fourteen, Mozart wrote and directed his first opera.