His mother's death in Paris in July 1778, his rejection by Weber, and the neglect he suffered from the aristocrats whom he courted made the two years from Mozart's arrival in Paris until his return to Salzburg in 1779 one of the most difficult periods in his life.
While at home Mozart composed two masses and a number of sonatas, symphonies, and concertos; these works reveal for the first time a distinctive style and a completely mature understanding of musical media. The success of Mozart's Italian opera seria Idomeneo, rč di Creta (Idomeneo, King of Crete), commissioned and composed in 1781, prompted the archbishop of Salzburg to invite Mozart to his palace at Vienna. A series of court intrigues and his exploitation at the hands of the court soon forced Mozart to leave. In a house in Vienna rented for him by friends, he hoped to sustain himself by teaching. During this period Mozart composed a singspiel (a type of German operetta with some spoken dialogue) called The Abduction from the Seraglio, which was requested by Emperor Joseph II in 1782.
In the same year Mozart married Constanze Weber, Aloysia's younger sister. Unending poverty and illness harassed the family until Mozart's death. The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), with librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte, while successful in Prague, were partial failures in Vienna. From 1787 until the production of Cosě fan tutte (All Women Do So, 1790, again with a libretto by Da Ponte), Mozart received no commissions for operas. For the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in 1791 he wrote the opera seria La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus; libretto by Metastasio). His three great symphonies of 1788—no. 39 in E-flat, no. 40 in G Minor, and no. 41 in C (the Jupiter)—were never performed under his direction. While Mozart was working on the singspiel The Magic Flute (1791), an emissary of a Count Walsegg mysteriously requested a requiem mass. This work, uncompleted at Mozart's death, proved to be his last musical effort. He died, presumably of typhoid fever, in Vienna on December 5, 1791; his burial was attended by few friends. The place of his grave is unmarked. The legend that the Italian composer Antonio Salieri murdered him is unsupported by reputable scholars.
Evaluation
Mozart had an unsuccessful career and died young, but he ranks as one of the great geniuses of Western civilization. His large output (more than 600 works) shows that even as a child he possessed a thorough command of the technical resources of musical composition as well as an original imagination. His instrumental works include symphonies, divertimentos, sonatas, chamber music for a number of instrumental combinations, and concertos; his vocal works consist mainly of church music and operas.