Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era and considered to be a musical prodigy. His output of over 600 compositions includes works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire.

From an early age, Mozart had a gift for imitating the music he heard. His travels provided him with a rare collection of experiences from which to create his unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna, he heard the work of composers active there, as well as the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which were to be hugely influential on his development. Both in London and Italy, the galant style was all the rage: simple, light music, with a mania for cadencing, an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other chords, symmetrical phrases, and clearly articulated structures. This style, out of which the classical style evolved, was a reaction against the complexity of late Baroque music. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are "homotonal" (each movement in the same key, with the slow movement in the parallel minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms commonly being written by composers in Vienna. One of the most recognizable features of Mozart's works is a sequence of harmonies or modes that usually leads to a cadence in the dominant or tonic key. This sequence is essentially borrowed from Baroque music's Phrygian style, especially J. S. Bach. But Mozart shifted the sequence so that the cadence ended on the stronger half, i.e., the first beat of the bar.

As Mozart matured, he began to incorporate some more features of Baroque styles into his music. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201 uses a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who included three such finales in his recently published Opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era to come, is evident in some of the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 is another excellent example of this style.

Over the course of his working life, Mozart switched his focus from instrumental music to operas, and back again. He wrote operas in each of the styles current in Europe: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, or Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is probably the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he developed the use of subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestration, and tone colour to express or highlight psychological or emotional states and dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted. His increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concerti served as a resource in his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.

Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income dropped. This was in general a difficult time for musicians in Vienna, since between 1788 and 1791 Austria was at war (see Austro-Turkish War (1788–1791)), and both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined.

By mid-1788, Mozart and his family moved from central Vienna to cheaper lodgings in the suburb of Alsergrund. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow Mason Michael Puchberg; "a dismal series of begging letters" (New Grove) survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart suffered from depression at this time, and it seems his output rate sank somewhat (see Köchel-Verzeichnis). The major works of the period include the last three symphonies (1788: 39, 40, 41; it is not certain whether these were performed in Mozart's lifetime), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, Cosi fan tutte, premiered 1790.

During this time Mozart made long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes: a visit in spring of 1789 to Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin (see Mozart's Berlin journey), and a 1790 visit to Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities. The trips produced only isolated success and did not solve Mozart's financial problems.

Mozart died at 1 in the morning on December 5. The New Grove describes his funeral thus: "Mozart was buried in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St Marx cemetery outside the city on 7 December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild."

The cause of Mozart's death cannot be determined with certainty. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment. The practice of bleeding medical patients, common at that time, is also cited as a contributing cause. However, the most widely accepted version is that he died of acute rheumatic fever; he had had three or even four known attacks of it since his childhood, and this particular disease has a tendency to recur, leaving increasingly serious consequences each time, such as rampant infection and heart valve damage.

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