WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: THE PRODIGY MOZART BEGAN TO COMPOSE AT THE AGE OF 5. WHAT DID HE USE TO WRITE DOWN HIS MUSIC MORE THAN 200 YEARS AGO? THE SCREEN TO THE RIGHT OF THE ENTRANCE WILL SHOW YOU.

That's right:

His pen was a feather, a goose feather to be precise.

The first composition that we have from Mozart, the child-wonder, is hanging on the wall to the right of the entrance. Mozart was eight years old when he came up with this piece of music – KV 1 – for the piano. It’s a dance – a so-called minuet.

This is not the original sheet of music, since we can’t expose it to bright light. This is an expensive copy – a so-called facsimile. This sheet looks exactly like the original composition, so take a good look. What color is the ink and what does the paper look like? It’s really quite different to what we know today, right? The original sheet of music is in an archive – a secure storage place – in Salzburg, by the way.

The Namadeus Game

Mozart assigned a musical note to every letter of the alphabet, in other words, he set the alphabet to music. He did he come up with this idea? When he was giving piano lessons to a girl named Franziska, he had the idea of putting Franziska’s name to music. Now it’s your turn: Type your name into the computer and listen to your own personal composition!

Facing Mozart

Bring Mozart to life! Just sit on the chair or sit on your knees and you can control Mozart’s facial expressions with your own!

Pocket violin or dance master violin

Can you see the mini-violin in the display case? Its proper name is pocket violin and it was used in the past to teach people to dance. After all, 200 years ago you couldn’t just plug in the CD player – it was far from being invented. So the dance teacher – the so-called dance master – explained the dance steps and accompanied the dancers himself on this special pocket violin. That makes learning to dance fun, right?

“The Magic Flute”

Here you can see puppets from the Schönbrunn puppet theater. “The Magic Flute” is the most-played opera by Mozart all over the world. King Sarastro welcomes you to his temple and the Queen of the Night sings her highest notes in the starry sky. Beside you are two headsets – use them to listen to the music of “The Magic Flute”.

 

It’s Prince Tamino in this piece that has the flute itself.

You won’t find Tamino here in this room but you’ll see a display case in the left back corner with wind instruments in it. Can you find the baroque flute? It looks very similar to the flute in Mozart’s piece.