Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Kicked out of his patron's service — literally — he bet on Vienna and invented the freelance composer.
The episode
In 1781 the 25-year-old Mozart was a salaried musician of Salzburg's Archbishop Colloredo — seated at table below the valets, forbidden to perform for Vienna's nobility on his own account. He demanded his release; the Archbishop refused, abused him, and stalled. Mozart kept submitting his resignation. On June 8, when he appeared in the antechamber with yet another petition, the Archbishop's steward Count Arco loaded him with insults and kicked him out of the room — literally, with his foot. Mozart, boiling, wrote his father that he would return the insult in kind, refused every plea to go back to Salzburg, and stayed in Vienna with no post and no patron: Europe's first great freelance composer. The decade that followed produced Figaro, Don Giovanni and the Requiem.
The move — copy this today
Your turn
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