How did Mozart contribute to the Enlightenment time period?
Wolfgang Mozart was an extremely important figure during the Enlightenment time period. The Enlightenment time period was an era of where European politics, philosophy, science, and culture all revolutionized. Mozart was a key part of the cultural aspect of this era in the 18th century. He, as a musician and composer, moved away from the typical religious themes, but wrote concertos and symphonies based off of his experiences and stories. He also paved ways for other composers of this era such as Beethoven, who created his own compositions with snip-its of Mozart's work. "Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds is another obvious tribute to Mozart, similar to Mozart's own quintet for the same ensemble."(from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart#Influence) Mozart also challenged the Church by creating compositions that were not based off the Christian religion. He created a new path and style of music that did not follow the idea of "divine inspiration" or tradition, but went towards the concepts of knowledge of music and the new found ideas of this time period. Before this time period, music was purely created for religious worship or for dancing those in higher classes. Mozart was bored and was not reaching his full potential with those constraints, therefore he wrote these compositions with dark sounds and that were filled with ideas of this time period. Songs before the Enlightenment time period tended to have words to evoke a pleasant emotion or to express a religious belief, but Mozart evoked emotions of all kinds using purely instruments and their melodic sounds. Many do believe that he also paved the way for music for the "Romantic Era", which was a time period of artistic revolution at the end of the 18th century. Even though, Modern-day music is no where close to the Enlightenment time period music, Mozart allowed for artists to create music for all to hear outside of the box. Without Mozart, we might not have any music besides the Christian genre that would be approved by the Church.