On June 9, 1763, the Mozart family – Papa Leopold, Mama Anna Maria, their son Wolfgang (seven and a half years old) and daughter Nannerl (some five years older than Wolfgang) – left  Salzburg to undertake a tour. Its purpose was to exhibit the children’s, in particular Wolfgang’s, musical talents and would last three and a half years, with the Palace of Versailles its goal. (In the end, they also crossed the Channel to England.) 

The route took them by coach through the capitals and main towns of Bavaria, Swabia, Wurttemberg, the Palatinate, the Rhineland and Flanders. This network of kingdoms, duchies, electorates, municipalities, and dependencies formed part of Germany’s venerable Holy Roman Empire, presided over by Europe’s most illustrious royal family, the Hapsburgs. Most books on Mozart have much celebrated this journey, but too often at the expense of Wolfgang’s earlier tours.

His first professional journey had, in fact, taken place a year before: Early in 1762, Leopold had led the boy to Munich, the capital of Bavaria, to perform at the harpsichord before Elector Maximilian III Joseph, a most serious musical amateur.  A half-year passed before the Mozarts’ next journey. On September 18, they left Salzburg to set out by river for Passau, the episcopate that superbly commanded the confluence of the Inn, Ilz, and Danube rivers.

After Wolfgang played for the bishop, the family embarked on the post-boat that traveled the Danube to Vienna, seat of the Hapsburgs and capital of the Holy Roman Empire.  After stops at Linz, Mautthausen, Ybbs, and Stein, the boat brought the Mozarts to Vienna on October 6. (Mozart did not stop at the great Benedictine Abbey of Melk, which commands the Danube east of Ybbs, but he did visit Melk more than once in later years.)

In Linz, Wolfgang had made his first documented concert appearance in public. News of the highly applauded event traveled quickly. “As soon as it became known that we were in Vienna, the order that we go to court arrived,” Leopold recorded.

Archduke Leopold (the future Emperor Leopold II) could hardly wait to hear Mozart at the keyboard. Wolfgang appeared before the Archduke’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa, at her summer palace of Schonbrunn (her youngest daughter, one day to be Queen Marie Antoinette of France, was present) and gave another concert for members of the royal family at the Hofburg, the Hapsburg’s palace within the city and symbolic seat of their authority. He also played in the palaces of Vienna’s highest mobility and began his acquaintance with the great metropolis in which he would marry (in St. Stephen’s cathedral) and spend his final decade.

The Mozarts returned to Salzburg in December after Wolfgang had given a series of concerts for the Hungarian nobility in Pressburg, today the capital of Slovakia and known as Bratislava. The city had long functioned for the Hapsburgs as a handsome setting for their coronations as the kings of Hungary; indeed, Hungarians looked upon the city as their own and called it by its ancient name of Pozsony.

Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace, situated between the much larger German states of Bavaria and Austria, was a tiny independent country, an ecclesiastical principality ruled by a prince who was also its archbishop. Geographically and historically, its ties to Munich were closer than those to Vienna and, for the first two-thirds of his life; the composer strove to establish himself permanently at the court of Munich. He performed many times in the great hall of Nymphenburg Palace. The highlight of his career in Munich was the premiere of his opera, Idomeneo, on January 29, 1781 in the new opera house that came to be known as the Residenz or Cuvillie’s Theater.

Robert W. Gutman has written critically acclaimed biographies of Richard Wagner and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.