What happened to all Mozart’s children?

3 January 2026, 12:00

The sad fates of Mozart and his wife Constanze’s children gives a new perspective to the composer’s music.

It’s so boring when your dad’s – like – the most gifted musician in the history of classical music. In fact, one of Mozart’s surviving children found it all so tiresome he went on to become an accountant.

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married Constanze Weber in Vienna in 1782, it was against the young composer’s father’s wishes because he considered her a poor match and their early courtship was surrounded by mild controversy involving a stranger measuring her calves at a party (we’ve all been there).

But their life together was seemingly a happy one, with their letters showing a deep love and companionship.

Wolfgang and Constanze went on to have six children together between 1783 and 1791. However, only two of the children survived beyond early childhood and the incredible Mozart line died with the final child.

Read more: Q: How many children did J.S. Bach have? A: Loads. Here’s what we know.

What happened to Mozart and Constanze’s children?

The couple’s first child, Raimund Leopold Mozart, was born in 1783 while Wolfgang was working on the D‑minor string quartet, K421, the second of the Haydn Quartets.

According to Constanze’s accounts some of the passages in the music reflect the cries from her labour pains. At the time Mozart wrote to his father that the baby was “a fine, sturdy boy, round as a butterball.”

The baby was named after the family’s wealthy patron and landlord, Raimund Wetzlar, who also became his godfather.

The young Raimund died when he was two months old, while his parents were visiting Salzburg. Wolfgang later wrote to his father, “We are both very sad about our poor, bonny, fat, darling little boy.”

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A year later Constanze gave birth to Karl Thomas Mozart. He was the first of their children to survive childhood and was only seven when his father died.

Karl was a gifted pianist and as an adult he studied music in Prague but later abandoned performing altogether to become an accountant in Milan as well as an official Italian translator to the Austrian Court Chamber.

Karl lived comfortably from the royalties earned from his father’s music on a small estate near Lake Como and never married. Karl eventually died in 1858 at the age of 74 and bequeathed his house to the town.

Johann Thomas Leopold was born in 1786 but died after a few weeks from a respiratory illness.

His sister Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friedericke Maria Anna, named after Mozart’s sister Maria Anna (Nannerl), was born in 1787 but died of intestinal complications as her father completed his final three symphonies.

Anna Maria, named after Wolfgang’s mother, was born in November 1789 but survived for only an hour. Historical sources suggest she was baptised before her death and buried the next day.

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The couple’s final child, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (who also went by the nickname Wolfgang), was born in 1791, just months before his father’s death.

Musically gifted, he studied under Salieri and Johann Nepomuk Hummel – one of Wolfgang’s former students – and made his Vienna debut in 1805.

Often struggling with the pressure of living up to his father’s name, he built a career as a teacher and composer but also did a lot of good work preserving Wolfgang’s legacy.

In 1841 Franz Xaver was appointed honorary music director of the Cathedral Music Association and Mozarteum in Salzburg and died of stomach cancer a few years later at the age of 53. His gravestone reads, somewhat poignantly, “May the name of his father be his epitaph, as his veneration for him was the essence of his life.”

It’s generally understood that neither of Mozart’s surviving children had any descendants.