At fifteen, Mozart was installed as the concertmaster in the orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg. Things did not go very well; Mozart didn't get along with the Archbishop, and relations deteriorated to the point where, in 1781, he quit this lofty position and headed for Vienna - quite against his father's wishes.

His father's death and his wife's illness left him greatly depressed, and his own health took a turn for the worse. His music from the preceding decade was only sporadically popular, and he eventually fell back on his teaching jobs and on the charity of friends to make ends meet. In 1788 he stopped performing in public, preferring to compose.

Mozart may have died of a number of illnesses. The official diagnosis was miliary fever, but the truth is that the physicians who attended him were never quite sure what Mozart died of. He suffered from rheumatic pain, headaches, toothaches, skin eruptions, and lethargy. A common theory today is that Mozart died of uremia following chronic kidney disease. Another possibility is rheumatic fever. Regardless of the cause, Mozart became bedridden for the last two weeks of his life. He died at shortly after midnight on December 5th, 1791, aged thirty-five years, eleven months, and nine days.