The man who ran Salzburg's music before the Mozarts arrived. Johann Ernst Eberlin was Court Kapellmeister from 1749 until his death in 1762, making him Leopold Mozart's direct superior and one of the most prolific sacred composers of the 18th century. Almost entirely forgotten today, he was nonetheless the figure who set the musical foundations the Mozarts inherited.
The Story
Johann Ernst Eberlin came to Salzburg from Bavaria in 1727 and spent the rest of his life building the city's musical infrastructure. He took the court organist post under Archbishop Franz Anton Graf von Harrach, climbed steadily through the hierarchy, and in 1749 became Court Kapellmeister for both court and cathedral, the most senior musical appointment in the Prince-Archbishop's service. For the last 13 years of his life he was the dominant musical authority in Salzburg.
Leopold Mozart served under him for all of those years. Eberlin was Leopold's direct professional superior, the man whose approval mattered, whose example shaped what Salzburg's music was expected to be. The two collaborated on a 12-piece carillon series for the Hohensalzburg Fortress organ, a small but tangible record of their working relationship. Leopold also copied Eberlin's works for his son Wolfgang to study. This was standard pedagogical practice: you learned by copying, and what Wolfgang copied was Eberlin.
Eberlin's catalogue is extraordinary in its scale: over 6,000 works across Masses, motets, oratorios, school dramas, and instrumental pieces. He was also a teacher. Anton Cajetan Adlgasser, who would serve as cathedral organist until his death in 1777, trained under Eberlin at the court music school. Adlgasser later married Eberlin's daughter. The musical lineage ran directly: Eberlin trained Adlgasser, and the institutional framework Eberlin built was the framework Leopold and Wolfgang worked within.
Eberlin died in Salzburg in June 1762, when Wolfgang was six. His death cleared the top of Salzburg's musical hierarchy and contributed to the sequence of events that eventually drove Wolfgang to seek his future elsewhere. The Mozarts inherited his infrastructure. Without Eberlin, the Salzburg musical world the Mozarts inhabited would have been shaped differently.
