Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Salzburg, 27 January 1756 - Vienna, 5 December 1791) was an Austrian musician who is universally recognized as the creation of compositions of extraordinary artistic value. Mozart is counted among the greatest geniuses in the history of music, endowed with rare and precocious talent. He began composing at the age of 5 and died at the age of thirty-five, leaving pages that profoundly influenced all the main musical genres of his era, including symphonic, sacred, chamber music and works of various kinds, so much to be defined from the Grove Dictionary as "the most universal composer in the history of Western music"