This day in music history.

December 5, 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, dies in Vienna Austria at the age of 35. The actual cause of Mozart's death is a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever"), a description that does not identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, mercury poisoning, and rheumatic fever. The practice of bleeding medical patients is also cited as a contributing cause.
He was born January 27, 1756. His father, Leopold wanted to exhibit his children's God-given genius, His daughter Maria Anna, was a gifted keyboard player, so in mid-1763 the family set out on a tour that took them to Paris and London, visiting numerous courts en route. Mozart astonished his audiences with his precocious skills; he played to the French and English royal families, had his first music published and wrote his earliest symphonies. It was on this tour that Wolfgang became ill with something diagnosed as "scarlet fever rash"; now thought to be erythema nodosum, a rheumatic nodular eruption now often associated with tuberculosis. Leopold, under the advice of a local physician, administered a cure that included an occasional glass of milk with ground melon seeds and a pinch of poppy seed. Within two weeks Wolfgang was well again, but the episode was a portent of more serious health problems to come.
Mozart was a studiously hard worker, and by his own admission his extensive knowledge and intellect about music developed out of many years of close study of the European musical tradition. It was indicated in a letter to his father that he could write a piece finished in his head on paper while composing another at the same time.
Mozart once said "My great-grandfather used to say that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop."