Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was born in Augsburg on 14 November 1719, the son of a bookbinder, sang as a choirboy and was educated at the Jesuit school of St. Salvator, where he became a capable violinist and organist. His parents intended him for the priesthood; instead he enrolled at the Benedictine University in Salzburg in November 1737 to read philosophy and law, took his bachelor’s degree in 1738 and was expelled in September 1739 for poor attendance. In 1740 he entered service as violinist and valet to a cathedral canon and published his first work, six trio sonatas whose copper plates he engraved himself; he joined the musical establishment of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg in 1743, married Anna Maria Pertl in 1747, and rose to deputy Kapellmeister in 1763 and no further. He died in Salzburg on 28 May 1787.

His Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, written in 1755 and published in 1756, went through two further German editions and was translated into Dutch in 1766 and French in 1770; it made his name across Europe and is still consulted as a primary source for eighteenth-century performance practice. From about 1759 he taught his two children, Nannerl and Wolfgang, and from 1762 organised the family concert tours through Munich, Vienna, Pressburg, Paris, The Hague and London that occupied much of the next decade. The teaching and travelling consumed his own career — he had effectively stopped composing by 1771, and was repeatedly passed over for the Salzburg Kapellmeister post — and scholars still disagree about whether he was a distinguished composer, while agreeing that he was a formidable pedagogue.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Mozart
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q156280