QUOTE : Several months after the death of his father, in December of 1787, Mozart’s primary ambition came to fruition: he obtained an appointment from Emperor Joseph II, as the emperor’s chamber composer. The position itself was not as lofty as Mozart would have hoped: it was part-time, with a salary of just over 800 florins a year. Mozart’s sole duty as chamber composer was to craft dances for the annual balls at Hofburg Palace. It is a matter of court record that the emperor offered this appointment to Mozart to discourage the musician from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects in the future, which suggests the emperor perhaps had other plans for Mozart to come, though they never materialized.