Music lovers across the globe are getting ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart, one of the best-loved composers the world has ever known.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, with Europe's royal dynasties feuding on the eve of the Seven Years' War, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on January 27, 1756.

By the age of three he was playing the keyboard, at five he wrote his first composition and when he died at 35, he left behind a prodigious body of some 630 works including 41 symphonies and 27 piano concertos.

Today, despite more than two centuries of human scientific, intellectual and cultural achievements, Mozart's work has transcended the vagaries of changing taste and fashion to remain as popular and alluring as ever.

Even those who profess to be a cultural ignoramus can hum a Mozart tune -- such as the nursery rhyme "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (he wrote the music, the words were added later) -- while many a person unknowingly has a Mozart composition as a ringtone on their mobile phone.

Babies today are played Mozart's compositions to stimulate their intellectual development, and when Voyager 1 took off for the edge of the solar system in 1977, it was carrying a recording of Mozart's "Magic Flute" among other examples of music from Earth.