Mozart is sunshine
Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)
Have you ever seen a cheetah or a jaguar running? They’re amazing; they run so fast, so gracefully – and so easily. What would they think if they saw a human being trying to run next to them?
In musical terms, Mozart was a bit like a cheetah or jaguar. Music just wasn’t difficult for him! He learnt to understand music as the learnt to understand speech; for him, it was just another language. Music was part of him, and he needed it like an animal needs food. As a child, Mozart would pounce on any new piece he was given. From the age of four, he started to play little pieces on the piano or harpsichord, and could learn them perfectly in half-an-hour. He started to compose at the age of five, and shortly after that, he became brilliant organist, an excellent violinist and an able singer. At the age of twelve, he composed his first opera, and was by then already a fine conductor. It must have looked funny when this little boy sternly conducted an orchestra of professionals three or four times his age. But he brought if off, because everybody realised that he was a total miracle.
Steven Isserlis
The “miracle whom God let be born in Salzburg” made his appearance on 27 January 1756, the last of seven children born to Leopold Mozart and his wife Anna Maria, and one of only two to survive infancy. Leopold Mozart – a talented violinist, and the author of a successful treatise on violin technique – played in the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, was one of the most powerful prelates in Austria.
Mozart’s relationship with his father was central to his life. Leopold Mozart has been vilified as the archetypal domineering father, dragging his prodigiously talented son around the courts of Europe at an early age, not only subjecting him to the rigours of prolonged travel, but forcing him to display his skills on the keyboard to any bored aristocrat who would pay money to listen; then hectoring him when he grew older, trying to obstruct him from leaving a miserable existence in Salzburg for the excitements of Vienna, and interfering in his personal life.
Childhood
At the age of four, Wolfgang began to study keyboard and composition with his father. Wolfgang’s elder sister Maria Anna (Nannerl) was also a talented pianist, though once she reached adulthood, the conventions of the time obliged her to confine her talents to the domestic sphere. Leopold saw it as his duty to exhibit his exceptional children to the world. When they were six and 11 respectively, he took them to perform before the Elector of Bavaria at Munich, and the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna.
In 1763 the whole family undertook a trip to Paris and London, where Wolfgang played to both French and English monarchs. By this time he was already composing: four early keyboard sonatas were published in Paris, and he wrote his first symphonies in London.
The family arrived back in Salzburg in November 1766. A further trip to Vienna failed to result in a hoped-for opera commission, but on returning home Mozart wrote one anyway, and La finta semplice (The Pretend Simpleton) was performed at the Archbishop’s palace in May 1769. Its performance was frustrated by intrigue on the part of the musicians, including the director of the theatres and the French troupe. Leopold realised that he would have to abandon its production. Dr Mesmer, whose healing techniques gave his name to the word “mersmerise”, commissioned a comic opera. Bastien and Bastienne, which was performed at his house.
Years of travel
In December 1769 Leopold took Wolfgang to Italy for the first time. After visits to Milan, Florence, Rome and Naples, Mozart received his first opera commission. Mitridate, re di ponto was performed at Christmas 1770 at the Milanese court; but although both it and a further opera, Lucio Silla, were well received, Mozart’s request for a job was turned down.
Back in Salzburg, Mozart settled down reluctantly as Konzertmeister to the court orchestra of a new (and less tolerant) Archbishop, and continued to compose. In January1775 he and his father travelled together for the last time, to Munich, for the performance of Mozart’s comic opera, La finta giardiniera (The Pretend Gardener). Two years later he asked for another period of leave, for an extended tip to Paris. The Archbishop promptly dismissed him, and Leopold, realising that his own position is now in jeopardy, decided not to go. Mozart set out his mother as chaperone.
The trip was a disaster. After a prolonged stay in Mannheim, where Wolfgang fell madly in love with a young singer called Aloysia Weber, he was peremptorily ordered by Leopold on to Paris. There he found the sophisticated French capital totally uninterested in an unknown provincial composer, now too old to be interesting as a prodigy. In Paris, there was no financial gain, only a severe loss, when Mozart’s mother died suddenly. Saddened and disillusioned, Mozart returned home.
Vienna: early years
Luckily, after a long eighteen months back in Salzburg, Mozart was commissioned to compose a major opera, “Idomeneo”, king of Crete to be produced in Munich. He had written several previously, but this was his first really great one. It was a triumph and even Leopold was happy!
To Leopold’s dismay, Mozart announced his intention of remaining in Vienna, where he would teach, compose, and give concerts. It was a bold idea, but ultimately an unsuccessful one. Austria was at war with the Turkish Empire, money was short, and fashions ephemeral, but for a few years, Mozart’s novelty value paid dividends.
Mozart got married, against his father’s wishes. His wife, Constanze Weber, was the younger sister of his first love, Aloysia, who had turned him down. Constanze was an amateur singer and Mozart described her as “kind-natured…not ugly, but not beauty either.
Constanze, who seems to have been a bit of a trollop, has always had a bad press.
However, Mozart seems to have been devoted to Constanze, although it is by no means clear that his devotion was reciprocated. They had six children, only two of which survived: Karl Thomas was born 1784, and Franz Xaver Wolfgang in 1791, just before Mozart died.
Vienna: middle years
For several years Mozart’s new career proved successful. He had a busy teaching and concert programme, for which he turned out a string of piano concertos, raising the genre to new heights of virtuosity, passion and expression.
Mozart’s first love was for opera and in 1785 he began work on a daring new operatic venture, based on Pierre Beaumarchais’s notorious French play La folle journee, ou le marriage de Figaro, which had been produced the previous year. This attack on aristocratic morals, disguised as a comedy, had already been banned in Vienna.
Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) is one of the great monuments of Western art, a masterpiece of characterisation, quicksilver wit and emotional depth. But Vienna failed to appreciate it. By this time, Mozart’s arrogance had made him many enemies, including the powerful court composer, Antonio Salieri. Salieri and his friends were intensely jealous of Mozart’s abundant talent, and did all they could to sabotage the opera’s production. (Salieri may not literally have poised Mozart, as some later claimed, but he certainly stifled his rival’s career).
Vienna: last years
The final years of Mozart’s brief life were a dismal catalogue of financial worry, constant moves to cheaper apartments, and failing health, which was always weak in any case.
He finally achieved his desire of a court appointment, but only as chamber composer, writing dance music for court balls, for a meagre salary. By June 1788 he was writing begging letters to his fellow Freemasons, asking for loans. Don Giovanni had been performed with even less success than Figaro.
While working on the Magic Flute, he received two more commissions, one for an opera seris, La clemenza di Tito, which was produced in Prague in September 1791 and was to be the last major work of this type, and another for a Requiem Mass. The letter was commissioned anonymously, via an emissary dressed in grey, by a Viennese nobleman whose young wife had died. Mozart’s own health was failing by this time, and as he worked on the Requiem, he became obsessed by the idea that it would be his own, and that he as being poisoned.
There are many anecdotes about Mozart’s death. Other say Salieri poisoned him, some other that he caused the suicide of his mistress’ husband and the most probable that he had advanced kidney disease.
He died on the morning of 5th December of 1791 in his wife’s arms, who was left with two sons aged seven and four months.
Because he left little money, he was given the cheapest possible funeral in an unmarked grave.
Few mourners accompanied. The unfinished Requiem was completed after his death by Franz Sussmayr, one of his pupils.
References
The Greatest composers by Wendy Thomson
The lives and times of the Great Composers by Michael Steen
Great Composers by Steven Isserlis
Wikipedia
Carl Neff history of music
