Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters

MOZART
A LIFE IN LETTERS

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
, who was born at Salzburg, Austria, on 27 January 1756, is ranked among the most famous, and the most popular, of all composers. A child prodigy, he toured western Europe between 1763 and 1771, with later trips to Vienna, Munich, Mannheim and Paris. After his break with the Archbishop of Salzburg in 1781, Mozart took up permanent residence in Vienna, where he became a successful freelance composer and performer. The author of masses, symphonies, serenades, concertos, operas, string quartets and other works in virtually every genre of the time, he died prematurely at the age of thirty-five, on 5 December 1791.

CLIFF EISEN
teaches at King’s College London. He has published widely on late eighteenth-century music and on Mozart in particular, including the Mozart article for the revised
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
(2001). In addition, he has edited two volumes
of Mozart Studies
(1991 and 1997) as well as the
Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia
(2005 with Simon P. Keefe). His current research projects include a monograph on Mozart and biography, an annotated translation of Hermann Abert’s classic
W. A. Mozart
(1919–23) and a study of the musicals of Frank Loesser.

STEWART SPENCER
was born in Yorkshire and studied Modern Languages at Oxford. He taught Medieval German Literature at the University of London and has subsequently worked as a translator. He is the editor, with Barry Millington, of
Selected Letters of Richard Wagner
(1987),
Wagner in Performance
(1992) and
Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion
(1993). He has translated books on Wagner, Liszt, Mozart and Bach and has published numerous articles on Wagner.

MOZART

Edited by
CLIFF EISEN
Translated by
STEWART SPENCER

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First published in Penguin Classics 2006
1

Chronology, introduction and editorial material copyright © Cliff Eisen, 2006
Translation copyright © Stewart Spencer, 2006
All rights reserved

The moral right of the editor and translator has been asserted

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ISBN: 978-0-14-190288-3

Chronology

Introduction

Further Reading

List of Important People

Map

A Life in Letters

List of Letters

Index of Principal Correspondents

Index of Mozart’s Works by Genre

Index of Mozart’s Works by Köchel Number

General Index

1756
27 January
Mozart is born in Salzburg.

1761
Learns to play short keyboard pieces and composes his first work, the andante Kia.

1762
His father Leopold Mozart takes him and his elder sister, Nannerl, to perform for Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria in Munich, and for Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna.

1763—6
The whole family tours modern-day Germany, France, England, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland, and the children perform for King Louis XV of France and King George III of Britain, among others. Composes several sonatas for keyboard and violin, symphonies andarias.

1767—8
Travels to Vienna where he composes symphonies, an
opera buffa, La finta semplice,
and a singspiel,
Bastien und Bastienne.

1769
Appointedunpaidthirdconcertmaster in the Salzburg court music establishment.

1769—73
Travels three times to Italy with Leopold; composes the operas
Mitridate, re di Ponto
(1770) and
Lucio Silla
(1772) and two serenatas,
Ascanio in Alba
(1771) and
Il sogno di Scipione
(1772), several symphonies and his first string quartets (K80 and K155– 160). Visits Vienna between mid-July and mid-September 1773; composes six string quartets (K168–173).

1774
Travels to Munich in December for the premiere of his opera,
La finta giardiniera.

1775—6
Remains in Salzburg; composes several serenades, four violin
concertos, three piano concertos, divertimentos for strings and horns and the serenata,
Il re pastore.

1777
Composes the piano concerto K271; resigns from Salzburg court service and travels with his mother, Maria Anna, to Munich, Augsburg and Mannheim, where he falls in love with the singer Aloysia Weber.

1778—9
Visits Paris where he composes several well-received works but fails to make significant professional headway; his mother dies on 3 July 1778. Returns unwillingly to Salzburg where he has been reappointed to court service as court and cathedral organist with increased pay. Is rejected by Aloysia. Composes the ‘Paris’ symphony K297, the concerto for flute and harp K299, the keyboard and violin sonatas K301—306 and the keyboard sonata K310.

1779—80
In Salzburg; composes symphonies, serenades, masses and other church works. Receives commission to write an
opera seria
for the Munich court theatre.

1781
Idomeneo
premieredin Munich on 29 January; called to Vienna, where he has a falling out with Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo and is finally dismissed from court service on 8 June. Establishes himself as a freelance performer and composer; commissioned to write a German opera,
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
and publishes six keyboard and violin sonatas (K296, K376—380).

1782
Die Entführung
performed on 16 July; marries Constanze Weber, Aloysia’s sister, on 4 August. Compositions include three piano concertos (K413—415), the ‘Haffner’ symphony K385 and a string quartet (K387).

1783
First child, Raimund Leopold, born but dies two months later; visits Salzburg with Constanze (July—October). Composes ‘Linz’ symphony K425, keyboardsonatas K330—332, two string quartets (K421, 428).

1784
Gives numerous subscription and private concerts; joins Masonic lodge. Second child, Carl Thomas, is born. Composes six piano concertos (K449—459), quintet for piano and winds K452, keyboard sonatas K333 andK457, and st ring quartet K458 (‘Hunt’).

1785
Visit of Leopold Mozart to Vienna (February—April); Mozart
gives successful concert series and performs at the Burgtheater. Compositions include the serenade for winds K361, the string quartets K464 and 465, three piano concertos (K466, 467 and 482), several songs, a piano quartet (K478) and a violin sonata (K481).

1786
Opera
Le nozze di Figaro
premieredat the Burgtheater on 1 May. Third child, Johann Thomas Leopold, is born and dies. Other compositions include three piano concertos (K488, 491 and 503); the ‘Prague’ symphony K504, the ‘Skittles’ trio K498, the ‘Hoffmeister’ quartet K499 and the concert aria
Ch’io mi scordi di te
K505.

1787
Travels twice to Prague for performances of
Le nozze di Figaro
(January) and the premiere of his opera
Don Giovanni
(October). Leopold Mozart dies on 28 May. Other works include the string quintets K515 and 516,
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
K525, the violin sonata K526 and several songs. Fourth child, Theresia Constanzia Adelheid, is born; she survives six months.

1788
Don Giovanni
premieredin Vienna (7 May); faced with financial problems, Mozart begins to borrow money from his Masonic brother, Michael Puchberg. Composes three symphonies (K543, 550 and 551 ‘Jupiter’), three piano trios (K542, 548 and 564) and the divertimento for string trio K563.

1789
Travels to Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam and Berlin with artistic but not financial success. Composes two keyboardsonatas (K570, 576), a string quartet (K575) and the clarinet quintet K581. Fifth child, Anna Maria, is born and dies.

1790
Opera
Così fan tutte
premieredon 26 January in Vienna; in October, Mozart attends the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt. Other compositions include the string quartets K589 and 590, and the string quintet K593.

1791
Sixth child, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, is born. Mozart travels to Prague for the premiere of his
opera seria, La clemenza di Tito,
commissioned to celebrate the coronation of Leopold I as king of Hungary; German opera
Die Zauberflöte
premieres in Vienna on
30
September. During the summer begins work on a Requiem, which is left incomplete on his death. Other works
include the motet
Ave verum corpus
(K618) and the clarinet concerto K622. Falls ill in November and dies suddenly, probably from rheumatic inflammatory fever, on 5 December at the age of thirty-five.

Two hundred and fifty years on, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – child prodigy, performer par excellence, universally admired composer, tragic Romantic artist and cultural icon – continues to fascinate musicians and music lovers alike. Along with Wagner, Mozart is probably the most written about composer in history. And more than any other composer, he has been featured in documentaries, movies, novels, television commercials and pop culture generally. Everyone seems to know something about Mozart, even if it is only the story of his final illness and early death at the age of thirty-five.

As a cultural icon, however, Mozart is also subject to the whims and fancies of any particular time and any particular place – the story that is told of his life is as much a reflection of its teller as of Mozart himself. Nevertheless, all biographies of Mozart, whatever their points of view or interpretative strategies, are based on the same documentary sources: the composer’s autographs, contemporary accounts of his life and works, and a rich family correspondence, including letters not only between Wolfgang and his father Leopold, but also between Leopold and his friends in Salzburg. In fact, the Mozart family correspondence, some twelve hundred letters written between 1756 and 1791, is more extensive than that of any earlier composer, and of many later ones as well. As such, it offers a unique insight into the family dynamics, Mozart’s relationship with his father and friends and lovers, the moving death of his mother in Paris in 1778, his compositional method(particularly with regard to the operas
Idomeneo
and
Die Entführung aus dem Serail)
and the events of his everyday life. To be sure, the letters can be read in any number of ways. Yet they
remain the primary source for setting the biographical record straight and they allow Mozart and his father to speak in their own voices – or rather in a variety of voices, depending on the person they were addressing and the reason for writing.

In a single volume of this kind, it is not possible to include all of the family’s letters. And they can never tell the complete life. Not only do they refer to people and events now lost from the historical record, but there are long stretches where no correspondence survives, chiefly when the family was all together in Salzburg. A further problem of survival concerns Leopold Mozart’s letters to his son after Wolfgang had moved to Vienna in 1781: although Leopold wrote regularly, someone – presumably Mozart’s wife Constanze – later destroyed his letters, possibly because of their inflammatory content (Leopold was happy neither with Mozart’s move to the Austrian capital nor with his marriage). And after Leopold’s death in the spring of 1787, Mozart lost his primary correspondent.

By including only extracts from Leopold’s letters, previous editions of the correspondence render it as overly Mozart-centric and give a false account of the relationship between father and son, to say nothing of the course of Mozart’s life; Leopold’s letters are here given in full (there are four minor excisions, indicated in the notes). They represent a rich and unexpected source of information concerning eighteenth-century men and manners, music and musicians. During the family’s travels in Europe, Leopold wrote frequently, and at length, to his close friend and Salzburg landlord, Johann Lorenz Hagenauer. He boasts of his son’s musical successes and comments on everything from his meetings with the great to lightning conductors and the latest Paris fashions. As someone who knew all too well the value of patronage, Leopold would unquestionably have schooled Wolfgang in the political and cultural realities of the day – a world in which German princes held absolute power within the confines of their own sovereign states, but which was beginning to be shaken by the dangerous ideas of the Enlightenment, spreading out from Paris, and in which the old dominance of Habsburg Austria within the German-speaking world was being challenged by the rising military power of Prussia.

Above all, however, the Mozart family correspondence straddles the line between history and the late eighteenth-century individual. And because it is incomplete, it straddles the line between fact and creative narrative – it is the reader who fills in the gaps and draws conclusions about Mozart’s motivations and relationships. That the story of his life unfolds in the context of a correspondence ties it conveniently close to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literary traditions, particularly the epistolary novel (see below) – as when, for example, the twenty-one-year-old Mozart, fleeing Salzburg to make his own way in the world, and falling in love with a charming young singer, is pursued across Europe by his father’s letters, admonishing, anxious and full of (mostly) unheeded advice.

Mozart’s life

Salzburg, where Mozart was born on 27 January 1756, was an independent church-state, ruled by a prince-archbishop. It has been portrayed as something of a cultural and musical backwater, but this was not so – situated between Bavaria, Austria and Italy, the city headstrong political and intellectual ties both to Vienna and to Italy, and its mercantile connections extended throughout Germany. Musically it was a distinguished centre of both performance andcomposition.

Mozart’s father, Leopold(b. 1719), originally from Augsburg, was a distinguished musician himself: a violinist, one of the directors of the Salzburg court music, and author of the most influential eighteenth-century violin tutor, the
Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule,
published at Augsburg in 1756. Leopold and his wife, Maria Anna, née Pertl (b. 1720), had five children that died in infancy and two that survived: Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia (b. 1751), known as ‘Nannerl’, and Wolfgang Amadeus.
¹
Mozart’s musical talents were apparent from an early age: trained by his father, he was able to play short, relatively easy keyboard works by the age of four and he composed his first allegros, andantes and minuets by the age of six. His sister, too, was a child prodigy, at least as far as performance was concerned, and in 1762 Leopold – genuinely convinced that his children were
miracles and that it was his duty to exhibit them to the world – decided to take them on tour, first to Munich and then to Vienna.

Nannerl and Wolfgang’s early successes were unprecedented and in 1763 Leopold conceiveda more ambitious plan. He took the entire family on an extended musical tour through Germany, France, England, the Low Countries and Switzerland, showing off the children before the courts of Europe. By the time they returned to Salzburg three and a half years later, Mozart’s fame as a musical prodigy had spread. He not only performed, he also composed: his first works, including symphonies, arias and accompanied sonatas, were all written at this time. In 1767 and 1768 the Mozarts visited Vienna, where the children played at court for the Empress Maria Theresa, and Wolfgang was commissioned to write an opera,
La finta semplice
(‘The Pretend Simpleton’). And at the very end of 1769, Mozart and his father set out on the first of three trips they made to Italy over the next three years, during which he composed two operas –
Mitridate, re di Ponto
and
Lucio Silla
– and two serenatas –
Ascanio in Alba
and
Il sogno di Scipione.
He became a member of prestigious musical academies at Verona and Bologna, wrote down the score of Allegri’s
Miserere
from memory after hearing it in the Sistine Chapel and was made a Knight of the Golden Spur by Pope Clement XIV.

From 1773 to 1777 Mozart was largely based in Salzburg. He visited Vienna in 1773, where he composed the string quartets K168–173, and Munich in 1774, where he completed the
opera buffa, La finta giardiniera
(‘The Pretend Gardener-girl’), but for the most part he chafed under the demands of his new employer, Hieronymus Colloredo, who in 1772 had succeeded the more congenial Siegmundvon Schrattenbach as prince-archbishop of Salzburg. Although Mozart composed prolifically at the time, including masses, smaller church works, symphonies, concertos, dances and chamber music, both he and his father actively sought opportunities elsewhere. His longing for independence came to a head in 1777, and he asked for, and was given, release from court service. In September, Wolfgang and his mother set out for Munich, Mannheim and Paris in search of employment; Leopold, thinking first and foremost of the family’s security, remained in Salzburg. The trip was a disaster: Mozart was unable to
secure a permanent position; he fell in love with a young singer in Mannheim, Aloysia Weber; and his mother died in Paris in July 1778. Leopold, in the meantime, had arranged for Mozart’s return to Salzburg, with increased pay anymore responsibilities at court. Rejected by Aloysia en route, Wolfgang arrived back there, unwillingly, in early 1779.

In 1780 Mozart was commissioned to write
Idomeneo
for the court theatre at Munich; the opera was first performed there, under his direction, in January 1781. Archbishop Colloredo – who was making a visit to Vienna – summoned Mozart to join his musical retinue there but he, no doubt encouraged by the success of his opera and his own high opinion of himself, argued furiously with his employer and was dismissed from court service. Leopold was horrified and tried to persuade Mozart to make amends with the archbishop but Wolfgang stood firm, justifying himself to his father both on grounds of his honour and the opportunities that Vienna offered him.

As it happened, Wolfgang was right. Joseph II, sole ruler of Austria since the death of his mother Maria Theresa in 1780, instituted numerous ‘enlightened’ reforms that directly or indirectly favoured men of talent; these included not only a loosening of censorship and freedom of the press, but also an attempt to foster German culture, both theatrical and operatic. It was thanks to Joseph’s German National Theatre (founded in 1776) that Mozart was commissioned to write his first ‘international’ success, the German opera
Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serai!
(‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’), a work described in at least one early obituary of him as ‘the pedestal upon which his fame was erected.’
²
And Mozart took advantage of that success, as well as his position as Vienna’s foremost keyboard player, to promote himself in a series of subscription concerts that were wildly successful: in a letter to his father of 20 March 1784, he named more than 170 subscribers to his concerts. At the same time he was in demand for performances at private salons, he wrote works for the local Tonkünstler-Sozietat (a benevolent society aiding musicians’ widows and orphans), he had several piano students from among the nobility and well-to-do middle class, and he joined the Freemasons, which in Vienna was an a-political and a-religious
society of intellectuals. By 1786, Mozart was recognized as both the pre-eminent performer in Vienna and, along with Joseph Haydn, the pre-eminent composer. His chief works included fifteen piano concertos (between K413 and K503), the six string quartets dedicated to Haydn (K387, 421, 428, 458, 464 and 465), the piano and wind quintet K452, and several arias and piano sonatas, among other works.

Mozart had another reason for wanting to stay in Vienna, one he was less forthcoming about with his father. In 1780, Aloysia Weber had moved to Vienna with her family; after a stint as a singer in Munich, she had been appointed to the Habsburg court. Aloysia, now married to the actor Joseph Lange, was beyond reach for Mozart but that hardly mattered (or it mattered only a little): he had, in the meantime, fallen in love with Aloysia’s younger sister, Constanze. Leopold was against the match but Mozart went ahead none the less, marrying on 4 August 1782. And in this choice, too, he seems to have been right. Although, like all marriages, theirs habits ups and downs, there is every reason to believe it was a happy one. Wolfgang and Constanze had six children, only two of whom survived to adulthood: Carl Thomas (1784–1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791–1844).

For reasons that are not entirely clear, Mozart gave fewer public concerts in Vienna after 1786. Possibly this was a result of his increasing occupation with opera:
Le nozze di Figaro
(‘The Marriage of Figaro’) was premieredin 1786 and successfully performed at Prague in early 1787; its success there lento the commission for
Don Giovanni,
first given in Prague in October 1787 and revised for Vienna in 1788.
Così fan tutte
(‘Women are all the same’) was composed in 1789 and premiered in Vienna in January 1790, but its run was interrupted by the death of Emperor Joseph II on 20 February – or possibly it was due to a general decline in Viennese cultural life at the time, usually blamed on the Austrian-Turkish war of 1788–90; with attention and resources diverted elsewhere, both the court and the nobility were less inclined to support public music-making. Whatever the reason, Mozart rarely appeared in concert, he composed fewer significant works in 1788 and 1789 (notable exceptions are the three last symphonies, K543, the G minor K550 and the ‘Jupiter’ K551), and he ran into financial difficulties; between 1788 and 1790
Mozart wrote several begging letters to his Masonic brother and friend, Michael Puchberg. Perhaps in an attempt to alleviate his financial problems, or perhaps just to get away from Vienna for a while, he undertook a concert tour to Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam and Berlin in the spring of 1789. But although it was artistically a success, financially it was a failure. Mozart took another journey in the late summer of 1790 to attend the coronation in Frankfurt of Leopold II, Joseph’s successor, as Holy Roman Emperor. This, too, brought no financial rewards.

The year 1791 – and a return to political stability in Vienna – saw a remarkable upswing in Mozart’s fortunes. In March he performed at a concert by the clarinettist Josef Bähr, he had commissions from patrons in Hungary and in Amsterdam, Viennese publishers produced at least half a dozen editions of his works and he was commissioned (albeit as second choice) to compose the Prague coronation opera
La clemenza di Tito
(‘The Clemency of Titus’). And even before he had begun this, he had agreed to compose
Die Zauberftote
(‘The Magic Flute’) for his long-time friend, the impresario Emanuel Schikaneder.
La clemenza di Tito
was first given at Prague on 6 September. When
Die Zauberftöte
premieredin Vienna on 30 September it was universally praised, if not for its text then for its music, and quickly established itself as the most popular of all German operas.