Mozart: The Man Revealed Read online

  It really is no wonder that when father and son finally arrived in Bologna on 20 July, even if they had escaped the pirates, they were utterly exhausted. They checked into the San Marco inn, and it was never going to be a short stay.

  Leopold’s leg was now causing him serious problems. He could not walk properly or stand for any length of time, and was in great pain. For the next two weeks he remained in his room, either in bed or with his leg resting on a chair.

  For Wolfgang, too, life was not entirely straightforward. He was now fourteen and a half years of age. In the previous weeks his voice had broken, and in Naples his father had noted he had put on a spurt of height – although ‘still a little man’ – which had meant his clothes needed altering.

  Puberty can be tiring for a teenager, even when living a calm life in luxurious surroundings. But Wolfgang, in Italy in high summer, on the road constantly, his eating and sleeping patterns disrupted, performing at the keyboard to order, was being pushed beyond natural limits.

  No wonder he wrote to his sister that ‘Italy is a drowsy country. I am always sleepy.’ It is a mark of his genius, though, that despite being exhausted he was able to tell her he had composed four Italian symphonies, five or six arias, and one motet.

  Music was very much on his father’s mind too. Wolfgang’s voice, it seems, had broken into a shaky scale of barely five notes: ‘He has neither a deep voice nor a high one, not even five pure notes; he is very cross about this as he can no longer sing his own compositions, which he would sometimes like to do.’

  Despite Leopold’s inbuilt pessimism, and therefore the probability of some exaggeration, it is still a beguiling image: the young musical genius struggling to sing his own songs, crying out in frustration at being unable to hit the very notes he had himself written.

  Leopold had informed the Milan opera house of their whereabouts, and exactly a week after their arrival in Bologna the libretto and cast list arrived. Wolfgang began work immediately on his new opera, Mitridate, rè di Ponto.

  Is it too fanciful to imagine Wolfgang, while naturally sympathetic towards his father, being perhaps just a little grateful that, laid up on a chair with his injured leg, Leopold was unable to interfere in his son’s creative process quite as much as he was used to doing?

  In fact Wolfgang did little work on the opera for the next few weeks. Circumstances were about to change dramatically for father and son. They received an invitation to stay at the country estate outside Bologna of Field-Marshal Count Pallavicini, a distant relative of the cardinal they had come to know in Rome, where they arrived on 10 August.

  “Puberty can be tiring for a teenager, but Wolfgang was being pushed beyond natural limits.”

  What a contrast to life on the road! They were given palatial rooms and were waited on by footmen and valets. Their beds were made up with ‘sheets of linen finer than many a nobleman’s shirt’. They had toiletry pieces made of silver, and a servant sleeping in the anteroom was on hand to attend to their every need, including dressing Wolfgang’s hair.

  They dined with the Pallavicinis at their sumptuous table in the terrace room. They ate the finest figs, melons and peaches, and delighted at their first encounter with watermelon, which, as Italians say from that day to this, fulfils three functions: you eat it, drink it and wash your face with it.

  Leopold spent his days reclining in an easy chair. Wherever he went in the house, servants followed with a comfortable chair and footstool, and his aristocratic hosts forbade him to rise to his feet when they approached. Mass was held privately in the house so Leopold did not need to make the journey to church.

  When his leg began to improve, Leopold along with Wolfgang took carriage rides through the lovely countryside. Wolfgang took to riding a donkey, to exercise his muscles a little. When he was well enough, Leopold went with Wolfgang to a sacred concert in the church of San Giovanni in Monte.

  There they bumped into the English composer and music historian Charles Burney, who had heard the young Wolfgang in London a few years previously. He was touring Europe to gather material for his history of music, and he wrote that ‘there is no musical excellence I do not expect from his extraordinary quickness and talents’.18

  It was an idyllic existence, something they both needed very much, and they were in no hurry to move on. It had been Leopold’s plan to leave at the end of the month and pay another visit to Florence, a city he especially loved. Wolfgang was excited at this prospect, since it would mean a chance to rekindle his friendship with young Thomas Linley.

  In the event, though, Leopold’s leg was taking a long time to heal, longer than expected. It is impossible for us to judge just how bad it was, but no doubt his kindly hosts encouraged him to stay longer to allow it to heal properly, and he probably would not have taken too much persuading.

  With any fear of outstaying their welcome put to rest, Leopold and Wolfgang remained at the Pallavicinis’ estate until the end of September. They finally returned to Bologna, where they spent more than a month leisurely gathering all their things together. They had by now accumulated an array of trunks and boxes, filled with books and music. So much did they have that Leopold started shipping some of it over the Alps to Salzburg to make their return journey easier.

  There were more musical honours to be had in Bologna, and Leopold lost no time in putting his son forward for membership of the august Accademia Filarmonica, despite membership being open only to those of more than twenty years of age and with conservatory training. Leopold calmly reminded the distinguished examiners that his fourteen-year-old son was a papal knight. They would certainly have already heard of Wolfgang’s extraordinary talents, and agreed to examine him.

  Leopold was locked in the library, while Wolfgang was sequestered in another room on the other side of the hall. He was given a plainsong Gregorian chant, which he was required to set in the ‘strict style’, adding three contrapuntal voices above the bass.

  Candidates usually took three hours over this fiendishly difficult exercise. Leopold reported that Wolfgang took just half an hour, probably not much of an exaggeration since the academy itself said it took him less than an hour.

  After perusing Wolfgang’s efforts, each member of the examining panel raised a white disc. Wolfgang was congratulated, letters patent were prepared, and this fourteen-year-old boy had another honour to his name.

  North-west to Parma, in a direct line to Milan, and Leopold had more reason to complain. What should have been a brief stopover was prolonged by torrential rain, so heavy that the city risked being flooded. Leopold’s leg might by now have largely healed, but the damp air exacerbated his chronic rheumatism.

  Finally arriving in Milan on 18 October, they took up assigned lodgings close to the theatre, consisting of a large room with three windows and a balcony and an equally spacious bedroom, with a huge nine-foot bed and two windows.

  Still Leopold was not happy. There might have been a good number of windows, but there was no fireplace. ‘We may freeze to death, but we will certainly not smell, since there is plenty of air,’ he wrote home to Salzburg.

  Wolfgang got down to work, serious work. Two days after arriving in Milan he wrote to his mother that his fingers hurt terribly from writing so many recitatives. Two weeks later in a letter to his sister, he said he had complained to Papa that he was getting sleepy, and Papa said, ‘Then stop writing.’

  With humour, but with signs of exhaustion showing through, he signs off the short note to his sister:

  I am, as always, Your

  brother wolfgang Mozart

  whose fingers are

  Tiherd Tiherd Tiredh

  tired from writing.*

  Six weeks later rehearsals began, and the opening night, on 26 December 1770, with Wolfgang himself at the keyboard – wearing a new scarlet coat with gold trim and light-blue lining – was a triumph.

  Cries of Viva il maestrino! (‘Long live the little maestro!’) rang out. Wolfgang directed the first three performance
s from the keyboard, then handed over to his deputy, while he and his father watched further performances from different parts of the auditorium.

  Traditionally the first opera of the new season drew small audiences, but not Mitridate. It played to full houses every night, as Wolfgang wrote to his mother, and ran for twenty-two performances. ‘Many are saying that as long as they have lived in Milano they have never seen a first opera so full,’ he wrote.*

  Leopold, ever the pessimist, refused to allow himself unalloyed joy. ‘My son’s opera has been received most favourably,’ he wrote to a colleague he had met in Bologna, ‘in spite of the great opposition of his enemies and detractors, who before hearing a single note had spread the rumour that it was a barbarous German composition.’

  Wolfgang was the toast of Milan. The city of Verona joined in, appointing him Honorary Kapellmeister of the Accademia Filarmonica, and he was feted on a more personal level too. On the night of 3 January Madame d’Asti von Asteburg, a family friend, cooked him liver dumplings and sauerkraut, his favourite dish. Other guests ate capon and pheasant.

  It was soon time to bid farewell to Milan and begin the journey home to Salzburg. First, though, a detour south-west to Turin, a city Leopold was keen to visit at the start of its new opera season.

  It was as though there was no Italian city that Leopold was prepared to miss, if there was the slightest chance of making musical contacts. They remained in Turin for two weeks, then back to Milan to pack everything up and begin the journey home to Salzburg. First stop, Venice, and the chance to hear more performances, show off his son’s skills, and make more contacts.

  It should have been an easy couple of days, but once again appalling weather delayed them – ‘astonishing’ winds – and it took them a full week to reach Venice. They arrived on Monday, 11 February, in the city known since its golden age as La Serenissima, the most exotic city in Europe, suffused with romance and intrigue, where masks were worn to conceal identities, and who knew what else?

  One can imagine the excitement of a boy just turned fifteen, past puberty, boarding a boat to make the short crossing to the city of canals. Who could tell what adventure might lie ahead?

  That was exactly what worried Leopold. Venice was the pleasure seeker’s capital of Italy, if not Europe, a reputation acquired nearly five centuries earlier when masks were first worn at balls and parties to celebrate a famous military victory of the Serene Republic. It had grown steadily since, allowing people of all classes and ranks to mingle freely – and anonymously. Passions were ignited, fantasies played out.

  Courtesans were more numerous in Venice than in any other Italian city. Far from being frowned on, they led fashion, and many were known for their musical accomplishments. Young men from across Europe, when they came to Venice, knew what they could expect.

  “One can imagine the excitement of a boy just turned fifteen, boarding a boat to the city of canals.“

  ‘As for women,’ wrote the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau only a few years before the Mozarts arrived there, ‘it is not in a city like Venice that a man abstains from them.’19 Leopold used more direct language. ‘[Venice is] the most dangerous place in all Italy.’

  His fears were compounded by the fact that he and Wolfgang were arriving in the final days of the annual Carnival, a mighty letting-off of steam before the rigours of Lent. There was another factor too. They were staying in the house of a friend of their Salzburg landlord Hagenauer,* but their main contact was with a business associate of Hagenauer by the name of Johannes Wider.

  Wider, a Salzburg merchant, was particularly popular since he had an attractive wife and six beautiful daughters. This was enough to cause Leop-old serious concern.

  It is easy to raise a wry smile thinking of a father who is a touch worried that his teenage son – a young man, by eighteenth-century standards – might get himself into a spot of trouble, or find himself led astray. What parent has ever been immune from such thoughts?

  But to Leopold this was no laughing matter. Wolfgang had responsibilities. He was already the family’s most effective breadwinner. Momentum was building across Europe, and must not be allowed to flag. If he was to continue to compose then he needed to remain serious, and focused. Any whiff of scandal, however slight, could put paid to his reputation.

  There was, too, the undoubted fact that Leopold was a deeply religious man. This was not a father who was prepared to allow his son any leeway in his social activities. Underlying this, I am convinced, is the realisation – for the first time – on the part of Leopold that Wolfgang might feel the urge to distance himself, however slightly, from his father’s influence; to break away, in however small a way, from his control. That, to Leopold, was unthinkable.

  As it happens, we know frustratingly little about the social side of the stay in Venice. The little we do know, though, is utterly fascinating. We have only a short letter from Wolfgang to his sister as evidence, but he most certainly had fun with the Wider females.

  He refers to the six daughters as ‘pearls’, and recounts how they, and their mother, attempted to initiate him as a true Venetian. This is the process known as the ‘treatment’. Bavarians who are familiar with it have a more expressive name: ‘Ass-bumping’ (Arschprellen).

  It involves wrestling the initiate to the floor, then raising him aloft by the arms and legs, swinging him back and forth, then bumping his bottom against the floor. In his letter Wolfgang described this as the way you become a true Venetian.

  Then he adds, tantalisingly, ‘They wanted to do it to me too, and all 7 women got together and attacked me, but they couldn’t get me down to the floor, addio.’

  Once again, for a seemingly insignificant event that rarely merits more than a line or two, or none, in Mozart biographies, it is worth pausing for a moment to take a closer look. If it is my aim in this book to reveal the man, then this qualifies for more than a mere passing reference, and surely allows for a certain amount of speculation.

  First, picture the scene. You can almost hear the squeals of delight from the girls as, encouraged by their mother, they grab Wolfgang by the arms and legs and try to force him down to the floor. I imagine Wolfgang – knowing, as we do, that infectious personality – convulsed in laughter, embarrassed no doubt, but most certainly enjoying the close physical contact with attractive members of the opposite sex.

  Where was Leopold? I suspect he absented himself in disgust. His son does not tell us. Will he have given the boy a ticking off afterwards? Most certainly, probably accompanied by a stern lecture. Frivolity was not something Leopold understood.

  For my part, the thought of the greatest musical genius who ever lived being bumped on the floor by six beautiful girls, encouraged by their mother, is an unforgettable image. But wait. Did he not say they couldn’t get him down to the floor? He wrote that as a postscript to a letter his father had written, so he would say that, wouldn’t he?

  Musically the stay in Venice was not an unalloyed success. Leopold wrote home that he and his son were invited to lunch with the great noble families of the city, who sent their private gondolas to collect them, and then personally accompanied them home afterwards.

  It seems Wolfgang gave at most four private recitals in aristocratic salons, and he might have performed in establishments that cared for orphaned girls, for which Venice was renowned, and in which music played a major role.*

  But Leopold, as always, was not happy, and it showed. A priest who met them wrote to a colleague that he did not believe Leopold liked Venice, and the probable reason was that, as had happened elsewhere, he expected musical invitations to come to him, not that he would have to go out to find them.

  The colleague who received that letter responded in kind, and it is worth quoting him at some length, because it gives a true sense of how, although Leopold managed to upset just about everyone, this did not detract from the lovely character, and extraordinary musical talent, of his son – loved and admired by everyone:

&nbs
p; The young Mozart is certainly wonderful for his age, and indeed I love him infinitely. The father, as I see the man, is equally discontent everywhere. He made the same complaints here as he did elsewhere. He idolises his son a little too much, and thus does all he can to spoil him. But I have so good an opinion of the boy’s natural good sense that I hope he will not, in spite of the father’s flattery, be spoilt, but will grow instead into a fine man.20

  Leopold was determined to reach home by Easter, and he and Wolfgang left Venice on 12 March, after a stay of a month. More towns and more recitals – Padua, Vicenza, Verona – and then, at last, across the Alps into Austria.

  This was not the route Leopold wanted to take – ‘I have already seen the Tyrol, and there is no pleasure in taking the same route twice, as if we were dogs’ – but his mood was considerably lightened by news that reached him in Verona, before they set out for the mountains.

  A personal message arrived from Empress Maria Theresa, no less, commissioning Wolfgang to compose a second opera for the Teatro Regio Ducal in Milan. The opera was to honour the marriage between one of her sons and an Italian princess. The wedding was due to take place the following October in Milan.

  The empress knew exactly what she wanted. Wolfgang was to set a work by the Milanese court poet entitled Ascanio in Alba; a story of the wise goddess of love, Venus, bringing together an adoring couple who first must be tested to ensure their love is real. In case anyone was in any doubt, the empress herself was, of course, the wise goddess; she determines the young couple’s love is real, and everyone lives happily ever after.

  There was even more reason now to arrive home as swiftly as possible. Wolfgang would need to get to work immediately. They crossed the Alps via the Brenner Pass again, this time heading north. A violent gale, bitter cold and snow delayed them for a day in Innsbruck, but on Maundy Thursday, 28 March 1771, they arrived home in Salzburg.

  Leopold and Wolfgang had been away for more than fifteen months. Much had happened. Wolfgang had made the transition from boyhood to youth. He had firmly cemented his reputation as a composer of the first rank in the country in Europe where it mattered most. Leopold might have found much to grumble about on the trip, but he was arriving home with yet another valuable commission in his pocket, and it had come, as it were, out of nowhere.