Mozart: The Man Revealed Page 11

  He knew, too, it meant within a matter of months that he and Wolfgang would leave home once again and head south to Milan. There was now no going back. Leopold might still have been employed at the court in Salzburg, but he – and they – knew he had a more important musical task on his hands: to guide his uniquely talented son to ever more musical heights, and bring glory to his home city.

  Nothing could now impede this. The future seemed set. But father and son were soon to encounter an intractable obstacle.

  * dessen finger von schreiben / Müdhe Müdhe Müedhes / müde sind.

  * It is possible the Milanese allowed themselves to be influenced unduly by Mozart’s tender age. He himself subsequently dropped the work. There is no mention of it in any of his letters after March 1771. It fell out of the repertoire, and was revived only as recently as 1971 in Salzburg.

  * The house, owned by the Ceseletti family, was by the Ponte dei Barcaroli, in the centre of the city and on the water. It still stands, with a plaque on the wall commemorating the stay in 1771 of ‘the boy from Salzburg in whom musical genius fused with the grace of the eighteenth century in the purest poetry’ (Nel quale la grazia del genio musicale e il garbo settecentesco su fusero in una purissima poesia).

  * Vivaldi had been appointed maestro di violino in one of these ‘ospedali’ in 1703.

  Life back home in Salzburg was anything but comfortable. Leopold knew even before he and Wolfgang arrived home that things could not continue as they were. The apartment they rented from Hagenauer was small and cramped, and he and his wife were no longer a couple with small children.

  ‘Wolfgang is not seven any more,’ Leopold wrote to his wife from Venice. In fact Wolfgang was fifteen, Nannerl nearly twenty. There was a simple solution: move to a larger apartment. But why go through that when there was the prospect of more travel? Wolfgang’s new opera was due to be performed in Milan in a matter of months. With rehearsals and general preparations they would be on the road again very soon.

  With few creature comforts at home and the court largely hostile – if not openly so, certainly under the surface – Leopold must rather have been looking forward to the next trip. Wherever he and his son went, they were treated like nobility and they mixed with the highest in the land. What a contrast to dull provincial Salzburg!

  This must surely have been Leopold’s thinking, and I am convinced – given what we know of future years – that it rubbed off on his son. Who can blame a teenage boy for enjoying the constant praise and flattery, from royal personages down? In time Wolfgang would come to despise his home city, and those who lived there. Like father, like son.

  Salzburg was preparing itself for celebrations – discreet celebrations, nothing too showy, in keeping with the pious modesty of the man in whose honour they would be held. The following January, on the 10th to be precise, less than two months before his seventy-second birthday, Siegmund Schrattenbach, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, would celebrate fifty years in the service of the Church.

  The Archbishop was a man much loved by his people. He was of the old school. Deeply religious, he would attend up to five church services daily. He marked every feast day in the calendar, and it was said – not in an unkind way — that if you wanted to become one of his privy councillors, simply let him see you saying the rosary at an open window.

  He was happy to attend weddings, loved children, and was generous with gifts to his subjects of all ages. And he loved music. Many a young musician in Salzburg found himself en route to study in musical cities such as Venice, with a court appointment awaiting him on his return.

  It was Schrattenbach who had allowed Leopold extended leave of absence, on full salary, for his first trip with Wolfgang to Vienna, for the extensive European tour that had taken the two of them to London and Paris, and for most of the second visit to Vienna. I suspect it was only under pressure from jealous rivals that he docked Leopold’s pay on that last trip for prolonging his absence without authorisation.

  And it was Schrattenbach who had appointed Wolfgang konzertmeister at the age of thirteen, albeit without salary, and authorised payment of two years’ salary in advance to Leopold for the first visit to Italy.

  Leopold could look forward to many more years of patronage and support from the very top, to allow his son’s career to advance. If Wolfgang had already shown himself without equal in the world of music, Leopold knew everything he had achieved so far would pale before the accomplishments that lay ahead.

  But Schrattenbach would not see either of the two anniversaries that were approaching, and under his successor things would never be the same again for the Mozarts.

  After less than five months father and son left Salzburg once again, en route for Venice and further musical glory. This time the journey took only eight days – the Brenner Pass now more familiar than daunting – and they arrived in Milan in blistering summer heat.

  It had not rained in Milan for a whole month, and when it tried, just a few drops fell before the sun blazed out again. ‘It was so dusty and hot on our trip, that if we hadn’t been so clever we would have choked and died of thirst for sure,’ Wolfgang wrote home to his sister three days after arriving. ‘I am panting it is so hot! I am tearing open my waistcoat right this minute!’ He was not suffering as much as some. ‘The princess [Maria Beatrice of Modena] had the runs the other day – or a shit-fit,’ was his graphic description.

  But despite the lack of creature comforts, Wolfgang was in his element. He and his father took the same lodgings they had taken previously, and the building was a cacophony of sound. Above and below them lived violinists, constantly scraping away. In the room next door a singing teacher gave lessons, and across the hall lived an oboist. ‘It’s all such fun for Composing! gives you lots of ideas,’ he wrote, in a marvellous insight not just into his joyous character, but into how he lived and breathed music.

  “Leopold knew everything Wolfgang had achieved so far would pale before the accomplishments that lay ahead.”

  The libretto for Ascanio arrived in Milan a week after the Mozarts, and Wolfgang worked feverishly on it. ‘My fingers are so sore from writing.’ It was completed – a three-hour opera with overture, choruses, recitatives, a ‘rather long’ allegro, an andante, as well as ballets to be danced at the end of each act – in under seven weeks, remarkable by any standards.

  The premiere took place, as scheduled, on 17 October 1771 at the Teatro Regio Ducal, two days after the wedding ceremonies for which it had been commissioned. It was a triumph.

  ‘Our heads are spinning,’ Leopold wrote home to his wife and daughter. In the days following, they were stopped in the street to be congratulated. After a few performances, the newly wedded royal couple came to see it. At the final curtain, they leaned over their box, clapping and shouting ‘Bravissimo maestro!’ to the diminutive character seated at the harpsichord below.

  The groom, young Archduke Ferdinand, was apparently so impressed he went to his mother the empress and asked her advice on whether he might offer young Wolfgang a position at the court of Milan. Empress Maria Theresa’s response has gone down in history.

  You are requesting that I take the young Salzburger into your service. I do not know, nor do I believe, that you would need a composer or useless people. If that would give you pleasure, I don’t want to keep you from it. I am saying what I am saying to prevent you from being burdened with useless people and giving titles to them.21

  Useless people! She says it twice so she must have meant it. She goes further. She refers to people such as the Mozarts going ‘around the world like beggars’.

  Beloved of her people, the empress, who did so much to retain the Habsburgs and their empire as the dominant force in mainland Europe, who indeed had met young Wolfgang and marvelled at his skills, suffered a lapse of judgement that will always blight her name when her artistic sensibilities are assessed. The archduke must have taken his mother’s advice. No offer of a position at court was forthcoming.

  This
second trip to Italy lasted just four months, and was intense from start to finish. Wolfgang’s postscripts to his sister, added to his father’s letters, are short and lacking in any really interesting observations – in contrast to his outpourings from the previous trip.

  What comes through is sheer fatigue, which clearly causes him an uncharacteristic lack of motivation. ‘I cannot write allot. first: I don’t know what. second: my fingers are so sore from writing …’ ‘I have no desire to go to Salzburg any more. I am afraid I might go crazy …’ ‘I know nothing new, except that next Tuesday will be another rehearsal …’ ‘I am well, god be praised and thancked! but always sleepy …’

  In fact he was not all that well. He had a heavy cold, and his father’s rheumatism was so bad that he would not leave their lodgings. His final postscript, on 30 November 1771, is his shortest of the trip. He is clearly utterly exhausted, and he sounds thoroughly depressed too.

  He denies being unwell, but without conviction, and in just a single sentence describes a harrowing event he has witnessed. He suggests he saw something similar back in Lyons on his earlier trip. There is no reference to this anywhere else in any letters written either by him or by his father. Is it a product of his general tiredness and depression? Or did it happen, and he is pretending he was there? We cannot know. But it is a bizarre thing to write – in a single sentence, with no embellishment. Whatever the truth, it is testament to a fifteen-year-old boy who has worked himself not just to the limit, but beyond it.

  So that you won’t thinck I am sick, I’ll write these two lines. farewell to you all. a handkiss for mama. and greetings to all good friends. I saw 4 fellows hanged on the piazza del Duomo. They hang them here just as in Lyon.

  The fact that as well as composing an opera, Wolfgang also composed a concerto and two symphonies during the stay in Milan, far from evidence that he overworked himself, to me suggests that composing is what he turned to when he needed to relax, when he had time on his hands, even if for a brief hour or two.

  It was a thoroughly weary father and son who left Milan on 5 December 1771. They were, naturally, flushed with the success of Ascanio, but success was what they had become used to. Leopold was truly disappointed that no offer of employment at court had come to Wolfgang. Twice he had delayed departure in the hope that Archduke Ferdinand would extend an invitation to work for him. But no offer came.

  The journey back took ten days, and we have no information about it. I suspect they were simply both too tired to be bothered with writing, particularly since they knew they would be home in a short time.

  Leopold and Wolfgang arrived home in Salzburg on 15 December. One day later the kindly and pious Archbishop Schrattenbach died.

  The death was sudden and unexpected, and it threw Salzburg into turmoil.

  The forthcoming celebrations, naturally, were called off. It was a time for score-settling, for factions and rivalry to break out.

  Schrattenbach was not of this world, said some. His piety and deep faith had led him to lose his grasp on politics and governance. He was too much archbishop and not enough prince. Under his rule expenditure was unchecked, and he had left behind a city deep in debt.

  Yes, debt, said his supporters, but in a thoroughly good cause. Why else was he so beloved of his people? His beneficence towards them ensured their loyalty and their love. They had lost a man who would speak up for the poorest among them. Was that not exactly what an archbishop should strive to achieve?

  The succession was obvious, and should have been a straightforward matter for the churchmen who made up the elective council, in whose power the appointment lay. There was a highly qualified, and enormously popular, local candidate, by the name of Count Waldburg-Zeil, who was dean at Salzburg Cathedral.

  Well known, and much respected by the local populace, he was overwhelmingly the choice of the people of Salzburg. But unusually the court in Vienna decided to stick its nose into Salzburg’s affairs. Vienna, imperial capital of the Habsburg empire, wanted one of its own in Salzburg.

  Vienna’s choice – in an open and blatant piece of nepotism – was the son of the imperial vice-chancellor, no less. He was the thirty-nine-year-old Count Hieronymus Franz de Paula Joseph Colloredo.

  Although he had been born in Vienna, Count Colloredo* was no stranger to Salzburg. He was appointed canon there at the tender age of fifteen, and had spent every second winter there. The Salzburgers knew him well – and disliked him intensely. Aloof and haughty from his teenage years, he cared deeply about rank, and expected the utmost respect from his sub-ordinates. Only with those of the highest rank did he feel at ease.

  Weeks of wrangling followed the death of Archbishop Schrattenbach, as the rulers of Vienna attempted to impose their will on Salzburg, and the local people made clear to the elective council who they wanted to rule over them. It took no fewer than forty-nine ballots before a name with a majority of votes emerged.

  On 14 March 1772 a crowd of Salzburgers gathered underneath the balcony of the palace, and were stunned into shock and silence when the name of Archbishop Colloredo was announced as the next prince-archbishop of Salzburg.

  They had not recovered as Colloredo and his attendants processed to the cathedral for the Te Deum to celebrate his accession. They looked on in total silence.

  Colloredo was known to the Mozarts as well. He had most certainly heard Wolfgang perform during his winter stays in Salzburg; it is possible he met them too in Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna and on their visit to Rome, where he was studying.

  Relations between the newly appointed archbishop and the Mozarts began well enough. Indeed it would be some years before they soured irretrievably, and Colloredo would become the ‘villain of the piece’, an unenviable role he maintains to this day.

  One of Colloredo’s earliest actions, in fact, was to take Wolfgang into paid employment at court. On 9 July 1772, at the age of sixteen, Wolfgang was formally appointed konzertmeister at a salary of 150 gulden a year – a third of his father’s salary.

  His duties required him to lead the court orchestra from the violin, something he had regularly done on an informal basis for some time. Wolfgang was soon composing pieces, and adapting others, to mark Colloredo’s accession.

  The archbishop was also prepared to allow father and son to make yet another trip to Milan – their third – for the performance of an opera Wolfgang had been commissioned to write for the Teatro Regio Ducal.

  There was a possible fly in the ointment, and it was once again Wolfgang’s precarious health. Nannerl recalled – half a century later – that on her brother’s return from the second Milan trip, he suffered a very serious illness, which gave him ‘extremely yellow’ skin.

  We cannot say for sure whether Wolfgang had contracted jaundice, or exactly when this happened. What we most certainly can say is that, once again, Wolfgang was overworking.

  As well as the opera for Milan, which would become Lucio Silla, Wolfgang had been commissioned to write another opera immediately after that for Venice. He was also working on several orchestral pieces. The work took its toll, but it was as if he needed to do it. In the event – possibly because his father realised the workload was too much even for this sixteen-year-old – the Venice commission was dropped.

  Father and son left Salzburg once again on 24 October 1772, taking the familiar route via the Brenner Pass south to Milan. Wolfgang had clearly not recovered fully from his illness. He penned his first postscript to his sister from the beautiful little wine-growing village of Bozen* on the other side of the pass, four days after leaving Salzburg. He is not in a good mood:

  We are now in Botzen. already? only! I’m thirsty, I’m sleepy, I’m lazy, but I am well … Botzen is a shit hole …

  Before I come back to this Botzen place,

  I’d rather smack myself in the face.

  Things were most certainly to improve in Milan. Wolfgang once again worked feverishly to complete his opera, and it was given its premiere on schedule on 26 December
1772.

  It was not an auspicious beginning. Archduke Ferdinand (the same royal personage whose marriage Wolfgang’s earlier opera had celebrated) arrived three hours late for the premiere, offering apologies for spending too long writing New Year’s greetings. ‘He writes very slowly,’ Leopold reported sarcastically.

  The opera, full length and with two ballets, lasted an enormous six hours in performance. Due to the late start on opening night, it did not finish until two in the morning. But it was, predictably, a triumph.

  Almost as if it was now his due, Wolfgang was feted throughout the city, and Lucio Silla was given no fewer than twenty-six performances, displacing the opera that was due to succeed it.

  Within just three weeks of the premiere, and clearly flushed with the success of the opera, Wolfgang dashed off – in a matter of days – a vocal piece for one of the singers who had performed in the opera, the renowned Italian male soprano, the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini.

  And not just any vocal piece, but without question one of the greatest – in my opinion the greatest – of all Wolfgang’s youthful works. It is a three-movement piece, and is almost a concerto for the voice. Although based on a sacred text, in places it is mischievous; it has offbeat themes and harmonic surprises, and its treatment of the single word ‘Alleluia’ must be unique in all music.

  “Nannerl recalled that on her brother’s return from the second Milan trip, he suffered a very serious illness.”

  It is, I believe, unlike anything else Mozart was to write. It is suffused with joyfulness, and to this day it remains one of his most popular pieces. It is the Exsultate, jubilate (K.165).