Mozart: The Man Revealed Read online

  One other aspect of this extraordinary relationship between the two cousins merits a mention. Bäsle might have been only nineteen years of age, but she clearly already had something of a reputation. Back in Salzburg Leopold had got wind of his son’s closeness to his cousin, probably from Anna Maria.

  He writes to Wolfgang, warning him not to let himself be carried away by infatuation. It is well known, he writes, that Maria Anna has too intimate a relationship with certain priests. It seems from Wolfgang’s reply that Leopold has used the word Pfaffenschnitzl, which translates roughly as ‘a tasty morsel for a priest’.

  Wolfgang angrily denies his father’s accusation, saying his ‘dear Bäsle’ is nothing of the sort, adding, ‘Yesterday she dressed up in the French fashion just to please me.’ Which might not entirely have put his father’s mind at rest.

  Leopold might have had a point. It is a fact that seven years later Maria Anna Thekla, the Bäsle, gave birth to an illegitimate child whose father was an Augsburg clergyman.

  I believe, looking at all the evidence we have, that the obviously more experienced Bäsle initiated Wolfgang into the joys of sex, they enjoyed a hearty romp together, they will most certainly have indulged in the ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ humour of young people, they probably masturbated together. One way or another, however far things were carried, I believe neither of them were virgins when Wolfgang and his mother left Augsburg.

  Not everyone will be of the same opinion, not least because the Wolfgang who arrived in Mannheim was an entirely different individual from the one who had left Augsburg. He was about to meet more young women, and his behaviour could not have been more different.

  * Whose daughter Nanette would later marry Johann Andreas Streicher, carry on the piano-making tradition, and become a close friend of Beethoven.

  * As Robert Spaethling points out in his Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life, it is this particular letter that has led some medical specialists to suggest that Mozart suffered from Tourette’s syndrome.

  Wolfgang and his mother arrived in Mannheim, the next stop on their tour, at six o’clock in the evening on 30 October 1777. The journey from Augsburg had taken four days. They were now outside Bavaria, in the highly sophisticated capital of the Electorate of the Palatinate, close to the university town of Heidelberg and the Black Forest.

  Sophisticated, and very musical too, Mannheim was ruled by Elector Karl Theodor, a keen patron of the arts. The name-days of both the elector and his wife were celebrated with grand masses, operas, ballets, comic operas and concerts.

  Mannheim was famous for its orchestra. The English composer Charles Burney wrote, five years before the Mozarts’ arrival there, ‘There are more solo players and good composers in this, than perhaps in any other orchestra in Europe; it is an army of generals, equally fit to plan a battle, as to fight it.’

  The profusion of musical events attracted skilled players from across Europe, including a famous section of horn players from Bohemia. The orchestra was renowned for its discipline, its precise attacks, attention to dynamics, and uniform bowing.

  Leopold Mozart was well aware of the reputation of Mannheim as a centre of musical excellence. ‘Its rays,’ he declared, ‘like the sun’s, spread through the whole of Germany, indeed through the whole of Europe.’

  If his son had failed to find employment in Munich, then that would surely be remedied in Mannheim. Just wait till they discover how talented Wolfgang is, Leopold must have thought.

  In the event, mother and son remained in Mannheim for almost five months. Wolfgang would leave Mannheim empty handed, with nothing to show for his stay there – in terms of musical employment, that is.

  In another, more private, area, his life was about to change forever, even though it would be a few years before he, or anybody else, realised it.

  Things got off to a bad start in Mannheim, and did not improve. Wolfgang was different. Suddenly he was less of an ingénue. He was more self-assured, with a touch of arrogance that others did not find appealing.

  It might be far-fetched to use this as another argument for a sexual relationship having taken place between him and his cousin, but it is not unheard of for a young man to walk that bit taller once he has lost his virginity – become a man in the true sense, so to speak. That, coupled with a definite lacking when it came to social graces, could well explain his demeanour in Mannheim.

  His new self-confidence bordered on conceit. In letters to his father, he described the deputy kapellmeister as ‘conceited and incompetent’, the choir as ‘feeble’, and the playing of the two court organists as ‘wretched’.

  He performed for the elector, for which he received a gold watch – another gold watch.

  I now have five watches, and am seriously considering having another watch pocket on each leg of my trousers so that, when I visit some great lord, I shall wear both watches – that way it will not occur to him to present me with another.

  One can’t help feeling that his sense of humour is wearing thin. There seems to be a new cynicism in his words.

  Wolfgang spent time with other musicians. He lunched and dined with them, he made music with them most evenings, and he attended parties. Given his social antennae were not his sharpest asset, it is more than likely he expressed opinions that were less than well received.

  Why else would he write to his father, ‘They seem to think that because of my small size and youth I possess no importance or maturity. They will soon learn.’ It was an attitude hardly calculated to endear him to his fellow musicians.

  It was notable that invitations to perform began to dry up, and once again no offer of employment was forthcoming. This was a source of ever increasing worry to his father back in Salzburg, who urged him repeatedly to try harder, to ingratiate himself more readily. This trip was costing money, and so far it had yielded precious little.

  It is extraordinary that Wolfgang seemed so completely insensitive to any concerns he was causing his father. It is almost as if – now that he was free of his father’s domineering personality – he was setting out to cause him even more worry, to hurt him more.

  “Anna Maria, not possessing musical talent, was naturally excluded from her son’s activities.”

  If that was his aim, he certainly achieved it with a remarkable letter that he wrote on 14 November. He opens it with a parody of the Catholic confessional prayer, calculated to offend his father’s sensibilities. The sins he is confessing to are also clearly designed to upset and worry his father. In fact, the letter bears the hallmarks of a young man getting home late and drunk, and picking up a pen:

  I, Johannes Chrisostomus Amadeus Wolfgangus Sigismundus Mozart, am guilty of not coming home until 12 o’clock midnight, the day before yesterday and yesterday, and often times before, and that from 10 o’clock until said hour I did some rhyming – nothing too serious but rather light and frothy, actually, nothing but crude stuff, such as Muck, shitting, and ass licking, all of it in thoughts, words … I must also confess that I thoroughly enjoyed it all. I confess all these my sins and transgressions from the bottom of my heart, and, in the hope that I can confess them more often, I am fully committed to perfecting the sinful life that I have begun. I, therefore, beg for holy dispensation if it can be obtained easily; if not, well, it’s all the same to me because the play must go on.

  This is a son rebelling against his father, pure and simple.

  Tensions were rising, too, between mother and son. It was perhaps inevitable, given that this was the first time they had been in such close contact, and over an extended period of time.

  Anna Maria, not possessing musical talent, was naturally excluded from her son’s activities. She was actually quite distressed, and it seems Wolfgang either had no idea, or simply did not care.

  She was rarely able to write to her husband without Wolfgang finding out, and if she added a postscript to his letters, he made sure he read it. Just once she managed to add a quick word to a letter ‘in g
reatest secrecy and haste while he is at table so that I am not caught’.

  Given the subterfuge she had to go to, it makes for even more painful reading. Anna Maria wrote, ‘In a word, he prefers being with others to being with me. If I take exception to one or other thing that is not to my taste, that makes him angry.’

  She describes how Wolfgang seemed to have forgotten she existed. ‘I am at home alone, as is the case most of the time.’ She said she ate and drank only what they could afford: ‘I never drink wine at the inn, except when Wolfgang takes a meal there, and then we share a glass.’

  Most portentously of all, she states that she orders a fire only when dressing or undressing. Her health is beginning to suffer. Winter was harsh that year in Mannheim, and at the age of fifty-seven Anna Maria was beginning to decline.

  Wolfgang was hurting both his parents, and he seemed oblivious to it. He was about to make matters a thousand times worse.

  On 8 December Wolfgang was formally told that there was no appointment for him at court. Leopold, suspecting this would be the case, had already written to his son urging him to leave as soon as possible for Paris. The French capital was the last – and greatest – hope. There, everything would surely come right.

  But winter had set in, the roads were icy and Anna Maria’s health was not good. Travel was impossible. Wolfgang and his mother had no choice but to wait for spring, kicking their heels with little to do, and eating more and more into their limited funds.

  But there was something occupying Wolfgang’s mind. He had hinted at it in a convoluted passage in a letter to his father written in the previous November. It is worth quoting, for it is an elaborate, tortuous – and typical – attempt of a young man suffering under his father’s controlling influence, attempting to lay the ground for what he knows will unleash a thunderstorm. And because this is Wolfgang, there has to be a scatological reference, used almost as a way of trying to introduce a little levity.

  I don’t want to talk about things before their time. everything will turn out fine. Maybe I can report to you in my next letter about something that is very good for you but only good for me, or something that is very bad in your eyes, but Acceptable in mine, perhaps also something Acceptable to you, however, very good, dear, and precious for me! This is all rather like an oracle, isn’t it? – well, it sounds mysterious but can be understood … One of those Oracular sayings will have to come to pass – I think it will either be the one in the middle or the last one – it doesn’t matter which; because it’s one thing whether I eat the muck or Papa shits it – it seems I can never get this thing right! I wanted to say: it’s one thing whether Papa shits the muck or I eat it! – now I better quit, I can tell, it’s useless for me to try …

  If Leopold was able to guess what was afoot, he gave no hint of it in his letters. Then, three months later, in a letter written on 17 January 1778, Wolfgang broaches the subject, but with a studied insouciance:

  The copying of the arias didn’t cost me much either, because it was done by a certain Herr Weber, who will accompany me on the trip. I’m not sure whether I have mentioned his daughter to you – she sings superbly and has a beautifully clear voice. The only thing she lacks is some experience in acting, but once she has mastered that she can be a Prima donna in any theatre. She is only sixteen. Her father is a good, honest German who is raising his children properly, and that’s the very reason why everyone is after the girl.

  Wolfgang is in love, and sure enough the storm is unleashed. Leopold is utterly appalled. He pours the guilt onto Wolfgang’s shoulders.

  We have done everything to make you happier and through you to bring happiness to ourselves and to set your future at least on a firm footing. But Fate has willed that we should not achieve our purpose … I am now in very deep waters, in debt to the extent of 700 gulden … So it must be clear as noonday to you that the future of your old parents and of your good sister who loves you with all her heart, is entirely in your hands … If you think it over, you will realise that not only have I never spent a farthing on the smallest pleasure for myself but that without God’s special mercy I should never have succeeded in spite of all my efforts in keeping out of debt. When you were children I gave up all my time to you in the hope that not only would you be able to provide later on for yourselves, but also that I might enjoy a comfortable old age, be able to give an account to God of the education of my children, be free from all anxiety, devote myself to the welfare of my soul and thus be enabled to meet my death in peace.

  What a turnaround! Leopold, the father, is throwing himself at his son’s feet. And that son, perhaps for the first time in his twenty-two years, appears unmoved. In fact, he ups the ante. Not only does he have no desire to go to Paris; he wishes instead to go on tour with the Webers – father and two daughters. This is open defiance:

  Herr Weber will attempt to organise some concert tours for me and him; we want to go on tour together. That is why I like him so much because, apart from his outside appearance, he is so much like you … I am so fond of this unfortunate family that I wish nothing more than to make them happy; and maybe I can do that. My advice to them is to go to Italy … If our plans could be realised, we, that is Monsieur Weber, two of his daughters, and I, will have the honour of visiting my dear Papa and my dear sister on the way to Italy for 2 weeks.

  If Leopold was angry before, he is now apoplectic. ‘MY DEAR SON! I have read your letter with amazement and horror. I am beginning to answer it only today, the 11th, for the whole night long I was unable to sleep and am so exhausted that I can only write quite slowly.’ He accuses Wolfgang of being easily led and letting others sway him as they like.

  ‘As for your proposal to travel about with Herr Weber,’ he writes, ‘and, be it noted, his two daughters – it has nearly made me lose my reason! My dearest son! How can you have allowed yourself to be bewitched even for an hour by such a horrible idea, which must have been suggested to you by someone or other!’

  He rants on, and then comes the imperious command: ‘Off with you to Paris! and that soon!’ In case Wolfgang is in any doubt: ‘You want to spare me anxiety and in the end you suddenly overturn a whole bucketful of worries on my head, which almost kill me! … Though half-dead, I have managed to think out and arrange everything connected with your journey to Paris.’

  Leopold is re-exerting paternal control, and Wolfgang, ultimately, is powerless to disobey. Obedience to his father was ingrained in him so deeply, from his earliest years, that it was inevitable he would revert to type. He has no choice but to take his leave of the Weber family, and prepare to depart with his mother for Paris.

  So who exactly was the object of Wolfgang’s affections? She was Aloysia, the second of four daughters of Fridolin and Marie Cäcilia Weber, and Wolfgang had fallen head over heels in love with her.

  Fridolin Weber* was a bass singer, prompter and copyist at the Mannheim theatre, and all four of his daughters were singers. At first, it seems, the family was overwhelmed by Wolfgang’s musical talents. When he began to talk of going on tour with them to Italy, they must have been even more impressed.

  ‘We owe everything to your son,’ Wolfgang quoted Weber to his father. ‘He has done a great deal for my daughter and has taken an interest in her and she can never be grateful enough to him.’ Wolfgang’s words, rather than Weber’s, but the sentiment is surely correct.

  It slowly dawned on Herr Weber, however, that although Wolfgang was always smartly turned out and had impressive musical contacts in the city, he was far from being a man of means. It was obvious to him, also, that it was Wolfgang’s father back in Salzburg who was issuing orders. We can assume Wolfgang will have expressed his interest in Aloysia to her father, and that Fridolin was lukewarm.

  We know tantalisingly little of how Wolfgang’s attraction to Aloysia progressed, other than from his letters, which are always calculated to portray her in a favourable light for his father’s benefit. She was certainly an accomplished singer, even if – acc
ording to one observer – falling short of Wolfgang’s extravagant praise. The sole portrait of her, made a few years after Wolfgang’s stay in Mannheim, shows an elegant young woman, with sharply defined nose, full lips and an alluring half-smile. It is easy to see how Wolfgang was attracted to her.

  Sadly we know nothing of Aloysia’s feelings towards her suitor. Wolfgang gives us no indication in his letters. Possibly we can infer from this that she was less than responsive, otherwise he would have been sure to mention it in making his case to his father.

  Future events were to bear this out. For the moment, suffice it to say that the love affair – one-sided from the start – would end in tears. But that was not the end of Mozart’s connection with the Weber family. In fact he would indeed find love within the family, and the Weber name would be linked to his from that day to this.

  * Future uncle of the composer Carl Maria von Weber, born 18 November 1786.

  Wolfgang and his mother set out from Mannheim on a sunny morning in March 1778, destination Paris, but the mood inside the carriage was anything but sunny. Neither of them wanted to be there.

  Wolfgang had no desire to go to Paris. He wanted to be on tour with the woman he loved, preferably in Italy. Aloysia had knitted him some mittens, her father had given him a copy of Molière’s comedies (in German). Was that not proof of her love for him, and her father’s affection? Wolfgang no doubt thought so, though they were more likely to be compensation for his unreturned advances.

  As for Anna Maria, she was totally out of her depth, away from everything that made her feel safe and secure, and it had been that way since the day she had left Salzburg. She spoke not a word of French and disliked, even feared, big cities. It is likely that she missed her husband’s controlling hand: even if there was a deep-seated resentment, she had long since learned that subservience was her best ally, and she had grown accustomed to acquiescence.