Mozart: The Man Revealed Page 17

  “Leopold lays the blame for Anna Maria’s death solely at the feet of his son.”

  But soon after she was bled, he writes, she began to have diarrhoea. More observations then about how foreigners who choose to drink the water in Paris always end up with diarrhoea. He himself was no exception, but managed to cure it by adding a little wine to the water(!).

  Then back to his mother. He describes how he took control when she began to complain of headaches, insisting she stay in bed all day. She alternated between being hot and feeling chilly, so he administered some ‘Antispasmodic Powder’.

  In an apparent attempt to deflect criticism from himself, he blames his mother for the fact that it was so long before a doctor came:

  All this time I wanted to send for a doctor – but she didn’t want one. When I insisted she told me that she had no confidence in French doctors – so I started looking for a German – but, naturally, I could not go out and leave her alone.

  He at last found a German doctor, ‘an elderly German of about seventy’, whose attendance proved to be unreliable. He gave Anna Maria rhubarb powder stirred into wine, which shocked Wolfgang.

  I can’t understand that, for it is said that wine increases your body heat – but when I said that, they all shouted – Not at all, what are you saying? wine doesn’t make you hot – wine only strengthens the body. It’s the water that creates the heat – and all the while the poor patient was desperately longing for a little fresh water – how much I would have liked to give her some – dearest father, you cannot imagine what I went through – but there was no other way, I had to leave her, in god’s name, in the hands of the doctor.

  It seems an unlikely scenario, the doctor insisting on giving Anna Maria a mixture of wine and water, when it was obvious to Wolfgang that it was fresh water she needed. More evidence, in my view, of Wolfgang trying to deflect any blame. Then, finally:

  Just put yourself in my position when [the doctor] quite unexpectedly said to me – ‘I fear she will not live through the night’.

  I say ‘finally’, but only so far as his mother is concerned. The letter continues for several more pages, but there is not another single mention of his mother’s final illness or death. He details how he has been unable to compose, he regales his father about how he has fallen out with Baron von Grimm, and he rants against the French who treat him as if was still a seven-year-old, the age he was when they first saw him.

  He finally signs off the letter with ten thousand kisses for his father, and an embrace for his sister, as if for all the world things are normal.

  Within days he received an excoriating letter from his father:

  I told you in May that she ought not to postpone being bled … Yet she put it off until June 11th … The day before this treatment she took far too violent exercise, and got home exhausted and overheated … she was probably bled too little, and finally the doctor was called in far too late … for she was already in danger.

  And just in case Wolfgang was failing to get the point:

  You had your engagements, you were away all day, and as she didn’t make a fuss, you treated her condition lightly. All this time her illness became more serious, in fact mortal – and only then was a doctor called in, when of course it was too late.

  Leopold then raises the stakes. He reminds his already fragile son how his birth nearly killed his mother (a reference to the placenta having to be forcibly removed), but ultimately he was responsible for her death in another way:

  The unbreakable chain of Divine Providence preserved your mother’s life when you were born … but she was fated to sacrifice herself for her son in a different way.

  In other words, Wolfgang might not have killed his mother when he was born, but he managed to kill her in the end. Leopold might have attempted to soften his words by using the third person, but one can only imagine the effect these words must have had on Wolfgang.

  In fact this letter from Leopold crossed with the one from Wolfgang describing his mother’s death, but if he hoped that his account would absolve him of any guilt in his father’s eyes, he was swiftly disabused of the notion.

  In a letter of 27 August, Leopold lays the blame for Anna Maria’s death solely at the feet of his son, for forming a ‘new friendship’ with Aloysia and wishing to travel to Italy with her. Only to prevent that happening did his mother stay with him and accompany him to Paris, a trip that cost her her life.

  It is cruel language for a father to use to his son, and it does not take much imagination to hear Wolfgang screaming out in frustration at his father’s intransigence. To be accused of having in effect brought about your mother’s death – at the second time of trying – is likely to have caused him an unending sense of guilt, to be borne for the rest of his life.

  But something within Wolfgang now changed. To begin with, he went quiet on his father. Increasingly pleading letters from Leopold arrived in Paris asking why Wolfgang was not writing to him.

  He implores his son to work harder, to try to win commissions. But it seems he finally gave up. He wrote to Wolfgang on 31 August announcing in triumphalist tones – ‘thanks to my brave perseverance’ – that he has persuaded Archbishop Colloredo to appoint Wolfgang konzertmeister on a salary of 500 gulden.

  It was the last thing Wolfgang wanted: to be back in Salzburg in the employ of the detested prince-archbishop. He knew he had no choice but to accept, but this time it would be on his terms:

  I’m serious when I say that if the Archbishop doesn’t allow me to take a trip every 2 years, I cannot possibly accept the Engagement … There’s one other condition for my return to Salzbourg: I don’t want to be only a violinist as I was before – I’m not a fiddler any more – I want to conduct from the piano – and accompany arias. It would have been a good thing if I could have had a written guarantee, specifying that I will be in line for the position of kapellmeister, otherwise I may have the honour of doing duties for two posts – but getting paid for only one.

  This is a new, emboldened Wolfgang. He not only lays down conditions, he even criticises his father for not obtaining terms in writing. It is also a musician recognising his greatest strengths.

  So Wolfgang prepared to leave Paris, ‘a city I can’t stand’. But even here he is doing it on his own terms. He informs his father that he will travel back via Munich, where he knows Aloysia Weber is working as a court singer.

  This time it is his father who has no choice but to accept. Wolfgang is on his own, with no mother to keep him in line. Leopold has lost a level of control over his son, and he will never get it back.

  Wolfgang left Paris on 26 September 1778, nearly twenty-three years old. For the first time on any of his travels, he is on his own. If it was a still immature Wolfgang who had arrived in Paris with his mother, from now on it is Mozart the man, and Mozart the musician.

  * The italics are my emphasis.

  Mozart the musician came of age in Paris. He might not have been able to compose while his mother was in extremis, but he most certainly was composing both before and after.

  A month after arriving in Paris, he composed a concerto for an extremely unusual combination of instruments, and whenever that happens it is a good idea to look for the person who commissioned it.

  Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, Duc de Guînes, an army general and diplomat, was an accomplished flautist, his daughter Marie-Adrienne a harpist. He asked Mozart to compose a piece for the two instruments and orchestra, and the result was the beautiful Concerto for Flute and Harp (K. 299).

  The piece is light and airy, elegant and expressive. It shows off flute and harp to perfection, which is all the more extraordinary since Mozart did not have extensive experience of writing for either of them as solo instruments. In fact he never used the harp again in any composition.

  This might have had something to do with the fact that he was disappointed to find that Marie-Adrienne was scarcely able to play her part. In fact the whole experience left him wounded. The Duc brushed off
Mozart’s request for payment, passing the matter on to his head butler, who would pay no more than half the agreed amount. ‘There’s noble treatment for you,’ Mozart wrote to his father.

  Next he turned to a full-scale symphony, and the significance of this work is that he was not writing it at the behest of an aristocratic patron, but to be performed before an audience of the general public.

  In writing about it to his father, his arrogance and his extreme dislike of all things French reveal a rather unattractive side to his character:

  I am very happy with it, but whether others like it, I don’t know – and to tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter much to me, for who, after all, are these people who wouldn’t like it? – I can vouch for a few intelligent French listeners who will be there. But the stupid ones, well, it won’t be a big misfortune if they don’t find it to their liking – but I do hope that even the stupid asses will find something they can like.

  Writing again almost three weeks later, after the first performance, things had got a lot worse:

  During rehearsals I was extremely worried because I had never heard a worse performance in all my life. You can’t imagine how they bungled and scratched their way through the Sinfonie – twice in a row – I was truly worried – I would have liked to have one more rehearsal, but because they are always rehearsing so much stuff all at once, there was no more time. I had no choice but to go to bed with a troubled heart and a dissatisfied and angry mind.

  He decided on drastic action – or at least that is what he told his father:

  The next day I decided not to go to the concert at all. But then in the evening the weather turned nice, and I decided to go, but with the firm resolve that if things went as poorly as during rehearsal, I would walk straight up to the orchestra, snatch the violin out of the hand of Herr Lahousè, the first violinist, and conduct myself.

  This is the new, emboldened Mozart, forging his own way as professional musician, and he wanted his father to know it. Having built up the tension and prepared Leopold for the worst, he delivers the good news:

  The Sinfonie began … and right in the middle of the First Allegro came a Passage that I knew would please, and the entire audience was sent into raptures – there was a big applaudissement – and as I knew, when I wrote the passage, what good effect it would make, I brought it back once more at the end of the movement – and sure enough there they were: the shouts of Da capo. The Andante was well received as well, but the final Allegro pleased especially … I was so delighted, I went right after the Sinfonie to the Palais Royale – bought myself an ice cream, prayed a rosary as I pledged – and went home.

  It is a beguiling image — the celebrated composer hurrying off on his own to eat an ice cream after the first performance of his most important symphony to date (the rosary line no doubt added to assuage his father’s religious sensibilities).

  The ‘Paris’ Symphony, as it has predictably become known, is a joyous and upbeat piece of writing, in the bright and brilliant key of D major. Mozart had scored it for a larger orchestra than he had used before, and it is full of unexpected turns and lively phrases, which demand vigorous playing from the whole orchestra.

  He had suspected this was just the kind of music the Parisians wanted to hear, and he provided them with it. If they had known how he had castigated their musical tastes in that letter, they might have been less inclined to applaud so enthusiastically.

  But here is what I find most extraordinary about the whole episode. All those passages I have quoted about the rehearsal and performance of the new symphony come in the same letter which began with the words, ‘My dear Mother is very ill’, and continues with ‘They are giving me hope, but I don’t have very much.’ Words written with his mother lying dead on the bed just a few feet from him.

  How was he able to detach himself from the appalling circumstances he was enduring, to the extent, even, that after describing the first performance of the symphony, he goes on to report that Voltaire, ‘the godless Arch-culprit, has kicked the bucket like a dog’? And this is followed by a further page of small talk.

  We cannot know. The most we can say is that this is the new Mozart, unencumbered by his father’s influence, ruminating unbounded about anything that takes his attention. Mozart was a musician before he was a writer. If he wanted to express true emotions, he did so through his music. And that is what he was about to do, in the immediate aftermath of his mother’s death.

  He turned to the instrument of which he was master, and composed the Piano Sonata in A minor (K.310).

  This work is without doubt the most intense and deeply personal piece of music he had composed to date. It is the only instrumental work for which he chose the dark key of A minor, and the first of only two piano sonatas in any minor key.

  It begins brightly enough, but the mood soon darkens. The main motif of the opening movement is a constantly descending phrase. It has a ring of despair to it. There is no let-up in pace as the movement drives relentlessly forward.

  In the second movement Mozart takes us deep into his world, with a mixture of emotions. The opening is singing and expressive, but then we find ourselves confined in a windowless space, and when we think we have found some comfort, he destabilises and disturbs us with dissonant chords repeated mercilessly.

  The final movement, brief and agitated, has a restless energy, and when in the middle section we think he has found light by switching to the major key, it is false hope. We are back in minor mode for a fiery ending.

  Mozart the musician is now fully mature, and masterpieces will continue to flow from him. All this from the composer himself, without the overbearing influence of his father.

  The transition to Mozart the man, alas, would be a little bumpier.

  Under instructions from his father to return to Salzburg as quickly as he could, he dawdled, taking as much time as he possibly could. He was in no hurry to be back in his home city with his father. There was something else on his mind, and he was determined to act on it.

  Throughout his stay in Paris, with all its ups and downs, the tragic loss of his mother, the success of his music, the woman he was in love with had stayed in his thoughts.

  “Mozart was a musician before he was a writer. If he wanted to express true emotions, he did so through his music.”

  He wrote regularly to Aloysia’s father, knowing his words would be passed on. Yet as far as we know, he wrote only one single letter to the woman herself, and it is a remarkable letter – not for what it says, but for what it does not say.

  He wrote it on 30 July, a little under a month since his mother had died, and the day before the lengthy letter in which he finally informs Leopold of his mother’s death. For some reason he chose to write it in Italian, possibly because that is the language of musicians, and certainly the content of the letter bears this out.

  For the most part, it is professional advice on how best to sing an aria he had composed the previous year:

  Pay attention to the expression marks … think carefully about the meaning and the force of the words … put yourself with all seriousness into Andromeda’s situation and position! – imagine yourself to be that very person.

  This is fascinating advice, and it is exactly what we might expect a singing teacher to write to his pupil. But it is hardly the sort of language a young man would use to the woman he is deeply in love with and hopes to marry. The letter is brief, and a model of politeness and courtesy. It is utterly devoid of any language that might be considered personal or intimate. Twice he refers to her as ‘Dearest Friend’, and describes himself as ‘Your true and sincere friend’.

  What it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, is a love letter. Nor does it have any of the humour he usually peppers his letters with, and certainly none of the earthy language he has used to his cousin Maria Anna, the Bäsle.

  And that particular person, with whom he has had such a fun-filled, boisterous and intimate sexual relationship, is about to re-enter the s
tory.

  It is difficult to be absolutely certain about Mozart’s motives and intentions at this particular moment in his life, since the only evidence we have to go on are his own, often convoluted and rambling, letters.

  But we can state with certainty, I believe, that he is now travelling to Munich with the firm intention of proposing marriage to Aloysia Weber. What is slightly less obvious is why he decides to involve Bäsle. This is a young woman of roughly the same age as Aloysia. Both women are in their early twenties, and he is highly attracted to each of them.

  But involve her he does. In December 1778, still on his unhurried return to Salzburg, he writes to her, imploring her to come to Munich. And in this letter, in total contrast to the formal and distant language of his letter to Aloysia, we are back in the familiar and comfortable Mozartian world of rhymes, puns, jokes, sexual innuendo and language that is sometimes downright pornographic:

  Make sure you get to Munich before the New Year,

  so I can look at you from afar and near

  I will show you around town if you don’t mind,

  and if need be I’ll clean your behind …

  Be sure to come even for a bit,

  otherwise we’ll be in deep shit.

  I shall greet you high and nobly with pizazz

  and put my personal seal on your ass

  I will kiss your hands and have such fun

  shooting off my rear-end gun.

  I shall Embrace you with a smack

  and wash you down front and back.

  I shall pay up all I owed you from the start

  and then let go a resounding fart,

  and perhaps even drop something hard …

  P.S. Shit-dibitare, shit-dibitate,

  the pastor of Rodempl,

  he licked the ass of his kitchen maid,