Mozart: The Man Revealed Page 4

  Leopold, always ready to report as much on what went wrong as on any successes, complained in a letter that the custom in Munich was to keep musicians waiting, sometimes for a long time, thus forcing them to run up extra costs for accommodation, meals and so on. To compound matters, he said, at the end it was unlikely any profit would be made. Whatever was received would cover expenses and no more.

  He was preparing to move on, having found a brief gap in the elector’s schedule of hunting by day and attending French comedies at night to show off his son’s virtuosity, when the elector let it be known he wanted to hear the daughter play as well. That meant prolonging the stay.

  In the event Nannerl performed admirably, and Leopold was pleasantly surprised to receive generous payment.

  They finally got away from Munich after a stay of almost ten days, and headed for Augsburg. Leopold was not looking forward to this part of the trip. He had never been fond of his home town. After all, he had left it at the first opportunity to attend university in Salzburg.

  There was also the embarrassment – and guilt, I am certain – of the rift with his mother. So deep was the break, as I have already noted, that his mother did not even come to hear her grandchildren perform.

  ‘I was detained in Augsburg for a long time and profited little or nothing’ and ‘Everything [in the Zu den drei Mohren inn] was uncommonly expensive’ were some of his comments, and as if to justify the surprising lack of interest in his children’s recitals, he blamed the fact that ‘those who came to the concerts were almost all Lutherans’.

  His sourness was at least to some extent unjustified, as the local newspaper eulogised his ‘two wonderful children’, and wrote of ‘the extraordinary gifts a magnanimous God has bestowed in so abundant a measure upon these two dear little ones’.

  Ever mindful of money and unnecessary expense, Leopold did invest in one rather surprising acquisition in Augsburg – a keyboard small enough to be carried on their travels. You have to wonder whether maybe the two children ganged up on their father, pointing out that they were unable to practise on their constant travels, since hotel rooms did not boast pianos.*

  As swiftly as he could, Leopold moved the family on to Ulm, around seventy-five miles west of Munich, another town Leopold had no liking for. ‘Loathsome, old-fashioned, tastelessly built,’ he wrote back to Salzburg. The quaint crooked streets and half-timbered houses dating from the Middle Ages held no appeal for him. He preferred classical order, balance, symmetry, though one does get the impression that, at that stage of the family’s travels, nothing would have satisfied him.

  In fact matters were about to get a whole lot worse. Leopold’s plan was to head next to Stuttgart, seat of Duke Karl Eugen, known to be a great patron of the arts, and generous with his financial rewards for artists. In Leopold’s pocket was a glowing letter of recommendation from a senior canon in Salzburg.

  But, en route, while at a coaching station changing horses, Leopold learned that the duke had left for his country palace north of Stuttgart, and intended travelling on from there to his hunting lodge.

  Undeterred, but no doubt cursing under his breath, Leopold ordered his coachman to change course, in the hope of catching the duke at his palace. He and the family arrived before the duke had moved on, and Leopold lost no time in making contact with the duke’s Italian kapellmeister.

  He brandished his letter of recommendation, but the Italian shrugged. Duke Eugen’s every minute was taken up with moving, with an entourage of almost two thousand, to his hunting lodge. Even an audience was out of the question, let alone a musical recital.

  Leopold appealed to the duke’s master of hounds, in a somewhat desperate attempt to persuade him to delay everything. This not only failed; it backfired. The official, knowing the duke was worried that he did not have enough horses for his huge entourage, commandeered Leopold’s.

  The Mozarts were stranded. Now Leopold really let his venom fly. It was all the dastardly Italian’s fault, he wrote home, adding that the wretched man hated Germans and was interested only in Italian musicians.

  Leopold finally secured fresh horses and on 12 July the Mozarts managed to get away and continue their travels. They journeyed on through southern Germany and up through the Rhineland, stopping in Heidelberg, Mainz, Frankfurt and Koblenz.

  Leopold kept up a steady stream of letters back to Hagenauer in Salzburg. He chronicles his children’s successes, their health – despite a storm more ferocious than any Leopold had ever experienced, the children slept soundly – and copious details about money, how much was earned, how much was spent on food and lodging, whether exchange rates were favourable or otherwise. Interestingly, there is barely a word in his letters about his wife. Certainly Leopold’s main concern was to appraise Hagenauer of expenditure and other practical details, but the families were more than business associates; they were friends too. The omission is curious.

  “Frankfurt, commercial and cultural capital of the area, was nothing short of a triumph.”

  They had now been away for over a month, with not very much to show for their efforts. There had been performances, much praise, money had come in, but little more than enough to cover expenses. Leopold was constantly having to justify drawing money on Hagenauer’s chain of business accounts.

  There was a certain amount of time to relax. In the medieval university town of Heidelberg they became tourists, visiting the fortress set on a height to guard the town. Leopold bemoaned the damage done to it in the recent wars against the French.

  They no doubt enjoyed seeing the giant beer cask, famed throughout the region, which held nearly 220,000 litres of the much loved liquid. And maybe father and son purchased fancy waistcoats the town was famous for. Leopold certainly mentions the two of them visiting the factory where they were made.

  Frankfurt, commercial and cultural capital of the area, was nothing short of a triumph – something Leopold presumably felt was much needed. He publicly announced that on 18 August a concert would take place that would appeal ‘to all those who take pleasure in extraordinary things … with incredible skill a girl of twelve and a boy of seven will play concertos, trios [with Leopold], and sonatas’.

  Which is what they did, with such success that the concert was repeated four times. At the fifth concert (possibly at the earlier ones too), Wolfgang invited members of the audience to play single notes or chords on any instrument they wished, even on bells, glasses and clock chimes. He would name the notes.

  As a clincher, his pièce de résistance, he would play the keyboard with the keys covered by a cloth – not just play, but improvise ‘in all keys, even the most difficult’.

  The audience was suitably stunned, and it was this concert Goethe recalled attending at the age of fourteen all those decades later.

  There was one small fly in the ointment. Hagenauer was beginning to become just a little concerned about the amount of money it was all costing. His letter to Leopold has not survived, but Leopold’s reply has, and in it he laments the high cost of hotels, laundry, food and tips. He makes the point that the money accruing to them through the children’s efforts is keeping pace with expenditure, and appeals to Hagenauer’s – and the archbishop’s – vanity when he writes, ‘We must travel nobly or worthily in order to preserve our health and the reputation of my court.’

  And travel nobly he continued to do. He now most certainly had the appetite for continued journeying and more performances to show off his children. He had three goals in his sights, of increasing importance: Brussels, Paris and, most prestigious of all, London.

  Crossing the border from Germany into the Austrian Netherlands* could be said to be the first time the Mozarts had travelled abroad. Technically they were still within the Holy Roman Empire, in its most westerly outpost, but to Leopold, at least, they were firmly in alien territory. The locals had no command of the German language, so Leopold found himself at a disadvantage when it came to haggling over price. He complained that publicans and innkee
pers immediately inflated the bill when they realised he was a foreigner.

  He was in a bad mood even before arriving in the capital. The iron hoops on the carriage wheels had burst, meaning extra stops for repairs, and more expense.

  Once in Brussels, he complained that he was unable to negotiate a preferential rate at the exorbitant Hôtel d’Angleterre. His mood was darkened still further when the local ruler, Prince Karl Alexander von Lothringen, let it be known he would like to hear the Mozart children play ‘within a few days’, but those days soon became weeks, with no further word from the palace.

  In a classic fit of Leopold pique, after five weeks of waiting he wrote to Hagenauer that ‘the Prince spends his time hunting, eating, and drinking, and in the end it appears he has no money’. He did concede, though, that the recitals the children had given in the meantime to various members of the local nobility had been well rewarded, though he had not received as much in cash as he had hoped.

  ‘Little Wolfgang has been given two magnificent swords … My little girl has received Dutch lace from the archbishop, and other courtiers have given cloaks, coats, and so forth. With snuffboxes, needle cases, and such things, we should soon be able to set up a shop.’ Leopold was clearly hoping to raise a smile back in Salzburg, but the underlying disappointment and frustration in his words come clearly through.

  As on various other stops, the Mozarts did some sightseeing on their idle days. Coming from landlocked Salzburg, they delighted in seeing ocean-going ships sailing right through the centre of the city, gliding through the paved banks of the canal that led to Antwerp and the open sea.

  Leopold took in a bit of culture. He admired works by the great Flemish artists, such as van Eyck, Rubens and Van Dyck, while A Last Supper by Dirk Bouts he confessed had rooted him to the spot. He wandered in and out of Flemish churches, with their stark altars of black and white marble.

  He remarked on how almost everyone had heavy wooden shoes, and the women wore hooded cloaks. A meal in an inn was meat and turnips ladled from a cauldron suspended above a hearth. In an inn outside the city he laughed when a herd of pigs invaded the dining room and waddled and grunted beneath the tables. He imagined himself in one of the medieval paintings he had seen.

  Finally, the waiting was over. On 7 November, after almost six weeks, a ‘big concert’ was held in the presence of Prince Karl. It was, as always, a huge success. Leopold was delighted to report back to his paymasters in Salzburg that he had received ‘a rich booty of fat thalers and louis d’or’.

  Eight days later he packed his family into the now rather battered coach and set out for Paris. The journey took four days, with three overnight stops. Leopold reverted to his habitual complaining. The rates for hiring horses were astonishingly high; the ubiquitous cobbles wreaked havoc on the carriage’s suspension, particularly since the coachmen whipped the horses to a gallop, and men and horses were changed every two hours (Leopold had paid extra for express travel, to save on more overnight stops). As for the men he saw climb aboard to take the reins, it is worth quoting him in full. It is a delightful mix of humour, sarcasm and, one suspects since this is Leopold, frustration.

  Sometimes I took them for a pair of pedlars, sometimes for a pair of rogues from a farce, sometimes for a pair of Italian donkey drivers, sometimes for a pair of vagabond hairdressers, or dismissed jobless lackeys, or even valets, sometimes for a pair of discharged sergeant majors.

  He added, just in case Hagenauer and company had not got the point, that they travelled at such speed and in such chaos that he felt like ‘a soldier in the Army of Empire pursued by two divisions of Prussians’.

  The Mozarts arrived in the outskirts of Paris on the afternoon of 18 November. Lying before them was a great European capital without ramparts and fortified gates – a sight for central European eyes to marvel at.

  The family was now truly abroad and the city they were about to take up residence in was a place of contrasts. Leopold lost no time in relaying his impressions to Salzburg. The streets were malodorous with no effective drainage, yet along them travelled coaches that amazed him with their beauty, many of them japanned, he said, like harpsichords.

  He found ‘very few beautiful churches’. Apparently not even Notre-Dame impressed him. To make up for it, there was a ‘large number of beautiful hôtels or palaces on whose interior decoration no expense has been spared, each of them containing extraordinary things, all in all everything a person can ever imagine as necessary to the comfort of his body and delight of his senses’.

  As for the comfort of the body, he was so impressed by an English import that he described it in detail to Hagenauer – or at least in as much detail as sensibilities would allow. It was the flushing toilet:

  On both sides are handles that can be turned after the business has been done. One handle causes water to spurt downwards, the other sends the water – which can even be warm – spurting upwards. I do not know how to explain it to you more fully in polite and respectable language. You must imagine the rest or ask me in good time.

  He added that the toilet cabinets were beautifully tiled in the Dutch manner, and that on highly decorated pedestals were exquisitely painted porcelain chamber pots. Nearby were glasses of perfumed water and pots filled with aromatic plants.

  And the exquisite line: ‘Usually one finds a handsome sofa nearby – for a sudden fainting spell, I believe.’

  Paris was also – and this was of somewhat more importance to the Mozarts than even a flushing toilet – the musical capital of mainland Europe. It had a grand opera house, and a smaller rival one that was giving rise to a new form of entertainment, opéra comique, something at which Wolfgang in years to come would excel.

  Many wealthy aristocrats were patrons of the arts, and the city had a flourishing music-publishing industry. It is therefore surprising that there were few public concerts; the Mozarts’ best hope lay in performing at the palaces of the nobility, and the ultimate prize, at the Versailles court of Louis XV.

  They were offered accommodation at the palace of Count van Eyck, the Bavarian minister in the city. This arrangement pleased Leopold, allowing him to cancel the expensive rooms he had reserved.

  He was even more pleased to find that their room was large and comfortable, containing a double-keyboard harpsichord. He was also intrigued to discover that in a secluded corner of the mansion the Count ran a gambling casino, protected against French law by being technically in Bavarian territory.

  All was set fair for the Mozart children to conquer Paris. But fate intervened. One of King Louis’s grandchildren had contracted smallpox and died suddenly. The court wore black and all entertainments were suspended.

  As they were used to doing, the Mozarts made good use of the time. The family had by now travelled far and wide, and word about them had travelled even further and faster. There was never any shortage of invitations to play in the palaces of the aristocracy wherever they went, and Paris was no exception.

  One man in particular eased their way in Paris, and he has thereby earned a small place in musical history. His name was Friedrich Melchior Grimm, a Bavarian who had become secretary to Louis Philippe, Duc d’Orléans.

  With access to high places he arranged concerts and soirées for the Mozarts, even to the extent of selling tickets and arranging for wax to light the hall. In short, he managed their musical activities. He also coached Leopold in court etiquette and what particular turns of phrase were popular at court, in preparation for the anticipated invitation to travel to Versailles.

  Leopold was naturally delighted to be in the hands of a fellow Bavarian, with whom he would have so much in common, not least the language.

  And how did Herr Grimm earn his place in musical history? Young Wolfgang had been using his time well, particularly since he now had a harpsichord at his disposal. He had composed two sets of sonatas for harpsichord and violin. It was Grimm who advised him on which members of French royalty and aristocracy he should dedicate them to, and it is
more than likely that the dedications, in flowery French, were written by him.

  Of perhaps greater service to the boy genius – and musical history – Grimm wrote in his fortnightly newsletter, the Correspondance Littéraire, Philosophique et Critique that at one concert a woman had asked Wolfgang if he would accompany her as she sang an Italian song she knew by heart.

  Wolfgang did not know the song, wrote Grimm, and so his accompaniment had a few mistakes in the bass. At the end of the song, Wolfgang asked the woman to sing it again. This time, he not only played the entire melody with his right hand, but with his left added the correct bass. Twice more he asked the woman to sing, and each time he varied the accompaniment. ‘He would have gone on twenty times had we not stepped in,’ Grimm wrote. With deliberate hyperbole he described ‘such an extraordinary phenomenon that one has difficulty believing what one sees with one’s eyes and hears with one’s ears … Now I understand why St Paul fell into a trance after his strange vision.’11

  As far as I am aware, this is the first description we have of what Wolfgang was actually capable of achieving at the keyboard, as opposed to general descriptions such as being able to play with his hands covered.

  The period of court mourning over, the Mozarts duly travelled to Versailles, where Wolfgang and Nannerl performed before the king and queen, to predictable acclaim. Leopold was pleased to report a payment of 1,200 livres.

  He also wrote with paternal pride that his son ‘bewitched almost everyone’. It is not difficult to see why. At the age of just eight, and small for his age, dressed in a black suit and three-cornered hat, he drew attention like a magnet.

  The king’s daughters allowed him to kiss their hands, and returned his kisses. The queen, Polish-born and fluent in German, conversed easily with him. Members of the royal family were seen to hurry along corridors in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. The English and Russian ambassadors sought him out.