Mozart: The Man Revealed Page 6

  Leopold was perplexed. He might have been poking fun at the eccentricity of English currency when he said, ‘Once I leave England I shall never see guineas again. So we must make the most of our opportunity.’ But the lack of income clearly worried him.

  A few months later, with the situation not improving, he reported that attendance at a concert by the children at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket was ‘not as strong as I hoped’, and wondered ‘why we are not being treated more generously’.

  If public displays were slowing down, that at least afforded young Wolfgang the time to indulge his rapidly growing passion for composition. During the entire stay in London, a period of almost sixteen months, he composed his first symphonies, several keyboard pieces, as well as a set of six violin (or flute) sonatas K. 10–15, which he dedicated to the queen. There were vocal pieces too.

  It is beyond doubt that Leopold oversaw many of these, but he professed himself impressed beyond words at his son’s talent for composition.

  There was one encounter for Wolfgang that was to lead to his name being associated with one of the greatest family names in music, even at this tender age. Resident in London for the past several years had been Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of the great Johann Sebastian. A complete Anglophile, he was known as John Bach, as well as ‘The London Bach’, and would spend the rest of his life in London.

  Probably on the recommendation of the royal couple, to whom Bach was well known and highly respected, a meeting was arranged between him and young Wolfgang. Leopold, surprisingly, barely refers to this in his letters, but Nannerl – writing many years later – gives us an entrancing description of the encounter between a well-established musician close to thirty years of age, and the boy of eight.

  Bach, she writes, took Wolfgang

  between his knees, the former played a few bars, and then the other continued, and in this way they played a whole sonata, and anyone not watching would have thought it was played by one person alone.12

  Another of those present confirmed that Bach sat Wolfgang on his lap and they played together. He wrote that they led each other into ‘very abstruse harmonies and extraneous modulations’ in which, he stated categorically, ‘the child beat the man’.13

  There is no doubt that Bach spread the word of the boy’s remarkable talent, and Wolfgang himself remembered J. C. Bach for the rest of his life with affection.

  The Mozarts finally left London on 24 July 1765. The prolonged stay in the British capital – more than fifteen months – might not have been the unalloyed success Leopold was hoping for, and he confessed himself disappointed. But he left having amassed a considerable amount of money; several times he had sent earnings back to Salzburg.

  There is also no doubting the fact that his young son – and to a lesser extent his daughter – had conquered London. Wolfgang had played before royalty, the aristocracy, and the general populace. He had been feted at every turn. His name was now spoken of with awe in the most sophisticated and important capital in Europe.

  More importantly for the history of music, Wolfgang had begun to compose. These were not childish jottings; they were already showing some of the genius that was to emerge in the coming years.

  Could it be possible for a child of such a tender age to emerge from all this unscathed? Leopold clearly thought so, but he was wrong.

  * A century later it gave the word vokzal, meaning ‘central railway station’, to the Russian language, when a music pavilion was built next to the railway station in Pavlovsk and named the Vauxhall Pavilion.

  † Little over a decade later, Johann van Beethoven – quite possibly taking his cue from Leopold Mozart – was to practise a similar deception at his son Ludwig’s first public recital in Cologne, advertising his age as six when he was in fact seven.

  We have to be grateful to Leopold Mozart for so completely chronicling the family’s travels in copious letters home. Without them we would know precious little of this extraordinary voyage that spread the Mozart name across Europe.

  It is as if Leopold’s thoughts minute by minute are being put down on paper, including the most mundane – which are themselves totally fascinating. It is so easy to picture him standing, frustrated, scratching his head, one hand on his hip, probably blaming his wife, when he writes on leaving London, ‘Just to look at our baggage makes the perspiration run down my face. We cannot leave everything here, yet we cannot take everything with us.’ What modern traveller, looking at too much luggage, has not felt that exact sentiment?

  Just for once, one aspect of the journey did not cause problems. The graphic description of the seasickness the Mozarts had suffered crossing the Channel persuaded Hagenauer and his wife to invoke divine intervention for the return journey, by praying to the Madonna of Maria Plain at the church dedicated to her just outside Salzburg.

  It worked. The weather was glorious, the sky blue, the wind favourable. The family disembarked at Calais with sharpened appetites for lunch.

  It had been Leopold’s plan to return to Paris, pick up the belongings they had left there, and head for home. It did not work out quite that way, thanks initially to a very persistent Dutchman.

  Shortly before the Mozarts had left London, the Dutch ambassador called on them to try to persuade Leopold to take the family to The Hague, so that Wolfgang could perform before Princess Caroline of Nassau-Weilburg, sister of William V of Orange. It seems Leopold had politely declined, because just a few days later, on 24 July, the envoy called again, to find the Mozarts had left that very day. Undeterred, he pursued them to Canterbury.

  It’s not surprising Leopold had declined. He had already written to Hagenauer stating he had no intention of taking the family to The Hague, ‘of that I can assure you’. The Dutch he had come across so far, mostly innkeepers, he had found ‘a bit uncouth’. In any case the family had been away from home for long enough. It was time they returned to Salzburg.

  “It was now that the rigours of the journey finally caught up with the Mozarts.”

  But the envoy’s persistence paid off, no doubt to his relief. The Princess had heard from her relatives in the English royal family how remarkable Wolfgang was, and insisted on seeing him for herself. The ambassador was able to offer Leopold a financial inducement he simply could not refuse. And so it was back on the road again, north to The Hague, not south-east towards Salzburg and home.

  It was now that the rigours of the journey finally caught up with the Mozarts. There had been bouts of illness in London, but now they were truly laid low. First Wolfgang, and then his father, came down with severe colds, forcing them to remain in Lille for a full month.

  Leopold was still not fully recovered when they packed up and moved on again. With stops on the way, during which Wolfgang performed on the organ, the family arrived by canal boat in the Hague on 10 or 11 September.

  Within a day Wolfgang was performing for the Princess, but Nannerl stayed behind at their lodgings. She was feeling unwell, with symptoms of a chest cold. It appeared not to be too serious, and Leopold went ahead and scheduled a ‘Grand Concert’ for the evening of 30 September. Both Nannerl and Wolfgang were to perform keyboard concertos with full orchestra, and the orchestra was to perform two of Wolfgang’s symphonies.

  But Nannerl suddenly took a turn for the worse, and on the evening of the 26th she started to shiver and had to lie down. Soon she was gripped by a high fever. Her throat was inflamed and Leopold summoned a doctor, recommended by the diplomatic corps, who bled her. Over the ensuing days more doctors came to inspect Nannerl and offer advice.

  Nannerl became more emaciated by the day. Leopold and his wife were advised that nothing else could be done for her, and that they should prepare for the worst. Leopold summoned a priest and Nannerl was given the last rites. Leopold and Anna Maria kept a constant vigil at her bedside, taking it in turns so the other could get some sleep.

  Later he wrote, ‘Though my poor daughter did not breathe her last, I have seen her near the agonie
s of death.’ We must forgive Leopold a certain callousness, even humour, in his description of worrying events, since he was writing after Nannerl had recovered, but he left those back in Salzburg in no doubt as to how close Nannerl had come to death.

  Had anyone heard the several evenings of conversation among the three of us – my wife, myself, and my daughter – during which we persuaded her of the vanity of this world and of the blessedly happy death of children, he would not have listened with dry eyes.

  Nannerl was delirious, and Leopold describes her rambling in English, French and German. He and his wife, he confessed, could not help laughing, in spite of their distress. And he rounded off the drama with what is almost an aside, ‘Meanwhile, in the next room, little Wolfgang entertained himself with his music.’

  Nannerl was still very unwell, clearly hovering between life and death, when Leopold – his mind, it seems, as much on financial loss as his daughter’s precarious state – decided to apportion blame:

  Now God has upset my calculations. If God spares her, I cannot expose her capriciously to the obvious danger of losing her life through an inopportune journey. You can easily understand that I have derived no advantage from this accident, but the greatest loss.

  Against all odds Nannerl turned the corner. She was well on the road to recovery, Leopold wrote, when the royal physician arrived, dispatched by the Princess herself, just in time to claim credit and receive gratitude. His most effective advice, according to a cynical Leopold, was to prescribe ‘good calves soup with well-boiled rice’.

  The crisis was over. Nannerl soon felt well enough to get out of bed and attempt to walk. But then crisis number two struck, and it was a crisis that carried a much greater threat to the Mozart family enterprise and its earning power. Wolfgang began to develop the same symptoms as his sister. And now we begin to get a true indication of the effects of the punishing schedule Leopold had inflicted on his young son.

  Some week earlier, doctors who had come to see Nannerl also apparently encountered Wolfgang, and reported their concerns that he did not look healthy. In fact, so unhealthy did he appear, according to the British Minister to The Hague, that they agreed he would ‘not be long lived’.

  They were not entirely wrong. For eight days Wolfgang was nearly comatose, and for four weeks his life hung in the balance. So vivid is Leopold’s description of his son’s illness that we cannot accuse him of exaggeration. It is quite understandable that he thought his son, who he knew was a musical prodigy unlike any the world had seen – ‘this prodigy of nature’ he had called him – was going to die, just a month before his tenth birthday.

  Wolfgang’s lips turned hard and black, and peeled away three times. His tongue seemed to have turned to wood. He lost all power of speech. For eight days he was unable to utter a single word. On 12 December Leopold wrote, ‘He is not only absolutely unrecognisable, but has nothing left except his tender skin and tiny bones, and for the last five days he has been carried daily from his bed to a chair.’ There is a hint that Wolfgang had endured the worst in those last few words. Had he not been showing signs of some recovery, he surely would not have been moved from bed to chair.

  As the days progressed the small boy was helped from the chair and encouraged to take a few faltering steps. Leopold and Anna Maria began to lead him gently across the room ‘so that little by little he may learn to move his feet again, and also to stand upright unaided’.

  For several months past the Mozart family had been struck down by illness. Only Anna Maria appears to have escaped it, although, given Leopold’s reluctance – deliberately or otherwise – to give any news about her in his letters, it is quite possible she was unwell too. He does say that for almost three months she did not dare leave the children’s rooms, as they were so seriously ill.

  With all the caveats about retrospective diagnosis two and a half centuries later, it seems both Nannerl and Wolfgang had succumbed to typhoid. The rigours of travel, poor hygiene, food and drink that was quite possibly contaminated – all point to typhoid, which drains the body of all energy.

  A high fever, rashes, sickness, diarrhoea, and the body totally drained, figuratively and literally. In a strange room in a strange town, with no effective treatment, it is no wonder the children were so very ill.

  Given what we know of Wolfgang’s health during his short life, it is tempting to see this illness as the beginning of it all, and that he never fully recovered his strength. It certainly seems he suffered more acutely than Nan-nerl. His symptoms sound appalling. Maybe it is not so surprising his sister was to outlive him by so many years.

  With both children now recovered, there was work to be done, financial losses to be recouped. Leopold had no time for sentimentality. He couched it in slightly less strident tones in his letters. To head straight home now, a lengthy journey in midwinter with the children so recently ill, would be folly, he wrote.

  But there is no doubt he was feeling the loss of income from both children being laid up for so long. Both of them were in front of an audience again on 22 January 1766 in The Hague. Less than a month later the family were in Amsterdam, where they stayed for five weeks.

  Leopold was back to his old tricks, as impresario and as an eighteenth-century public relations man. He advertised the children’s upcoming performances, subtracting a year from his son’s age, and stating that the two of them would play ‘not only concertos together on different harpsichords, but also on the same one with four hands, and finally the boy will play on the organ his own caprices, fugues, and other pieces of the most profound music’.

  Early in March they were back in The Hague, with Wolfgang composing at least nine new pieces for performance in royal circles. Then it was back to Amsterdam, on to Rotterdam and Antwerp, with yet more performances.

  We have an interesting insight into Leopold’s character during the stay in Amsterdam. He was, it seems, a deeply religious man, a devout Roman Catholic. He had continually asked Hagenauer back in Salzburg to offer prayers for the children during their illness, and he no doubt ascribed their ‘miraculous’ (his word) recovery at least in part to divine intervention. This is reinforced by the fact that time and again Leopold attributes his children’s otherworldly musical talents – particularly those of Wolfgang – to a divine gift, a gift straight from God.

  We have practical evidence of his deep religious conviction. In Amsterdam, he writes that he met an old friend from Salzburg who he was appalled and saddened to find had embraced Calvinism. He says he spent much time and energy trying to draw him back into the Catholic fold. We have no reason to doubt this is true.

  Back on the road the family passed through Mechelen (today Malines) in the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), where they called on the archbishop. This is the town from which a musician and singer by the name of Ludwig van Beethoven had left for Bonn thirty-four years earlier. His grandson, named for him, was to change the course of music, and be a lifelong admirer of the composer whose life this book chronicles.

  Brussels, Valenciennes, Cambrai and finally Paris, with the opportunity to rest – possibly. The family remained in the French capital for two months, and we have very little detail about the stay. However, one witness wrote a vivid account of the children’s talents, stating that Nannerl was brilliant on the harpsichord, and the only person who could outplay her was her young brother, who had already composed symphonies, and whose profound grasp of harmony was ‘beyond comprehension’.

  It is more than likely that there were more performances. Paris was an expensive city, and Leopold would no doubt have wanted to see some return for their stay there.

  They left Paris on the evening of 9 July. More cities, more performances. Lyons, then into Switzerland to Geneva, on to Lausanne, Berne, Zurich. Into Germany, to Donaueschingen and Munich. It is exhausting just to contemplate the Mozarts’ schedule. It is also almost unnatural. Even if they had not been recovering from serious illness, we would say that Leopold was driving them hard, very hard ind
eed, and to some extent it is to cover his own increasing sense of unease.

  He had now been away from Salzburg, and from the court – the source of his income – for more than three years, and the strain was beginning to show in his letters home to Hagenauer. He was worried on two counts, professional and personal.

  Accommodation in Salzburg was weighing heavily on his mind. He would be returning home to very different circumstances from those he had left more than three years ago.

  His two children were now recognised throughout Europe as musical prodigies. Of the two, clearly, Wolfgang was the more talented, but Nan-nerl’s skills as a musician were not to be underestimated, and they provided her with one great advantage. She was highly eligible as a wife. Her skills would surely be appreciated by a suitor, and might well bring money in if she chose later to teach.

  Nannerl was now fifteen, and that was a marriageable age. In Salzburg she would require some privacy at home. Clearly she could not continue to share her mother’s bed, as she had done before and again on tour.

  The same applied to Wolfgang, only more so. Leopold was a good enough musician himself to know that Wolfgang was talented beyond what was conceivable, even for someone supremely gifted. As a religious man he knew he was dealing here with something outside earthly comprehension.

  On a practical level, Leopold understood that Wolfgang’s future lay in his extraordinary ability to compose music. Performers, virtuosos, were not in short supply in Vienna, capital city of music, but to compose was to put a musician into an entirely different class.

  Compositions were what would ensure immortality, more than skill at the keyboard, and if there were already composers in Vienna, they were far fewer in number than performers, and certainly none possessed the extra-ordinary talent that Wolfgang did, leaving aside the fact that they were many years older.