Mozart: The Man Revealed Read online

  The goldsmith in whose house the Mozarts were lodging deliberately hid from them the fact that one of his children had caught the disease. He was forced to own up to the fact when his two other children also came down with it. ‘You can imagine how I felt,’ Leopold wrote. What should have been a triumphant return to the imperial capital had turned into a catalogue of disasters.

  The disease, and the fact that it had struck the royal family so hard, released Leopold from any obligation to remain in Vienna. His priority was to get as far away from any smallpox-affected area as possible, so as soon as he could he left with the family for Moravia, well north of Vienna, where he had contacts. All he could do was pray that his own children did not come down with the dreaded disease.

  They did. Both of them. Wolfgang first, and worst.

  In the town of Olmütz, the already crowded hotel Zum schwarzen Adler (‘At the Black Eagle’) could offer only an uncomfortably damp room. A heater was brought in, but it belched smoke and made the family’s eyes smart.

  It was not long before Wolfgang’s cheeks began to glow red and hot. His forehead burned, his hands were as cold as ice. He could not sleep.

  The hotel managed to find a more comfortable room, and Wolfgang was carried to it, wrapped in furs. His fever continued to worsen, and he was soon delirious. Leopold suspected immediately that this was smallpox. If it was, then his worst fears would be confirmed.

  As it happened, Leopold had an impressive contact in Olmütz – one of the reasons he had journeyed there – a certain Count Podstatsky, nephew of a former archbishop of Salzburg, now dean of the cathedral. Leopold lost no time in contacting him.

  The count’s response was exemplary. He dispatched his personal doctor to the hotel to examine Wolfgang, and – with no heed to the possible spread of infection – had rooms made up in the deanery for the Mozarts.

  The doctor confirmed the worst. Wolfgang was once again wrapped in furs, and this time leather as well, and transported, shivering, to the deanery. His eyes were badly affected. They became painful and he preferred to keep them closed. For nine days it was as if he was blind.

  Small red spots appeared on his face, and soon after the smallpox broke out fully. After nine days the fever abated, the spots began to disappear, leaving behind the telltale scars; Nannerl wrote later that his face was heavily scarred from the disease. There are, as far as I can ascertain, fourteen portraits of Mozart done from life, thirteen of them after the smallpox. None shows any sign of the scars. Portrait artists were well used to covering blemishes.*

  As perhaps only a child can, Wolfgang recovered rapidly as soon as the fever abated. The bishop’s chaplain called on him and taught him card tricks, and – unlikely though it might sound – when he had regained enough strength he took fencing lessons from a local fencing instructor.

  “Young he might be, but with every passing year Mozart’s precocious talent would seem just that bit less remarkable.”

  Leopold was grateful beyond words to Count Podstatsky – though not literally. He had some time since resolved to write a biography of his remarkable son, and he promised that when he came to write it the count’s good deeds would ‘redound in no small way to his honour’.†

  For the immediate future, though, Leopold’s worries were not over. Nannerl came down with the disease. He could at least be grateful that the attack was mild, she recovered quickly, and her face was left unmarked, thus not impeding her marriage prospects.

  Once Wolfgang was fully recovered, he returned to what he loved best, bringing to fruition a new symphony, the Symphony in F (K. 43), its slow movement an orchestral arrangement of a duet from Apollo et Hyacinthus. It was Wolfgang’s first four-movement symphony.

  Both children recovered, it was time for the Mozarts to head south, back to Vienna, to try their luck once more at court. This time they had more success.

  It was a difficult journey back, the coach frequently delayed by deep and drifting snow, and maybe the family were grateful for a few days’ rest, before receiving a summons to Schönbrunn on 19 July 1768, nine days after they arrived.

  It is more than likely the empress had heard of the children’s illness, and wanted to offer sympathy and support. In the intervening months she herself had come down with smallpox. Leopold wrote to Hagenauer that he could scarcely believe his eyes to see the empress clutching his wife’s hands and stroking her cheeks, the two women speaking intimately not as ruler and subject, but as mothers. One suspects he might even have felt a small pang of envy.

  The new emperor proved a slightly tougher nut to crack, at least initially. He seems to have shown little interest in hearing Wolfgang play. The boy was now twelve years of age, on the brink of his teenage years. Young he might be, but with every passing year his precocious talent would seem just that bit less remarkable.

  And then something quite extraordinary happened. Leopold reported to Hagenauer that the emperor – out of the blue – asked Wolfgang if he would like to compose an opera and direct it. Twice he asked him, said Leopold. That was most certainly too good an opportunity to let pass.

  To Leopold this would be the passport to Italy, home of opera. In fact soon afterwards he began collecting letters of introduction to influential people in the world of Italian music. The future looked secure.

  Wolfgang was excited beyond words. This was something he really wanted to do. For Leopold it represented the logical next step for his son, and of all forms of musical entertainment it was the one most likely to bring in good money. And with the request, in effect an order, coming from the emperor himself, what could possibly go wrong?

  A lot, as Leopold was to find out. To compound matters, it was entirely his fault.

  Leopold upset just about everyone it was imperative not to upset. His arrogance completely got the better of him.

  The first to get a taste of this was the venerable Christoph Willibald Gluck, revered composer of opera, much loved by the Viennese opera-going public. His Don Juan and Orfeo ed Euridice had been enormously popular, and only weeks earlier his Alceste had been a huge hit.

  Leopold, it seems, calmly informed him that on nights when he was not leading his opera from the harpsichord, a twelve-year-old boy would be directing his. Gluck was appalled. In his mid-fifties, he considered it thoroughly demeaning that he would in effect be sharing the prestigious Burgtheater with a boy. Leopold left him in no doubt this was sanctioned from the very top.

  He then antagonised the director of the Burgtheater, who would have to bear the costs of the production. Wolfgang was raring to go, but Leopold complained the librettist was not supplying the text quickly enough.

  The opera was to be called La finta semplice (‘The feigned simpleton’), and Wolfgang intended it to be a full-length opera of two and a half to three hours.

  He began work in late January. At the end of March Leopold reported that it was going well, and that it should be ready for performance before the emperor in June. Things went badly wrong, though. The first rehearsal in late spring was a disaster, with the singers claiming the work was unsingable, and members of the orchestra complaining they did not want to be directed by a boy.

  Musical circles in Vienna were intrigued by the goings-on. Rumour spread that the music was in fact written by the boy’s father, and was ‘not worth a fig’. Calamity ensued when the theatre director cancelled the production outright, refusing to pay any fee as the work was ‘untheatrical’.

  At this point Leopold’s arrogance got the better of him. He blamed anyone and everyone. He wrote home about ‘all sorts of concocted intrigues and malicious persecutions’. Gluck, he said, persuaded all other composers to join him in opposing the project. The singers and orchestra, according to Leopold, were persuaded to say the opera was unsingable and unplayable, even though he knew perfectly well they actually admired it greatly.

  Leopold was in high dudgeon and he took the moral high ground. ‘Had I known all that I know now,’ he wrote to Hagenauer, ‘Wolfgang would never h
ave written a note, but would have been home long ago.’

  In fact Leopold was facing a dilemma. If he left now and took the family home to Salzburg, he would have to carry the burden of total failure. If he stayed, it might be to no avail and increase his costs considerably.

  It was at this point that he overreached himself. What he did next showed an appalling ignorance of etiquette, of just how little he understood about rank and hierarchy. In fact he unwittingly proved himself to be the complete outsider, the provincial adrift in the capital city of empire. He wrote directly to the emperor himself, blaming the director and management of the court theatres, people whose appointment was ultimately sanctioned by the emperor himself. He declared himself entitled to compensation for the cancellation of the opera and reimbursement of his costs.

  Verbally he complained to senior figures that the cancellation of the opera was proof of Vienna’s contempt for provincial Salzburg and its archbishop. Not words likely to earn him any friends.

  All this from a Salzburger who, it was well known in musical circles, was on protracted unpaid leave, and in danger of dismissal from the court on his return.

  The emperor accepted Leopold’s complaints and promised they would be thoroughly investigated. And that was the last Leopold heard about it. He had thoroughly burned his boats in the one place that really mattered to an aspiring musician.

  His arrogance had upset his son’s plans not only in the short term but in the longer term as well. Some years later the empress opposed giving Wolfgang a permanent position at the Habsburg court because that would have meant putting up with his family, ‘people of no use to us’.

  Wolfgang consoled himself by writing several small works, as well as a Mass, and an operetta entitled Bastien und Bastienne.

  The Mozarts returned to Salzburg after a difficult year away. It really was now time for Leopold to put his grander plan into action. Enough of Salzburg, enough of Vienna and the Habsburgs. Italy was there, waiting to be conquered.

  * Using the same calculation as in Chapter 2, this would be roughly equivalent to £300,000 in today’s money – a fortune.

  * Evidence that Hagenauer and possibly business colleagues were again subsidising the trip.

  * This is also true of portraits of Beethoven who, like Mozart, contracted smallpox as a child.

  † In fact the biography was never written.

  By the end of the year, Leopold and Wolfgang were on their way to Italy. It was no thanks to Leopold. A cheeky demand he had made to the archbishop for the salary that had been withheld from him while he was away in Vienna was rejected out of hand.

  Archbishop Schrattenbach, who had nurtured other local musical talent, made it clear he would subsidise the trip purely on account of young Wolfgang’s extraordinary musical gifts, and he expected the boy to return to his native city polished by Italian culture and ready to contribute to Salzburg’s musical life.

  Leopold wanted to set out as soon as possible, but he was made to wait, as if the court was reluctant to give way on everything. It was almost at the end of the year, on 13 December 1769, that the carriage rolled out of Salzburg.

  There were only two people in it. This moment was a turning point in the lives of the Mozart family. Leopold, paterfamilias, decided that he and his son Wolfgang would travel alone.

  The lower costs of just two people travelling played a part in his decision, but there was more to it than that. Leopold could see how much more impressive Wolfgang was than his elder sister. She was good at the keyboard, but he was very much better. And so far she had shown little inclination to compose. As for Wolfgang, he could barely compose fast enough.

  There was also the matter of age. Nannerl was now eighteen, an adult. She might be very accomplished at the keyboard, but she was no longer the child wonder she had been on earlier tours. Remaining at home, she could be expected to take in a few students, thus bringing some money in. She was also of marriageable age. Leopold had every reason to hope that during his absence she might make a good match.

  Wolfgang was six weeks short of his fourteenth birthday. He too was no longer a wunderkind. He was still short of stature (which his father admitted was something of a concern), with sparkling eyes and a beguiling face that slipped into a smile at the slightest opportunity. His skill at the keyboard, not to mention tricks such as playing on a covered keyboard, stunned and baffled professional musicians twenty and more years older than him. Leopold was in no doubt of the effect he would have on Italian audiences.

  There was the added bonus that much of the music Wolfgang would play was also composed by him. These were not childish jottings, but works of such maturity and complexity that doubts always arose as to whether he could possibly have composed them. Leopold had by now learned how to dispel these suspicions and, given his tender age, Wolfgang was more than happy to obey instructions and oblige his father.

  To this end father and son took with them a stack of manuscripts, from chamber pieces, choral works, to symphonies and piano pieces – all the work of Wolfgang. And Leopold had done his homework. He had made use of the delay in departure to contact noble houses in northern Italy that belonged to Habsburg aristocracy, as northern Italy was part of the Habsburg empire and was ruled from Vienna. Leopold knew even before they left that they would be received, royally in some cases, in major cities across the north of Italy.

  Perhaps even he could not have foreseen the full extent of what he and his son were embarking on. In the event they would stay on tour for fifteen months. Wolfgang would perform in almost forty cities and towns, travelling all the way down to Naples in the south. As well as numerous private recitals, he would give at least twenty-five public performances – and he would still find time to compose around twenty new pieces of music.

  Verona, Mantua, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples – and these are only the principal towns and cities. The teenage boy would be feted in some of the most musical, musically sophisticated, and indeed musically critical, cities in the whole of Europe.

  We have copious information on the tour, since Leopold continued to be an indisputably prodigious letter writer. All the more so, since he was now separated from his wife. And since it was his wife he was writing to, rather than a friend, there is more intimacy in the letters than there was on previous tours.

  At the bottom of almost all Leopold’s letters, Wolfgang added a postscript to his sister or less often to his mother. Often he would enclose a separate letter to Nannerl. It is the first opportunity we have to hear Wolfgang’s own words, allowing us for the first time to form a true picture of the young genius’s personality.

  Verona and Mantua were almost like warm-up destinations ahead of the biggest prize in northern Italy, Milan. In both cities Wolfgang performed, to much praise and adulation. Now Leopold had his sights firmly set on Milan. It was imperative Wolfgang was well received there.

  Milan was the centre of Austrian government in northern Italy. Senior members of the Habsburg aristocracy had homes there. There was constant communication between Vienna and Milan at a senior level. It is beyond doubt that word of Wolfgang’s achievements throughout Europe had reached Milan. We can also assume Leopold would have had letters of recommendation in his pocket bearing many an aristocratic seal.

  The two, father and son, arrived in Milan at noon on 23 January 1770. On the journey their feet were enveloped in muffs lined with wolf fur against the bitter cold. They lodged in the Augustinian monastery of San Marco, which was warm and comfortable, much to Wolfgang’s relief.

  The journey across the Alps into northern Italy and then west across Veneto and Lombardy to Milan had taken its toll. Wolfgang’s face had become red and leathery in the icy temperatures ‘as if he had been on a military expedition’, Leopold wrote. Worse, much worse, his hands showed signs of frostbite.

  The nobleman who was Leopold’s main contact in Milan, Count Karl Joseph von Firmian, was unwell, which at least allowed Wolfgang some time to recuperate. A kindly Brother Al
phonso provided him with four mattresses to curl up on, to which he added a warming pan every night. Wolfgang was soon able to shake off the rigours of the journey.

  Count Firmian, a nephew of a former archbishop of Salzburg and now governor-general of Lombardy, is one of those characters whose place in history is assured by his ability to recognise youthful genius and nurture it. A highly cultured man, he spoke several languages and had a library of forty thousand books. He was to be a constant advocate of Wolfgang, directly or indirectly, in Italy, and would be responsible for the commission of several future operas. He was the perfect contact.*

  As soon as Count Firmian was recovered, he summoned the Mozarts and laid plans for Wolfgang to demonstrate his powers to the aristocracy and cognoscenti of Milan. A first concert was held at the count’s palace on 18 February, at which the guests of honour were the Duke of Modena and his daughter, who was about to marry into the Habsburg royal family.

  Count Firmian was so impressed with Wolfgang that he arranged for him to give a public concert just five days later. He also decided to subsidise it so it would be free to the public, which was rare in itself. It is easy to imagine Leopold being less than pleased, and this might be why, in a letter home, he said no more than that the concert went off ‘just as all our concerts have done everywhere’.

  “Just because Wolfgang is an unsurpassed musical genius does not mean he is not subject to the same thoughts and desires as any adolescent boy.”

  The main event of the stay came two and a half weeks later, again at the count’s palace. It was a special gala evening for a select audience of a hundred and fifty guests. The crème de la crème of Milanese society was there.

  It was, predictably, a triumph. Count Firmian immediately commissioned Wolfgang to write an opera for the following season at Milan’s prestigious and renowned opera house, the Teatro Regio Ducal.*

  Leopold’s eyes must have watered when he saw the contract, which was for 100 cigliati.† Count Firmian had worked out a sensible timetable. A libretto would be forwarded to the Mozarts as they headed south from Milan. Wolfgang could begin work, and then return to Milan in early November with enough time to work with the singers.