Mozart: The Man Revealed Page 9

  A sweetener, should Leopold have required it, was a gift from the count to Wolfgang of a snuffbox set in gold containing 20 cigliati. Leopold might well have been irritated by Count Firmian’s decision to allow Wolfgang to perform free of charge, but it had most certainly paid dividends.

  Father and son left Milan on 15 March, knowing they would be back towards the end of the year, and with a very nice contract burning a hole in Leopold’s pocket.

  Let us look at this boy by the name of Wolfgang Mozart who had just passed his fourteenth birthday. Wolfgang, Wolferl to his family and friends, a boisterous, energetic, hyper (as we might say today) live wire, with boundless energy, albeit prone to sudden and severe illness, was entering adolescence. And what fascinates adolescent boys? Girls, of course. Just because Wolfgang is an unsurpassed musical genius does not mean he is not subject to the same thoughts and desires as any other adolescent boy.

  In a letter to his sister from Milan, Wolfgang writes of a prima ballerina he has seen at the ballet: ‘They say she is not at all bad looking, but I haven’t seen her up close.’ And of one of the singers at the opera: ‘The second Dona is not bad looking on stage, young, but nothing spessial.’16 To say that this is a foretaste of what is to come is an understatement of gigantic proportions.

  The same applies – much, much more so – to another area of fascination for Wolfgang, again something he shares with other adolescent boys, and that is bodily functions. There is a dancer at the ballet who jumps very well, but ‘he can’t write like me: [I write as easily as] pigs piss’.

  More than anything it is bodily functions from the rear end that hold, and will continue to hold, an endless fascination for him. We will come across this time and again, indeed throughout his life, even later – to the bewilderment and embarrassment of learned and academic musicologists from that day to this – gelling with his musical activities.

  In this same letter, he writes of a male dancer who ‘let out a fart each time he jumped’. And in another to Nannerl, writing of the dance festival he and his father attended in Milan, he adds a postscript sending ‘a Thousand Compliments to you from Don Cacarella espessially from the rear’. ‘Don Cacarella’ being Wolfgang’s pet name for diarrhoea, and the rear, naturally, being his bottom.

  So the stay in Milan, which lasted seven weeks, represents the first truly significant musical success for Wolfgang, in that he has been awarded a valuable contract to compose a full opera. It also gives us our first invaluable insight into the joyful character of this teenage boy.

  South to Lodi, where Wolfgang composed his first string quartet, and on to Parma and Bologna. In Bologna he met the greatest of all the castrati, Farinelli, now in retirement. He was introduced to leading musicians in whatever town they stopped in, performances were given, and to Leopold’s delight payments were made in appreciation.

  The first major stop was in Florence, where there were more performances and more money earned. Wolfgang’s musical powers were still being put to the test, as if surely there had to be some weakness in his armour. Certainly no offence was taken at this, Leopold seemingly happy to allow his son to be challenged, and Wolfgang more than happy to oblige.

  We know this from Leopold’s account of a meeting with a certain Eugenio Marquess of Ligniville, a director of music known as a scholarly contrapuntalist. He challenged Wolfgang to write counterpoint to several difficult themes, ‘which’, wrote Leopold, ‘[Wolfgang] threw off and worked out as others might eat a piece of bread’.

  It is perhaps easy for us today, just as it was for those who encountered him, to concentrate and marvel so completely at Wolfgang’s musical genius that we forget what sort of life he was actually leading.

  No evidence exists that Wolfgang ever attended school; he was on the road throughout his childhood and into his teens, forever on display, and always meeting, playing and conversing with men and musicians decades older than him. It was a lonely life for a growing boy. Where were the friends of his own age, the pranks that they would certainly have got up to?

  No wonder, then, that when at last he met a boy of his own age, and a superbly gifted musician to boot, he was over the moon and a friendship quickly formed.

  The boy was the English violin prodigy Thomas Linley, who had come from his home in Bath to Florence to study with Pietro Nardini. He was alone, no member of his family accompanying him. Thomas was just three months younger than Wolfgang, and like him was unusually small for his age. Hardly surprising the two boys immediately got on.

  Musically it was a perfect match. Thomas was already being described as the most supremely gifted violinist England had ever produced. They were soon performing together at aristocratic venues in Florence, sometimes both on violin, at other times Wolfgang accompanying Thomas on the piano.

  “The instant friendship Wolfgang formed with Thomas emphasises what a strange life they both were leading.”

  Their closeness was so evident that Leopold wrote that even when performing before nobility they were ‘constantly embracing one another’. You can see why. Even if each struggled with the other’s language, at last Wolfgang had someone his own age to laugh and giggle with, chatting and joking in broken English and German about the obvious topics that would interest adolescent boys, and certainly they would have performed musical tricks too, delighting in the other’s skills and sharing in the adulation they received.

  Sadly Wolfgang does not write about Thomas in letters home. We have only Leopold’s account, and all that interested him was musical prowess. When it came time for Leopold and Wolfgang to leave Florence, Leopold allows himself a small measure of empathy: ‘Little Thomaso accompanied us home and wept the bitterest tears because we were leaving the next day.’

  Thomas, on his return to England, went on to a glittering early career, both as performer and composer, earning himself the sobriquet ‘The English Mozart’. He no doubt talked of his new-found friend widely and whenever he could. Maybe he met people who had encountered Wolfgang as a child in London.

  The story does not have a happy ending. Thomas and Wolfgang never met again. In July 1778 Thomas went with his sisters to Lincolnshire to stay as guests of the Duke of Ancaster. On 5 August Thomas went boating on the lake, a storm blew up, the boat overturned, and Thomas drowned. He was just twenty-two years of age, at the height of fame, with a glittering musical career ahead of him.

  To compound the tragedy, his three sisters all died of consumption over the next fifteen years, and his brother drowned in 1795. Their father died in the same year, it was said of a broken heart.

  Young Thomas barely earns more than a line or two in Mozart biographies, and then it is only to relate how the two boys made music together. But it is worth pausing for a moment to contemplate the relationship that developed between these two teenage boys, and the similarities they shared. Both had siblings, and had been taken away from them. Now at last they were able to speak ‘boyish’ language together, laugh, play pranks, talk about girls, their desires and hopes.

  It is not fanciful to imagine that it was a total relief for both of them to spend time together not making music. The instant friendship Wolf-gang formed with Thomas emphasises what a strange life they both were leading. They might have been doing what they loved best, what came most instinctively to them, but it is not an exaggeration to say neither had had a childhood.

  The journey south was difficult. It took five days in rain and wind, the roads were rough, and they stopped at ‘disgusting, filthy inns where there was nothing to eat’, reported Leopold.

  As they approached the Eternal City, Leopold allowed his imagination a little rein. In a thunderous storm, lightning lit up the sky. He and his son, he wrote, felt like great men being welcomed by a firing of salutes.

  Leopold had timed their arrival to coincide with Holy Week and Easter, when musical activities would be at their height and the noble families of Rome would be certain to be in their palaces. He had not taken into account the fact that the city would b
e full. The only accommodation they could find was in a small and uncomfortable boarding house. Wolfgang complained in a letter to his sister that he was having to share a bed with his father, so naturally he was getting no sleep.

  The day after their arrival, Maundy Thursday, they pushed their way through the crowds to watch Pope Clement XIV washing the feet of the poor, and they took in the sights of the Vatican City.

  Leopold marvelled at the symmetry and order of the architecture, its richness and gigantic scale. Wolfgang, with self-deprecating humour, described how his lack of height proved a real embarrassment. Taking his turn to kiss the feet of a statue of St Peter dating from the thirteenth century, he had to be lifted up so he could reach – ‘so small I, the same old numbskull’.

  The Mozarts stayed in Rome for a month. They met senior cardinals, and were pleased to find news of Wolfgang’s musical prowess had already reached the highest circles. The Pope himself knew of Wolfgang, though no summons to meet him was immediately forthcoming.

  No public concerts were given, but Wolfgang performed in the palaces of royalty and aristocrats, as well as ambassadors. As both father and son had come to expect, plaudits were universal and more often than not accompanied by financial reward and gifts.

  From this stay in Rome comes one of the best-known legends of the teenage Mozart, and our knowledge of it stems from a letter Leopold wrote home to his wife Anna Maria.

  After a tour of St. Peter’s, Leopold took his son to the Sistine Chapel to hear the Tenebrae service. Traditionally this concluded with a singing of the Miserere by the seventeenth-century Italian composer Gregorio Allegri. This was a work the Vatican reserved to itself. It was so greatly prized, Leopold wrote, that ‘the singers in the chapel are forbidden on pain of excommunication to take away a single voice part, copy it, or give it to anyone’.

  In short, the Vatican forbade Allegri’s Miserere to be performed, or in any way heard, outside the Sistine Chapel. It was able to do this by the simple expedient of forbidding any copies of the music to be taken outside. Without copies it would be impossible for any choir to perform it, given that it was a substantial work lasting well over ten minutes.

  They reckoned without Wolfgang Mozart. As Leopold relates, after they heard it sung they returned to their lodgings and Wolfgang wrote down, from memory, as much of the music as he could remember. He needed to check on a few passages, so on Good Friday they went again to the Sistine Chapel when it was to be sung again, and Wolfgang was able to complete it.

  Leopold wrote to his wife that he had told all and sundry of Wolfgang’s achievement. She, panicked, wrote back fearing Wolfgang would be punished. Her husband reassured her. He knew for a fact that the Pope had been told, he said, and no thunderbolts had been hurled. In fact, Leopold told her, it had greatly increased admiration for their son.

  As the warm weather of early summer arrived, Leopold headed south with Wolfgang to Naples, where he knew there were prize pickings. In fact their stay in Naples was something of a disappointment. The local nobility showed little interest; there never was a summons from the King and Queen of Naples, and the situation was saved only by the interest of foreign ambassadors, particularly from Britain.

  The British ambassador William Hamilton and his wife Catherine had met Wolfgang in London. They lost no time in inviting the Mozarts to their residence. Catherine was in fact an accomplished pianist, though she admitted to ‘trembling’ in front of Wolfgang.*

  With the heat of summer worsening his mood, Leopold decided to move north again. Although he admired the huge variety of fruit, vegetables and flowers in Naples, he found the inhabitants almost as rude as those in London, and he deplored the filth, the beggars, ‘the godlessness … and the disgraceful way in which children are brought up’.

  After Naples, it was back to Rome, where a singular and extraordinary honour awaited. But before that, it was as if the sheer relentlessness of what they were doing caught up with them, both of them.

  Leopold was keen to get back to Rome as quickly as possible – too quickly. We cannot be entirely sure why he was in such a hurry: perhaps frustration at time wasted in Naples, more than five fairly unproductive weeks, the heat and noise and bustle of this southern Italian city, coupled with a desire to get back to the capital to see what glory, and remuneration, awaited them there.

  “The pope himself was to award Wolfgang a papal knighthood, making him a Knight of the Golden Spur.”

  It was an overly impatient Leopold who ordered a post-coach, a much smaller two-wheeled coach with a half-open top, which was drawn by a single horse with a postilion riding alongside. This sedia could cover the distance to Rome in a little over twenty-four hours without overnight stops, instead of the usual four and a half days.

  When a stop was necessary Leopold, using a combination of German and badly accented Italian, ensured swift service and good horses by telling innkeepers and officials he was steward to the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire. Innkeepers doffed their caps; customs officials employed by the Vatican bowed in respect and waved the travellers on.

  The final stage of the journey was over makeshift roads of deep sand and soil, which made progress slow. Leopold ordered the postilion to whip the horse, which he did with such force that the horse reared, stumbled and fell, pulling the carriage down with it.

  Leopold instinctively held out an arm to prevent Wolfgang from falling out, but gashed his right shin against the iron bar supporting the mudguard. It was a deep gash, down to the bone and ‘the width of a finger’, and it was to cause Leopold considerable pain over the ensuing months.

  Father and son were exhausted by the time they arrived in Rome. As soon as they got to their room, Wolfgang collapsed in a chair and fell so deeply asleep he snored. Leopold had to lift him up, undress his son and put him underneath the covers. Wolfgang did not wake.

  Three days later, on 29 June, Leopold, his leg badly swollen and bandaged, took a recovered Wolfgang to St Peter’s to attend services for the Feast of Peter and Paul. A week after this they were invited to call on Cardinal Pal-lavicini, who informed them that the pope himself was to award Wolfgang a papal knighthood, making him a Knight of the Golden Spur. This carried insignia of cross-studded sash, sword and spurs. A papal patent described Wolfgang as ‘a musician who excelled since earliest youth in the sweetest sounding of the harpsichord’.17

  Three days after this, Leopold and Wolfgang had a formal audience with Pope Clement, who informed him he was now entitled to style himself ‘Chevalier de Mozart’.

  To a fourteen-year-old boy, especially one with Wolfgang’s quirky sense of humour, this was more amusing than impressive, and in a letter to his sister he indulges in the kind of lavatory humour he is to use more and more. In a combination of French and Italian, as if maybe that is slightly more acceptable than his native German, he writes:

  Mademoiselle, I have the honour of being your very humble servant, and brother,

  Chevalier de Mozart

  Rome, July 7, 1770, Addio, be well and shit in your bed with a resounding noise.

  Once again, this is a mere nothing compared to what lies ahead.

  * Similarly, nearly two decades later in Bonn, Count Waldstein was to nurture the youthful genius of Ludwig van Beethoven.

  * The building would be destroyed by fire in 1776. Rebuilt, it would open with the new name, which it bears to this day: La Scala.

  † The equivalent of 100 ducats, in the region of £11,250 today.

  * Catherine would die ten years later, after which Hamilton would marry his mistress, Emma, whose name would become forever linked with that of Horatio Nelson.

  Leopold, a natural worrier, had plenty to worry about. His letters home are a catalogue of problems. His injured leg was not healing as it should; in fact it had become worse. The wound opened and his leg and foot swelled. Soon his ankle was the thickness of his calf. To compound his misery, he was in pain in his other foot, probably with an attack of gout.

  Constantly
on his mind was the danger of contracting malaria, which was prevalent in Italy and came with the hot summer months. For Wolfgang to become ill again would be a disaster. Leopold had a valuable contract in his pocket for an opera that Wolfgang needed to compose by the beginning of the new season in Milan. Already he only had months left to complete it.

  A long and difficult journey north lay ahead. Leopold contrived to make it even more difficult, rather as he had done with the shorter journey from Naples to Rome. He decided they would travel by night, to lessen the risk of catching malaria on the road in the heat of day.

  They left Rome at six in the evening on 10 July. They travelled right through the night, until five the next morning, when they stopped. By then they were bitterly cold, Leopold writes, even with their furs over their coats. They warmed themselves up with drinks of hot chocolate.

  They left again at five in the afternoon. Their destination was Bologna, 240 miles north of Rome as the crow flies, via Florence. But Leopold decided against making it that simple.

  Instead they headed across Italy to the Adriatic coast, destination Loreto, where Leopold wished to make devotions at the shrine of the Virgin in the Santa Casa, the house in which the Holy Family had lived in Palestine. The house had been miraculously flown by four angels to Loreto, where for centuries it had been a place of pilgrimage.

  From there they took the coastal road up to Rimini – a foolhardy and potentially disastrous decision. Leopold reported that the whole coast was swarming with mounted soldiers and police, deployed to protect travellers, and pilgrims, from Barbary pirates who were attacking and robbing them.