The following contains excerpts from Mozart, His Life and Times (Peggy Woodford)
This is a biography of one of the most talented musicians to have ever lived. His story is not one of success, but of difficulties both personally as well as societally, yet the genius of his gift continued to surface through it all.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born, 1756) grew up around musical instruments of all kinds surrounding him in his house. Leopold, his father, was a well-known musician and official court composer to the Court of Salzburg. Music was an important part of court life in which each court had a Kapellmeister who was in charge of all the music, both of the religious music in the chapels and churches, and the music needed for various festivals, balls and receptions. Wolfgang’s older sister, Nannerl, was also an accomplished musician, as her father began teaching her at the age of five. When Wolfgang was four years old, he began interrupting his sister’s lessons, and his father began to take notice of his son’s talent. As his father began to train him, he was able, at the age of four, to learn an entire minuet and trio in half an hour. When Wolfgang was six and Nannerl eleven, Leopold decided it was time to show his two brilliant children to the world, taking them on tour to Munich in 1762. The concert was a great success and people could hardly believe what they were seeing.
The Mozart family then set out for Vienna (a city known for its music) to give the children a concert for the Emperor and Empress at the Imperial palace. One letter described, “Those in the audience could scarcely believe their eyes and ears when the children played. In particular the Emperor Frances I was delighted with the little wizard, as he jokingly called him. He chatted with him many times.”
In 1763, the family travelled to Paris to give concerts, and a newspaper article wrote, “True miracles are so rare that it behoves us to report one when it comes our way….His daughter, eleven years of age, plays the clavier in the most brilliant manner, executing the longest and most difficult pieces with amazing precision. Her brother, who will be seven years old, is so extraordinary a phenomenon on that we can scarcely credit what we see with our own eyes and hears with our own ears. Easily and with utmost accuracy, the child performs the most difficult pieces with hands that are scarcely large enough to span a sixth. It is a wondrous thing to see him improvising for a whole hour, giving himself entirely to the inspiration of his genius and generating a host of delightful musical ideas…”
The family continued to move from city to city, spending anywhere from several months to a couple years in each place, showcasing the talents of their children, endeavoring to gain some income. They moved to Versailles, London, Vienna, Verona, Milan, Bologna, Rome, and back to Salzburg. All the while Wolfgang was continuously writing music and receiving honors from the various nobilities he impressed throughout the travels. By the age of ten, he was known throughout Europe. Often concerts were applauded, but made no money. There was just praise and presents. While the presents were often beautiful jewels, watches, swords, and clothes, they didn’t buy food unless they were pawned. Mozart’s father had hoped to eventually find a place of permanent employment for his son in a court somewhere, which would potentially provide a steady income.
W.A. Mozart, now seventeen years old had grown discontent that the world clapped for him then forgot him. He needed lucrative employment in a great court, such as at Vienna, Munich, Milan, or Paris. He finally obtained an ill-paid post as one of the composers for the court in Salzburg, which became an increasingly difficult situation for him, as the Archbishop had openly declared that the young Mozart knew nothing and that he ought to go to a conservatoire in Naples in order to learn music. Mozart left the position to the city of Mannheim, known for its musical culture.
Mozart hated crawling to the nobility and grew increasingly bad at doing it. While his concerts were successful, no one was offering him permanent employment. All the while, he continued writing music. Leopold, his father, tried to influence his son to make wise life-decisions, but as Wolfgang was now in his early twenties, he had a mind of his own and was often unable to deal wisely with money. While he had short bursts of affluence, he had no idea how to save, and was often penniless, underpaid and in search for a permanent post. He would teach lessons to aristocratic women, but his greatest opportunities for hire came through commissions to write operas, which he loved.
Mozart married Constanze in 1782 in Vienna, against his father’s wishes. Their relationship was never peaceful, and although Mozart loved Constanze, in spite of her slackness about personal and household affairs, unreliability and selfishness, she never created a happy home-life that he desperately needed.
He continued to stay busy writing commissioned operas (for his operatic work, he typically used libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte), or balls and parties, being so busy that much of his free time was gone. Immersing himself in his work, every year he would suffer some form of illness, often in bed for weeks at a time.
Mozart’s father at one point came to Vienna to stay with him for a while, in which he was introduced to Franz Joseph Haydn, who also lived in Vienna. Haydn, who had come to Mozart’s house for a musical evening declared to Leopold, “I, as an honest man, tell you before God that your son is the greatest composer I know in person or by name. He has taste, and moreover, the most thorough knowledge of composition.”
In the spring of 1787 a sixteen-year-old boy came to visit Mozart. He was Ludwig van Beethoven, and he had been sent to study with Mozart. Unfortunately after only two weeks he had to leave and go home because he had news that his mother was critically ill. Mozart realized how exceptionally talented young Beethoven was, but had little time to teach him, as he was working at top speed on an opera.
Mozart struggled to get his opera, “The Marriage of Figaro” performed in Vienna, as other competing operas had been written by other composers. The city of Prague, however, loved his work, and was eager to perform it. While in Prague, Mozart exclaimed, “Nothing is played, sung or whistled but Figaro. No opera is drawing like Figaro. Certainly a great honor for me.” At age thirty-one, upon returning to Vienna, He wrote “Don Giovanni” and the Viennese didn’t like it at all. Around the same time his father became ill and died, and six months later the court appointment that had been held by the famous opera composer Gluck had opened up, as he had also just died. Mozart saw this as his opportunity to finally secure a steady employment. He was appointed the Imperial and Royal Court Composer at a small starting salary which just about paid the rent.
Though Mozart was both unhappy about this and worried because he was so short of money, in the next month he wrote his last three great symphonies one after another (Numbers 39, 40 and 41). Mozart had a few students, but his concerts, which had always drawn full audiences in the past, were no longer popular. The fickle Viennese taste had changed. Mozart had to borrow money from friends to keep going, which depressed him. He was now thirty-tree years old, and most other composers had financial security by that age. He was poorer than ever and his ‘golden age’ in Vienna was over.
He was invited to tour Prague, Leipzig and Dresden and was eager to get out of Vienna. While he was in Leipzig (where J.S. Bach had lived) he was delighted to have the opportunity to play on Bach’s own church organ and study some works that he had never seen before, writing to Constanze, “Now here is something one can learn from!”, spending hours poring over sheets of Bach’s music.
Arriving back in Vienna, he wrote his last opera, “The Magic Flute”.
Apparently his last work, Requiem, was written for a tall gaunt stranger wearing grey who left an anonymous note demanding that he write the piece. Mozart wrote, “My head is confused, I can think only with difficulty, and cannot free my mind of the image of the Unknown. I constantly see him before me; he pleads with me, presses me, and impatiently demands the work from me. I am continuing with it because the composing is less tiring that doing nothing. Besides, I have nothing more to fear. I can feel from my present state that the hour is striking. I am on the point of expiring. My end has come before I was able to profit by my talent. And yet life has been so beautiful…”
Growing weaker and weaker, he was giving strict instructions to his pupil Sussmayr as to how to finish the Requiem, as he would never be able to do it himself. His last breath was to try to make the sound of the drums in his Requiem to his student. His last breath was his music. Mozart died 1791 at the age of thirty-five.