Mozart E-Book

John Suchet

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 485

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

DISCOVER THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WORLD'S MOST-LOVED COMPOSERMusical history is full of tormented geniuses, tortured despite – or because of – their enormous talent. Yet perhaps the greatest musical virtuoso the world has ever known cannot be counted among them. Though he faced great hardships, Mozart was surely the happiest composer who ever lived.In Mozart: The Man Revealed, John Suchet breathes new life into the story of the 'boy genius', revealing a complex character, yet one who always remained comfortable with himself and at ease with his gift. His musical legacy may be immortal, but the man behind the music was gloriously human.'A lively read' - Financial Times Best Books of 2016'Fascinating, and impressively well-researched . . . makes for an absorbing read' - Christopher Morley, Birmingham

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to the memory of James Black.

Lover of Mozart’s music and chronicler of his life.

Preface

Prologue

1

The Handsomest Couple in Salzburg

2

The Little Wizard

3

The Grand Tour

4

Prodigies of Nature

5

He Is Skin and Bone

6

Wolfgangganggangerl

7

Chevalier de Mozart

8

Ass-Bumping in Venice

9

Bravissimo Maestro!

10

Gnagflow Trazom

11

There Is No Vacancy

12

Wolfgang Amadé Rosenkranz

13

Off with You to Paris!

14

My Dear Departed Mother

15

Unlucky in Love

16

A Kick in the Backside

17

An Honest and Virtuous Wife

18

Return to Salzburg

19

Paternal Pride

20

Womaniser, Criminal and Genius with Words

21

The Final, and Greatest, Symphonies

22

A Stranger Knocks

23

The Taste of Death on My Tongue

Afterword

Postscript

Notes

Index

Mozart the man is easy to understand. Mozart the genius is impossible to comprehend.

The story of his life is well known. Austrian-born, with a tyrant of a father who drove him relentlessly, an unhappy marriage to a spendthrift woman, a childlike character ill at ease amid the pomp and aristocratic splendour of the Viennese court, poisoned by his great rival Salieri, which led to an early death that robbed the world of its most instinctive musical genius.

Only the last is true. In this era of mass entertainment, it is possible the most prevalent image we have of Mozart is that portrayed in the hugely successful film Amadeus. Like the plot of the film, and the play from which it was adapted, the character is largely fictitious, or at least grossly exaggerated.

One element, though, rings totally true. That smile stretching from ear to ear, that uncontrollable laugh, that permanent sense of happiness, of being comfortable with himself and at ease with his genius – all that permeated his being.

Musical history is replete with tortured souls, tormented geniuses. Among them is one who can lay claim to be the greatest of them all, given how much he achieved in such a short life. And even if that is disputed, one fact cannot be: despite repeated disappointment at his failure to gain regular paid employment, despite money problems in the final three years of his life, Mozart is surely the happiest composer who ever lived.

Listening to Mozart’s music induces a sense of well-being, a feeling that all is well with the world. Whatever is happening outside the concert hall or opera house, if a human being can create such beauty, then there will always be hope for humanity.

Mozart was giving us the benefits of a gift with which he was imbued. He knew it. He did not know where it came from, or why he alone possessed it, but he knew it and he continued to use it. We owe him a limitless debt of gratitude, as will our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and every generation that follows them.

Everything Mozart created exists for us to enjoy. It was a brief life, but we should be eternally grateful that he lived at all.

On 5 September 1842, a year behind schedule – something of an embarrassment – a monument to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was unveiled in the centre of the city of his birth, Salzburg. It had been planned for the year before, the fiftieth anniversary of his death, but had been postponed when a Roman mosaic floor was uncovered during excavation work.

As well as a lasting memorial to Salzburg’s most famous son, the monument was also intended as an act of reconciliation. Mozart, like his father Leopold, had come to loathe Salzburg, the archbishop-prince who ruled over it, and indeed its people.

The feeling was entirely mutual, and when Wolfgang left Salzburg for Vienna, never to return, there was something of a collective sigh of relief that this difficult, disobedient – although admittedly highly talented – musician had finally left.

The monument was a form of belated apology. Mozart should have been better treated by his home town, as people from far and wide had been saying ever since his death. Now Salzburg would be able to point to the huge, imposing monument by a celebrated German sculptor.

The site had been carefully chosen. Mozart’s wife Constanze had recently moved to a new apartment in the Michaelsplatz. It was decided the statue would be erected there, and the square renamed Mozartplatz. Constanze would be able to gaze out of her apartment window onto the statue of her husband.

She would not have recognised the larger-than-life-size figure: handsome and serious face, cloak over the shoulder gathered at the waist like a toga, pen in hand. This was not a representation, but a deification.*

Two thousand people gathered for the unveiling, many coming from distant parts of the world. Mozart’s two sons, Karl and Wolfgang, were there. But their mother was not. During that year’s delay, she had died at 3.45 a.m. on 6 March 1842, at the age of eighty. She had outlived her husband by more than fifty years.

The other centrally important woman in Mozart’s life was not there either. Like Constanze, she would not have recognised the Mozart she knew, her laughing, mischievous brother, in the dignified and imposing figure staring into the distance.

But even if she had been there, Nannerl would not have been able to see the statue. In her final years she slowly became blind. The attractive young girl, ‘a regular beauty’1 whose musical abilities – along with those of her younger brother – had stunned Europe and who had been labelled ‘a prodigy of nature’, was described in her final years as ‘a decay of nature’.

Maria Anna Mozart, known throughout her life as Nannerl, had outlived her famous brother by almost forty years, dying thirteen years before the unveiling of the statue at the age of seventy-eight.

One woman was at the unveiling, and she was a totally unexpected guest. In the midst of the ceremony, a very tall, thin and eccentric-looking woman interrupted proceedings by declaiming, ‘Ich bin die erste Pamina!’ (‘I am the first Pamina!’)

The woman was the celebrated Austrian soprano Anna Gottlieb. More than half a century earlier, when she was just twelve years of age, Mozart had cast her in the role of Barbarina, the gardener’s daughter, in The Marriage of Figaro.

Five years later, when she was still only seventeen, her voice was so beautiful that Mozart gave her the all-important role of the steadfastly loyal Pamina, the embodiment of innocence and beauty, in the great creation of his final year, The Magic Flute.

At the time of the unveiling of the statue, Anna was the last singer still alive who had known Mozart.

* There were marked similarities to the statue of Beethoven unveiled in his home city of Bonn three years later. Albeit by a different sculptor, it showed a godlike figure, toga thrown over the shoulder, and a pen in the right hand.

Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 in the city of Salzburg. At the time of his birth it was a wealthy city state sitting between Bavaria and Austria, and independent of both. It had grown rich and important on the back of its abundant natural product, salt, which gave it its name, Salz-Burg – ‘Salt Castle’.

Technically it was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and so loosely speaking was part of Germany.* Mozart himself was in no doubt. Throughout his life he referred to himself as German by birth and a German composer.

From its earliest years Salzburg had an abbey, and by the eighteenth century a cathedral had stood there for a thousand years. The most powerful man in Salzburg was the archbishop, who was not only the most senior religious figure but also a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, answerable only to the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna.

The prince-archbishop, and the canons under him, ran the city of Salzburg, and they ran it according to strict Roman Catholic principles. A Law on Morals, issued by the archbishop in 1736, a mere twenty years before Mozart was born, decreed:

Men are not to leave their beds without wearing shirt and trousers, nor women without wearing shirt and petticoat. Trousers must be waist high, fastened in front. Women’s skirts must cover half the calf; shirts and bodices must be made wide enough as to overlap and lace properly. Absolutely forbidden is the irritating, bestial and fiendish habit occurring in the public baths, where men and women bathe together almost naked and then dry each other off.

The prince-archbishop’s court was by far the biggest employer, controlling the lives of a huge number of people, from lawyers, soldiers and local industrialists, down to secretaries, valets and maidservants.

And musicians. Salzburg was a cultured city, maintaining a large court orchestra and choir, and giving employment to a number of composers. In all, around a hundred musicians were employed by the court.

Traditionally the archbishop of Salzburg held himself aloof from the people of the city, allowing his canons to extort money from them. For centuries there had been palpable resentment directed from the city, and from outlying villages in the diocese, towards the wealth that existed within the cathedral.

There was thus quiet satisfaction when, in 1753, a new archbishop was appointed – a cultured man, with affection towards his people, and a great love of music. Archbishop Siegmund Schrattenbach made it his aim to put Salzburg at the forefront of music within the states of the Holy Roman Empire.

This was an enormous stroke of good fortune for one man in particular, who some years earlier had left his home in Augsburg in Bavaria to escape a career in the priesthood, and headed for Salzburg to pursue his vocation in music. After attending university in Salzburg he secured a position at court as a violinist and violin teacher.

With prodigious musical talent, and a regular income, it was not long before he married. Following the appointment of the new archbishop, he became a court composer, and soon after that deputy kapellmeister. He was rising fast in his chosen profession and the future looked rosy. He and his wife were in a position to start a family.

His name was Johann Georg Leopold Mozart.

History has not been kind to the father of the boy genius, and it is not hard to see why. Contemporaries described him variously as acerbic and difficult, aloof and domineering. He controlled the lives of those closest to him in every detail. His wife was barely allowed to make a decision for herself, and his children would find that their every move was decided for them well into adulthood.

It seems that Leopold Mozart’s contrary character was formed early in life. Born in Augsburg, he was the eldest of nine children, and found himself left increasingly to his own devices by a mother who had too many demands on her time to pay him much attention.

At the age of seventeen, just four months after his father’s sudden death, he took himself out of school. If this upset his mother, he was to make matters much worse by announcing he had no desire to take up the family business of bookbinding, or to follow his mother’s second wish by entering the Jesuit priesthood.

An estrangement became a rift when Leopold decided to leave Augsburg altogether and head for Salzburg, intending to turn his natural talent for music into a career. He enrolled at Salzburg university, where his headstrong character really showed itself.

In September 1739, at the age of nineteen, he was expelled for ‘want of application and poor attendance’; in effect, for truancy. But what really shocked the university authorities was his calm acceptance of his fate. The rector reported:

A few days before the examination he was called before the Dean and informed that henceforth he would no longer be numbered among the students. Having heard this sentence, he offered no appeals, accepted the sentence, and departed as if indifferent: therefore he was not called for further examination.2

‘As if indifferent …’ You can just picture the look on his youthful face that caused the rector to write these words. Maybe it was a slight curl of the lip, the beginnings of a sardonic smile. There must have been something in his expression that struck the academic panel, and made it worth noting. If one is tempted to admire Leopold’s independent spirit, such admiration must surely be tempered by his display of youthful arrogance.

It was a quality that stayed with him in later life. Those academics would not be the last to feel the force of Leopold’s character. But there was method behind Leopold’s seeming indifference to the end of his student career. He immediately obtained employment as a musician, and as early as the following year published his first compositions, a set of six trio sonatas.

Meanwhile Leopold’s relationship with his mother only got worse. He informed her that he had met a young woman in Salzburg and intended to marry her. This was, as it were, the final straw. If Leopold married a Salzburg girl, it was unlikely he would ever return to live in Augsburg. His mother disapproved so totally that she disinherited him.

The rift was never healed. As far as we know, Leopold’s mother never met her daughter-in-law. Even more extraordinary, when her two highly talented grandchildren were brought by their parents to Augsburg, where they gave three public concerts, she did not come to see them perform.

Consider this. Wolfgang Mozart, boy genius, comes to Augsburg at the age of six to demonstrate his extraordinary musical skills – which are already known and marvelled at – and his own grandmother refuses to leave her house to come and see him.

When a break occurs between mother and child, whatever brave words the son may choose to put on it, however successfully he may suppress it, the guilt can linger and fester. I believe this is what happened with Leopold. He was in any case a difficult character. The fact that the schism was never healed is likely to have made him an even more irascible and unpredictable individual.

Unlike Leopold, the woman he chose to marry, the woman who would give birth to the greatest of musical geniuses, remains a somewhat shadowy figure. As we shall see, in the many letters that Leopold would write to her during travels with their son, she rarely rates a mention.

Anna Maria Pertl* was born in the village of St Gilgen, on the banks of the Wolfgangsee in the Salzkammergut mountains, one of the most beautiful regions of Austria.

What could have been an idyllic childhood was anything but. Anna Maria’s father, who was forty-five when he married, had suffered a near-fatal illness five years before she was born. His health continued to decline and she was only three years old when he died.

He left the family destitute. As his health worsened he had borrowed more and more money, and at his death his debts totalled more than four times his annual salary as a minor local official. His effects were confiscated and Anna Maria, together with her mother and elder sister, had to move from the calm of a lakeside village to the bustle of Salzburg, where they lived on charity.

It seems that both his daughters had inherited his ill health. Anna Maria’s elder sister died soon after the move, and Anna Maria herself was described in charity records as ‘constantly ailing’ and ‘the constantly ill bedridden daughter’.

Her fragile health was clearly not helped by having to look after her widowed mother. What she could not yet know was that her father had possibly passed on one truly great gift. Although he had not pursued music as a profession, he was a highly gifted musician. It might not have manifested itself in his daughter, but it most certainly would in her own children.

It is not known how Anna Maria came to meet a young violinist at court by the name of Leopold Mozart, but after what appears to have been a fairly lengthy engagement – ‘All good things take time!’3 Leopold wrote to his wife on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary – they married on 21 November 1747. Leopold had just turned twenty-eight; his wife was thirteen months younger.

Leopold had, as he wrote later in the same letter, and with a rare touch of humour, ‘joined the Order of Patched Trousers’. He had reason to celebrate his marriage. His wife was, by all accounts, docile and obedient which, given Leopold’s natural proclivity for decision-making and brooking no disagreement, made for a contented union.

Leopold and his wife Anna Maria were soon considered the handsomest couple in Salzburg. Their portraits, painted when they were in middle age, show fine sensitive faces. There appears to be a touch of self-assurance, arrogance even, in the portrait of Leopold, with his half-lidded eyes and slightly curled lip, and Anna Maria’s pose perhaps presents a stronger character than we suspect to be the case.

Yet if those faces had been shown etched in some pain, it would have been understandable. Exactly nine months after their marriage a son was born, named Leopold after his father. The infant lived for less than six months.

Anna Maria was already pregnant again when he died, and gave birth to a daughter, Maria Anna, four months later. The child lived for just six days. Anna Maria was soon pregnant once more, and less than a year later gave birth to another daughter, again named Maria Anna. This infant lived for a little over two months.

Three children lost in the space of seventeen months, and the couple had not yet been married three years.

It is hardly surprising that when another daughter was born exactly a year after they had lost their third child, Leopold and Anna Maria lived in a state of high anxiety, celebrating each day that the child survived as a miracle.

Once again – and one can imagine this decision being made only after much soul-searching – they named their daughter Maria Anna, like her two deceased sisters. The third Maria Anna, known as Nannerl, was to live for seventy-eight years and three months.

But the couple’s heartbreak was not yet over. A son Johann Karl, born sixteen months after Maria Anna, lived for just three months, and a daughter Maria Crescentia, born in the following year, died at seven weeks.

Six children in a little less than six years, and only one who had lived to see a first birthday. It is impossible to know, when Anna Maria fell pregnant yet again, whether she was elated or in despair. Infant mortality was high in the mid-eighteenth century, and there will have been many families in Salzburg who lost as many, or more, children than the Mozarts. But still the toll of seven pregnancies in such a short period of time must surely have debilitated Anna Maria both physically and emotionally.

I imagine an exhausted woman, now thirty-five years of age – middle aged, in fact – resigned to almost constant child-bearing, followed by the infinite sadness of seeing tiny coffins bearing each child away. Now a seventh child was on the way.

Anna Maria gave birth to a son at eight o’clock on the evening of 27 January 1756. It was not an easy delivery. The placenta failed to emerge naturally and Leopold reported that it had to be removed forcibly. As a result Anna Maria became extremely weak; she was at high risk of fatal infection, and for a time it was not known if she would survive.

A child who was more than a day old without being baptised was believed to be in danger of hellfire, and so the infant was baptised at ten thirty the following morning. He was given the names Johannes Chrisostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus. The first two names were for the saint, St John Chrysostom, on whose name day the child had been born; Wolfgangus was for his maternal grandfather; Theophilus was the Greek version of Gottlieb, ‘Beloved of God’, the name of his godfather.

From the start he was called by his third name, Wolfgang, or more often its diminutive, Wolferl. In later life he himself preferred the Latin version of his fourth name, Amadeus, though he was more inclined to use Amadè, or Amadé, or even (when in Italy) Amadeo.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was his parents’ seventh, and final, child. He and his elder sister Nannerl were the only two to survive into adulthood. But his was not to be a long life. Nannerl would outlive her younger brother by almost thirty-eight years.

As soon as they were married, Leopold and his wife had moved into an apartment on the third floor of a building at 9 Getreidegasse (‘Grain Lane’).* The building was owned by the Hagenauers, a family that dealt in groceries and spices on the ground floor and one imagines the infant Wolfgang and his sister growing up with the pungent aroma of these products under their noses.

It was a fortuitous move. The Hagenauers became firm friends of their tenants, the Mozarts. Johann Lorenz Hagenauer was also a banker and music lover. Not only did he encourage Leopold to take his young son on tours of Europe, but in effect bankrolled them by issuing credit in cities along the way.

The building was in the old town in the centre of Salzburg. The Getreidegasse was the commercial heart of the city. It was home to court offices, bakers, grocers, goldsmiths, hotels and taverns. It was the most heavily populated street in the whole of Salzburg.

The boy Mozart thus spent his formative years in the heart of the city, surrounded by its noise and bustle. He remained a city boy all his life, and when many years later he moved to Vienna, he never lived beyond the close suburbs, preferring always to be as near to the centre of the city as possible.

The Mozart apartment, while not large, was able to accommodate a family of four. There was also room for a clavier, a small keyboard instrument. Had more of the children survived, it’s likely the family would soon have had to move out. As it was, they remained there for twenty-six years, until the seventeen-year-old Wolfgang’s fame and resultant earnings allowed them to move to a larger home.

The apartment in the Getreidegasse frequently echoed to the sound of music. Leopold and his professional friends would play together, and Leop-old was able to supplement his income by giving private violin lessons there.

He was a very successful teacher. In the year Wolfgang was born he had published a book entitled Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (‘A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing’). It was reprinted twice in German, and was then translated into Dutch and French.

Leopold Mozart was firmly established as one of Salzburg’s leading musicians, and it would not be long before he was appointed deputy kapellmeister (deputy head of music at court), a senior position second only to the kapellmeister himself.

Given his professional reputation, it must have come as a welcome surprise to Leopold when he realised his eldest child Nannerl was showing signs of an interest in music. Maybe she sang for him; maybe she picked out notes on the clavier.

He will no doubt have surmised that, given his own natural musical talent, supplemented by that of his father-in-law before his untimely death, his children might display some aptitude for music. Little could he have known just to what an extent that would prove to be true.

Trusting his instincts, he began to teach Nannerl the clavier when she was around seven years of age. She took to it immediately, surprising and delighting her father. He probably did not pay much attention at first when his young son, just three years of age, began to watch these lessons intently. When they were over the boy would pick out notes, playing simple chords and smiling at the pleasing sound.

To aid Nannerl’s progress, Leopold compiled a book of pieces for harpsichord by composers of the day, including a number of anonymous ones, almost certainly by Leopold himself. Mostly the pieces were minuets, but he arranged them in such a way that they became increasingly difficult, the rhythms more complex, ever wider jumps, tricky ornamentation, advancing to hands crossing over.

The book, which Leopold called Notenbuch für Nannerl (‘Book of Notes for Nannerl’), was exactly what Wolfgang needed, as playing thirds up and down the keyboard began to bore him. He started playing the pieces in Nannerl’s book.

Leopold began to pay attention. He could clearly see that Wolfgang was gifted. He started to teach his young son some minuets, then some more difficult pieces. Recalling this later in life, Nannerl said Wolfgang could learn a minuet in just half an hour, and a more difficult piece in an hour. He would then play them with the utmost delicacy, faultlessly, and in exact time, she said. This might normally be expected in a highly talented young musician at least ten years older than Wolfgang.

Realising that his son was more than just usually talented, Leopold began to teach him the organ, and then the violin, at the age of four. The boy took to them naturally, particularly the violin. But his father was something of a taskmaster, and Wolfgang had to work hard to gain his approval.

On one extraordinary occasion, two of Leopold’s colleagues came to the apartment in the Getreidegasse to run through some new string trios with him. Little Wolfgang, aged six, nagged his father to allow him to play second violin. Leopold was adamant he could not. He was a child, nowhere near competent enough. Wolfgang insisted he could do it. Again his father refused. Wolfgang cried tears of frustration and left the room.

The second violinist, one Johann Andreas Schachtner, suggested to Leopold he let the boy play alongside him. It couldn’t do any harm. Leopold relented, on condition Wolfgang followed Schachtner’s lead.

‘I was astonished to realise,’ Schachtner recalled, ‘that I was soon entirely superfluous.’4 He put down his violin and allowed Wolfgang to continue. The boy successfully navigated all six trios, reading from sight.

Wolfgang, emboldened, asked his father to let him play the first violin part. This meant Leopold relinquishing the lead to his young son. Schachtner related how Wolfgang, given his small hands, had to resort to ‘wrong and irregular positions’,5 but he and Leopold were stunned to admit he carried it off without any serious mistakes.

We are indebted to Schachtner for recalling another occasion, which happened at about the same time, and was of even more significance than the string trios run-through.

He and Leopold returned to the apartment after Thursday service to find the small boy sitting at the table, pen in hand, blotches of ink on a piece of paper. They watched him dipping the pen to the bottom of the inkwell, which caused drops of ink to spill onto the paper. Wolfgang wiped the blotches away with the palm of his hand, and continued writing. They asked him what he was doing.

‘I am writing a clavier concerto. The first movement is nearly ready,’ the boy replied.

Leopold laughed at his son’s bravado, pointing out that nothing could be read under the ink smears. But then he began to look more closely. Soon, according to Schachtner, he was shedding tears of wonderment and joy.

‘Look, Schachtner, how correctly and properly it is written. But it is too difficult. No one could play this.’

‘That’s why it’s a concerto,’ Wolfgang said. ‘You must practise very hard to be able to play it.’6

Then, to the men’s utter amazement, Wolfgang demonstrated what he meant on the keyboard.

He soon put it aside, though, as if instinctively he knew that he should start with less ambitious compositions. He composed several small pieces for clavier, which his father wrote down in Nannerl’s book. Several pages went missing in the intervening centuries. Two pieces have survived. Soon after his fifth birthday, Wolfgang composed an Andante and Allegro in C major for clavier (K. 1a and 1b).* They are his first known compositions.

Leopold Mozart was now in no doubt. He had a son with a musical talent neither he, nor anyone, had ever encountered before. The question confronting him: how should he handle it?

* Salzburg has had a chequered history, due largely to the shifting borders of Continental Europe during the Napoleonic wars. It was annexed to Austria after the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. It was briefly transferred to the Kingdom of Bavaria as punishment for the Austrian defeat at Wagram in 1809. In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, the city was definitively returned to Austria, the bicentenary of which was celebrated in 2015–16.

* Mozart biographers seem evenly divided over whether his mother was Anna Maria or Maria Anna. The portrait of her that hangs in Mozart’s birth house in Salzburg is labelled Anna Maria. Also, since her daughter was christened Maria Anna, and one of the children’s cousins too, I shall refer to her throughout as Anna Maria.

* The whole building was acquired by the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation in 1917, and is today a museum devoted to Mozart.

* According to the numbers assigned to Mozart’s compositions by Ludwig von Köchel in his catalogue of 1862.

The short answer: show it off and make money out of it. In early January 1762 Leopold took his two children to the capital city of Bavaria, Munich. Nannerl was ten, her brother approaching his sixth birthday.

Leopold Mozart has, in the intervening centuries, taken much criticism from biographers of his son for setting out on travels when his children were so young, with the explicit aim of showing off their musical talent. Today we might call him a ‘tiger dad’ and accuse him of ‘hot-housing’ the children.

On one level the criticism is justified. Neither child ever attended school. For a daughter in the mid-eighteenth century this was probably not exceptional. But Wolfgang never attended school either. His father taught him entirely at home, in subjects as wide-ranging as mathematics, reading, writing, literature, languages, history, geography, dancing, even moral and religious training. Excellent musician Leopold might have been, but one has to wonder whether he was skilled enough in these disciplines to educate his son adequately in them all.

From Leopold’s point of view, though, his behaviour was entirely justifiable. He realised he had two young children of exceptional talent. Nannerl was well ahead of her age in musical performance. She could sight-read, improvise on a given melody, take it through several keys, and compose accompanying bass lines. As for Wolfgang, he was so much more skilled than his sister that he put her in the shade.

This, in fact, was of some concern to Leopold. What if it was a temporary gift? Given that he had started so young, what was to say that his talent might not end as abruptly, or at least decline and wither? Wolfgang might reach a level of brilliance, but not improve from there. If he were not to progress in the next ten years, say, his prodigious talent at the age of sixteen would be a lot less impressive than at the tender age of six.

And so, keen to make the most of his children’s talent while it lasted, Leopold left for Munich with Nannerl and Wolfgang, leaving his wife behind. It was to be a brief trip – no longer than three weeks – and it is probable that Leopold did not need to ask the archbishop for leave of absence from musical duties at court.

Very little is known about what happened in Munich, other than the fact that Leopold must have had an impressive letter of introduction in his pocket, since he was able to gain an audience with the elector of Bavaria, Maximilian III Joseph, and present his highly gifted children before him.

We can also be sure that the prince, himself a talented composer and player of the viola da gamba, was impressed, because the aristocracy of the city took the lead from their ruler and invited the two Mozart children to perform in their salons.

Leopold returned home to Salzburg in early February, flushed with the success of the trip, inordinately proud of his children, and already planning his next move. Leopold was beginning to realise that his children could become a seriously successful source of income.

He immediately began working on another trip, and lobbied at the highest level to achieve it. This time he was setting his sights high. The ultimate goal within the Habsburg empire, the seat of the Holy Roman Emperor, the capital city of the empire as well as the capital city of music: Vienna. It is also more than likely word had filtered back from Munich to Salzburg that the Mozart children really were quite exceptional.

Leopold achieved his goal, and more. The music-loving Archbishop Schrattenbach approved Leopold’s leave of absence. More than that, he agreed to sponsor the trip, at least in part, and keep Leopold on his full court salary while he was away. With that commitment in his back pocket, so to speak, Leopold was able to persuade his landlord, Johann Lorenz Hagenauer, to provide more financial assistance. Hagenauer lent Leopold money and allowed him to draw money on the Hagenauer business account while he was away. Hagenauer, as well as being Leopold’s landlord, was effectively his banker as well.

Conditions were thus perfect for the Mozart family to try their fortune in the sophisticated capital city of Vienna, with its plethora of wealthy aristocrats and patrons of the arts.

‘Family’ is the operative word. Leopold was not going to do this by halves. This time he would take his wife with him as well: they all left Salzburg on 18 September 1762. Finances were secure enough to take a servant with them, though that is probably too lowly a word. Joseph Richard Eslinger was a bassoonist and copyist, but his job was to look after the family’s clothing and baggage, make sure all the music was kept in order, and generally run errands for them.

It might be imagined that Leopold was over-brimming with confidence, secure in the knowledge that his young son – still only six years and eight months of age – would stun the musically sophisticated Viennese with his extraordinary talent.

Quite the opposite. Leopold was a natural worrier and something of a born pessimist. Soon after arriving in the capital, he wrote to Hagenauer, ‘If only I knew how it will finally turn out.’

The journey from Salzburg to Vienna took almost three weeks. The Mozarts were in no hurry. There were plenty of people to impress along the way, with musical performances that would act as rehearsals for the big city. There was also always the possibility that such performances would bring financial reward.

The most direct route to Vienna would have taken them east, but instead they travelled north to Passau, on the Bavarian border with Austria. Leopold’s aim was to show off his children’s talents to the prince-bishop, Count Joseph Maria Thun-Hohenstein.

There, on the very first stop of the trip, he was reminded that things could be anything but straightforward. A local aristocrat, used to issuing orders and expecting tasks to be performed at his pleasure, might issue an invitation to an itinerant musician. It could be a vague invitation, with no set date or time. The musician had no choice but to wait, running up the cost of board and lodging in the meantime.

That was exactly what happened to the Mozart family in Passau. The count kept them waiting for five days, before summoning Wolfgang to play, but not his sister. To compound the disappointment the boy was rewarded with a measly four gulden, which Leopold complained left him with a net loss of 80 gulden.

Leopold’s initial optimism was tempered by reality as the family boarded a boat in Passau to travel down the Danube to Linz, the bustling and busy capital of Upper Austria that straddled the mighty river. But things began to look up.

On the boat Leopold fell into discussion with a certain Count Herberstein, who knew the city well and was soon to become the first Bishop of Linz. He told Leopold exactly who he should get in touch with when they arrived.

This paid dividends. In Linz, under the sponsorship of a senior member of the aristocracy, Wolfgang and Nannerl gave their first public concert. Several visiting Viennese noblemen were in the audience, including one, Count Pálffy, who had the ear of Archduke Joseph, son of Empress Maria Theresa no less (and later co-ruler with her, before becoming emperor in his own right).

Count Pálffy, a delighted Leopold reported, ‘listened with astonishment’ to the two children, and on his return to Vienna duly spoke ‘with great excitement’ to his friend the archduke, who in turn – just as Leopold had hoped – passed it on to his mother, the empress. She, without any doubt, will have mentioned it to her husband, the emperor.

Leopold had good cause for optimism. Word of his children’s musical prowess had reached the very top. No doubt emboldened, he decided not to head straight for Vienna but instead to leave the boat at the little town of Ybbs – let word spread, let a sense of excitement and anticipation build up.

There Wolfgang played the organ in the Franciscan Church. He played it so well, Leopold wrote in a letter back to Hagenauer in Salzburg, that ‘the Franciscans rushed to the choir stalls and were almost struck dead with amazement’. You can understand why. This was a boy not yet seven years of age playing a mighty organ.

The Mozart family arrived in Vienna on 6 October, almost three weeks after leaving home. At the quayside, reality struck. The Mozart name might have reached the imperial royal family in the Hofburg Palace, but it was unknown to custom officials on the banks of the Danube.

The Mozarts were told to open their luggage for inspection. Perhaps Leopold gave his son a knowing look; perhaps it was Wolfgang’s own initiative. The boy took his violin out of its case and played a minuet. The senior customs officer, enchanted by the impromptu recital, allowed the family to proceed without opening their bags.

“Leopold had good cause for optimism. Word of his children’s musical prowess had reached the very top.”

They stayed first in temporary accommodation on the Fleischmarkt, then moved into lodgings on the Tiefer Graben. It was not the height of comfort. Leopold reported that they had a single room on the first floor, ‘a thousand feet long and one foot wide’. It was partitioned in two, with Leopold and Wolfgang sharing one bed in the sleeping area, Anna Maria and Nannerl sharing the other. Leopold was irritable, and complained the children would not stop wriggling.

Word had most definitely arrived in Vienna ahead of them, and it had spread at the highest level. Leopold took himself off to the opera four days after arriving in the capital (to see Gluck’s Orfeo) and overheard another of Maria Theresa’s sons spreading the word from his opera box that ‘there is a boy in Vienna who plays the clavier admirably’.

This son was Archduke Leopold, who in time would succeed his brother Joseph as emperor. We know, therefore, that even before the Mozarts arrived in Vienna, the extra-ordinary talent of young Wolfgang was talked about by the emperor, empress and two future emperors.

And it permeated down. The senior aristocrat who had arranged the recital in Linz had returned to Vienna and spoken immediately to the highly influential director of opera. Count Herberstein, Leopold’s companion on the boat, had done his part too to spread the word in Vienna.

Leopold was most certainly not exaggerating when he wrote to Hagenauer in Salzburg, ‘As soon as it became known that we were in Vienna, the order arrived that we should present ourselves at court.’

On Wednesday, 13 October, the family took a carriage to Schönbrunn Palace, the emperor’s summer residence west of the city. To say they had arrived, in more senses than one, would be an understatement.

One can picture Anna Maria and the two children looking agog as the imperial carriage, which had been sent to collect them, drew up to the grand, imposing and beautiful baroque palace, recently improved and remodelled on orders from Empress Maria Theresa. Leopold, I imagine, sat quietly, expressionless, jaw probably set, wondering if everything was about to go as planned. Was it possible that his son could have an off day?

He need not have worried. The account of the occasion, as detailed by Leopold in letters to Salzburg, has achieved legendary status. It is the first real evidence we have of young Wolfgang’s extraordinary talent at the keyboard. It also gives us our first true insight into his character, into what kind of child he was.

The family was ushered into the royal presence. Empress Maria and her husband Emperor Franz sat in two luxuriously upholstered chairs. Also present was their youngest daughter, Maria Antonia, just three months older than Wolfgang, who in a few short decades would enter history as Queen Marie Antoinette of France. There were also other family members in the room, as well as some senior figures such as ladies in waiting.

It began conventionally enough – other than the fact that this was a boy aged six and a half, and inordinately small for his age. Wolfgang climbed onto the stool, little legs dangling, and played on the clavier. To his father’s relief he did not disappoint.

‘People could hardly believe their ears and eyes at [Wolfgang’s] performance,’ reported one of the ladies of the court.7

Emperor Franz himself, taking control, decided on a little mischief. Little Wolfgang was to be put to the test. ‘I can see that you play with all your fingers, which is what you are used to doing. But what if the keyboard were covered? Could you pick out a tune then with even one finger?’8

Wolfgang squealed with delight. It was just the kind of trick that appealed to him. A piece of cloth was found, and laid along the length of the keyboard to cover the keys. The black keys being raised will have held the cloth slightly above the white keys, so that no indentation to mark the separation between the keys would have been apparent. Wolfgang would have to play completely blind, which unsurprisingly caused him no problem at all.

First he picked out a tune with one finger. Then, with no difficulty, he played with all his fingers, probably looking up into the air with a mischievous grin, maybe cheekily directed at the emperor himself.

Emperor Franz, spellbound, dubbed him Hexenmeister (‘little wizard’). The empress, too, was unstinting in her praise, because little Wolfgang jumped down from the piano stool, ran over to her, leapt up onto her lap, put his arms round her neck and showered her with kisses.

Never had the empress of the Habsburg empire been treated with such familiarity by anyone outside her immediate family, and then by a child she had never met before.

There was more familiarity that caused much amusement. At one point Wolfgang, careering round the room as a child would, slipped on the marble floor. Maria Antonia, the future Queen Marie Antoinette, helped him to his feet. ‘You are very kind,’ he said to her. ‘One day I will marry you.’9

The emperor then informed everyone that Herr Mozart was author of an indispensable guide to playing the violin, and ordered his daughter-in-law, who was learning violin, to play for Leopold.

One can imagine Leopold swelling with pride at this unexpected encomium. Not only had his young son impressed the royal family beyond measure, but his own talents were being praised too.

It was a thoroughly satisfied Leopold Mozart who took his family back to the humble lodgings they shared on the Tiefer Graben – rather below what a family of musicians who had entertained the emperor and empress might be used to.

The whole visit to Schönbrunn had lasted three hours, which included a personal guided tour for Wolfgang of the empress’s private apartments, carried out by the royal children who were excited to have a new young friend.

If word had reached the royal palace before the Mozarts’ arrival in Vi-enna, it now raced through the ranks of the nobility like a forest fire. So many requests were there for Wolfgang to perform in aristocratic palaces and salons that Leopold had to write home to the prince-elector in Salzburg asking for an extended leave of absence.

Since one of those requests was for a second visit to Schönbrunn palace, the extension was a formality. That particular request from the very top brought with it 100 ducats, a very welcome addition to Leopold’s finances.

There was more. Other aristocrats gave Leopold a variety of gifts and – much more welcome – money. By the time the family had been in Vienna for a month, Leopold had sent home to be banked the sum of 120 ducats, which was more than two full years’ worth of his Salzburg salary.*

We have reason today to be very grateful to the empress for the gifts that she gave to Wolfgang and Nannerl – a set each of full-dress court clothes. These might have been hand-me-downs from royal children, but Wolfgang and Nannerl wore them the following year, back home in Salzburg, for two oil paintings, the first portraits we have of the Mozart children.

The young Wolfgang looks thoroughly regal in lilac jacket and matching brocaded waistcoat, with plentiful gold braid, gold buttons and tassels, white lace collar and cuffs and white stockings. He is holding a black hat and wearing a sword. His left hand is tucked imperiously into his waistcoat, his right rather arrogantly on his hip, one finger extended. He wears a wig, and he gazes unflinchingly at the painter. Were it not for his diminutive size, he could be a decade older than he was.

Nannerl, in a plum-coloured taffeta dress appliquéd with sheer white lace, has an equally self-assured gaze, her right arm bent at the elbow, hand turned with fingers splayed, as if she has been interrupted while playing at the keyboard.

And that, perhaps, is the most interesting feature of the portraits. Both have keyboards. That, now, is the Mozart children’s raison d’être. They are musicians.

Leopold Mozart had every reason to be thoroughly pleased with the way things had gone in Vienna. But, as we have seen, he was something of a worrier, a born pessimist perhaps. And the truth was he did have cause, if not for pessimism, then at least for worry.

Leopold held a senior position as musician at the court in Salzburg. The most senior musician at court, the kapellmeister, had died the previous June. It was taken for granted that his deputy would succeed him, which would leave a vacancy for the number-two position.

Leopold Mozart was a leading candidate for deputy kapellmeister, but just when he should have been back in Salzburg pressing his case, manoeuvring along with other candidates, ensuring his name was at the forefront, he was away in Vienna.

Leopold put pen to paper. Using Hagenauer as a conduit, knowing full well his words would reach the court, he stated that if by staying in Vienna he was in any way losing favour with the prince-archbishop, he would leave ‘on the instant’ by mail coach for Salzburg.

He went further, and his choice of words is interesting. ‘I am now in circumstances that allow me to earn my living in Vienna,’ he wrote. ‘I still prefer Salzburg though, but I must not be held back. If I am, I cannot say what others might persuade me to do.’

It is a veiled threat to resign from the Salzburg court and move, with his family, to Vienna permanently. His children, and in particular Wolfgang, he now knew, would be able to bring money in through their musical talents, and enough for the family to live on.

Leopold must have wondered if he had gone too far. Was he pushing his luck? What if the prince-archbishop called his bluff? It was not entirely a bluff. But here he was relying on his children’s continued talent. The old worry resurfaced. What if they failed to improve? What if the aristocracy tired of them, and their earning power dwindled? What if something totally unforeseen were to happen?

And that last worry is exactly what occurred. By the time of the Mozarts’ second appearance at Schönbrunn, on 21 October, young Wolfgang was seriously unwell. It had been threatening for some time. His mother was convinced the boat journey on the Danube, which had been unseasonably cold, wet and windy for September, had damaged his health.

So prodigious was Wolfgang’s talent that, even suffering from a worsening cold and sore throat, he had been able to play as well as ever in the salons of the nobility. But people – high-ranking aristocratic people – were beginning to talk. Was Leopold pushing his son too hard?

“Even the empress was heard to say Leopold was sacrificing his son’s health in the pursuit of ducats.”

Even the empress was heard to say Leopold was sacrificing his son’s health in the pursuit of ducats. It was not looking good for Leopold. Or Wolfgang.

After that return visit to Schönbrunn, Wolfgang came down with a rash and lesions, with pain in his back and hips, which were diagnosed as ‘a kind of scarlet fever’. His condition was made more difficult by his adult teeth beginning to come through. (He was just six years and nine months.)

The doctor confined him to his bed, and there he stayed for two weeks, after which time he showed considerable improvement. But word of scarlet fever had spread, and Leopold suddenly found invitations cancelled and others not forthcoming.

Leopold has done himself no favours with posterity by writing to Hagenauer that ‘this adventure [Wolfgang’s illness] has cost me 50 ducats’. He compounded this by spending an impressive 23 ducats on a private coach. He justified it by claiming they would have returned with fewer ribs had he not done so. He is probably right, in that Wolfgang’s health would have suffered even more had he travelled in a more basic form of transport.

He suffered enough as it was. By the time the family arrived home in Salzburg, Wolfgang was so seriously unwell that smallpox was suspected. He had a fever, which prevented him from sleeping, and complained he felt nothing in his lower legs and was unable to move his feet.

He was confined once again to bed, and it was a week before things began to improve. With all the caveats of attempting a diagnosis two and a half centuries after the event, it seems the earlier illness was a streptococcal infection, followed some weeks later by rheumatic fever. Though his young age allowed for a swifter recovery, these were serious ailments for a child as young as Wolfgang.

While Wolfgang’s mother worried over his health, Leopold looked beyond that to the effect a serious illness would have on the family finances. He had already seen how in Vienna Wolfgang’s poor health had led to an immediate loss of income. If that were to recur, the rosy future he had once seen for the family would swiftly dissipate.

He had his own position to consider too, and it was precarious. Leopold had seriously tried the prince-archbishop’s patience by extending his absence for a second time, to fit more recitals in on the journey home.

In what looks to us like an absurd misjudgement, once back in Salzburg he had defended himself to Archbishop Schrattenbach by saying he had been forced to take the return journey slowly because the extreme cold made it necessary to protect the children’s health. He compounded this by saying he had been suffering from dreadful toothache, which so disfigured his face that people who knew him had not recognised him.

If we are not fooled today, neither was the archbishop. But just when things were beginning to look really grim, they started to improve. Although Michael Haydn (the younger brother of Joseph) was brought to Salzburg as court composer and konzertmeister, thus diluting the power of the deputy kapellmeister, Leopold Mozart got the promotion he wanted.

Wolfgang’s health improved too, and it was soon evident that his extraordinary young genius had not suffered.

Leopold looked to the future, and with his innate pessimism the future was at worst precarious, but at best … who could tell? It was time to be bold. Bold and courageous.

Wolfgang had conquered Vienna. Now it was time for him to conquer Europe.

* It is practically impossible to estimate what money in mid-eighteenth century Vienna would be worth today. It has been calculated that 20 gulden, or florins, might be worth around £500. Given that there were 4.5 gulden in a ducat, 100 ducats might be worth around £11,250, meaning the sum Leopold banked would be around £13,500 in today’s currency.

On 9 June 1763, the Mozart family – mother, father, and two children – left Vienna for an extensive tour of Europe. Leopold had planned an ambitious itinerary. In the event it would be far more ambitious than he had intended, visiting more places and taking much longer than originally planned.

In all, the tour lasted for three and a half years, covered several thousand miles, stopped in eighty-eight towns and cities (several more than once), and the children performed for audiences totalling many thousands.

Leopold was easily able to persuade the benign Archbishop Schrattenbach to give him paid leave of absence, the costs again being partly born by Hagenauer and other wealthy burgers of Salzburg. The musically aware elector had witnessed the Mozart children’s skills for himself, and knew any kudos they received would reflect well on Salzburg and its ruler.

That is indeed what happened, but to a degree far beyond anything Schrattenbach, or Salzburg, or indeed Leopold Mozart, might have expected. By the time of the family’s return home, the name Mozart was known throughout Europe.

Those who had attended one of their recitals were heard to speak of the experience decades afterwards. In fact Germany’s foremost playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, shortly before he died, vividly recalled seeing ‘the little man with his wig and his sword’10 performing in Frankfurt nearly seventy years earlier.

It certainly did not begin auspiciously. The family of four, plus a valet who also dressed wigs, had made less than a day’s travel when one of the back wheels on the carriage broke. A temporary replacement was supplied at a coaching inn, but it was not quite the right size.

They had to continue, so Leopold and the valet walked alongside the carriage for two hours to lessen the weight, and they arrived just after midnight in the town of Wasserburg in Bavaria, in search of a cartwright and an inn where they could stay.

It ended up costing Leopold two new wheels, an extra night in the inn, which included a bed for the coachman too, and feeding the team of four horses and replacing them with a new team.

Leopold complained of the extra expense and time lost in a letter to Hagenauer back in Salzburg, but saying also that he put the second day to good use (knowing word would be relayed to Schrattenbach).

While the coach was being repaired, Leopold took Wolfgang to the church in Wasserburg. The organ there had pedals, and the small boy with short legs had not played on an organ with pedals before.

Leopold showed Wolfgang how to play with a pedal board, and then wrote in astonishment: ‘Pushing away the stool, he experimented while standing.* Remaining upright, he played as he worked the pedal, and gave the impression of having practised in this manner for several months.’ Adding, again – we can assume – in the firm expectation that word would reach the archbishop, ‘This is a new sign of God’s grace.’

The carriage repaired, they travelled on to Munich, arriving on 12 June. This was a return visit to the Bavarian capital, and here they collected more admiring members of the aristocracy, including the elector himself.

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.