August 18, 2025 • 21 mins
Dive into the captivating world of Gustav Kobbe, a German-American music critic who lived during the vibrant era of Liszt and Wagner. With a distinct flair for storytelling, Kobbe offers a romantic and entertaining exploration of the loves and lives of seven iconic composers, all while firmly aligning himself with the Wagnerian perspective. His unique writing style, filled with rich imagery and unusual sentence constructions, transports listeners to the 19th century, making each chapter a delightful auditory experience. Wagner receives an especially thorough account, reflecting Kobbes personal claims of familiarity with both Liszt and Wagner, as well as Cosima Wagner. This blend of anecdote and insight creates an original narrative that stands apart from more traditional biographies. (Peter Thomlinson)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter one of the Loves of Great Composers. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information, ought to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Peter Tomlinson. The Loves of Great Composers by
(00:20):
Gustav Coby, Chapter one, Mozart and his Constance. Nearly eight
years after Mozart's death, his widow, in response to a
request from a famous publishing house for relics of the composer, sent,
among other Mozartiana, a packet of letters written to her
(00:42):
by her husband. In transmitting these, she wrote, especially characteristic
of his great love for me, which breathed through all
the letters, Is it not true those from the last
year of his life are just as tender as those
written during the first year of our marriage. She added
(01:03):
that she would like to have this fact, especially mentioned
to his honor, in any biography in which the data
she sent were to be used. This request was not
prompted by vanity, but by a just pride in the
love that her husband had borne her and which she
still cherished. The love of his constance was the solace
(01:25):
of Mozart's life. The wonder child, born in Salzburg in
seventeen fifty six and taken by his father from court
to court, where he and his sister played to admiring audiences,
did not, like so many wonder children, fade from public view.
But with manhood, fulfilled the promise of his early years
(01:46):
and became one of the world's great masters of music.
But his genius was not appreciated until too late. The
world of today sees in Mozart the type of the brilliant,
careless bohemian whom it loves to associate with arms, and
long since has taken him to its heart. But the
world of his own day, when he asked for bread,
(02:08):
offered him a stone. Mozart died young, he was only
thirty five. His sufferings were crowded into a few years.
But throughout these years there stood by his side one
whose love soothed his trials and brightened his life, the Constance,
whom he adored. What she wrote to the publishers was
(02:28):
strictly true. His last letters to her breathe a love
as fervent as the first. Some six months before he died,
she was obliged to go to Baden for her health.
You hardly will believe, he writes to her, how heavily
time hangs on my hands. Without you, I cannot exactly
explain my feelings. There is a void that pains me,
(02:50):
a certain longing that cannot be satisfied. Hence never ceases. Continues. Ever,
I grows from day to day when I think how
happy and childlike we would be together in Baden, and
what sad tedious hours I pass here. I take no
pleasure in my work because I cannot break it off
(03:10):
now and then for a few words with you, as
I am accustomed to. When I go to the piano
and sing something from the opera the magic Flute, I
have to stop right away. It affects me so bastar.
If this very hour I would see my way clear
to you, the next hour wouldn't find me here. In
(03:31):
another letter written at this time, he kisses her in
thought two thousand times. When Mozart first met Constance, she
was too young to attract his notice. He had stopped
at Mannheim on his way to Paris, whither he was
going with his mother on a concert tour. Requiring the
services of a music copyist, he was recommended to Fridoline Weber,
(03:56):
who eked out a livelihood by copying music and by
acting as prompter at the theatre. His brother was the
father of Weber, the famous composer, and his own family,
which consisted of four daughters, were musical. Mozart's visit to
Mannheim occurred in seventeen seventy seven, when Constance Weber was
(04:16):
only fourteen. Of her two older sisters, a second Aloysia,
had a beautiful voice and no mean looks, and the
young genius was greatly taken with her From the first.
He induced his mother to linger in Mannheim much longer
than was necessary. Eleoisia became his pupil, and under his
(04:38):
tuition her voice improved wonderfully. She achieved brilliant success in public,
and her father delighted watch with pleasure the sentimental attachment
that was springing up between her and Mozart. Meanwhile, Leopold
Mozart was in Salzburg wondering why his wife and his
son were so long delaying their further journey to Paris,
(05:00):
when he received from Wolfgang letters full of enthusiasm over
his pupil couple with the proposal that instead of going
to Paris, he and his mother should change their destination
to Italy and take the Weber family along in order
that Eleisia might further develop her talents. There, he got
an inkling of the true state of affairs and was furious.
(05:24):
He had large plans for his son. Knew Weber to
be shiftless and the family poor, and concluded that for
their own advantage, they were endeavoring to trap Wolfgang into
a matrimonial alliance. Peremptory letters sent wife and son on
the way to Paris, and the elder Mozart was greatly
relieved when he knew them safely beyond the confines of Mannheim.
(05:49):
Mozart's stay in Paris was tragically brought to an end
by his mother's death. He set out for his return
to Salzburg, intending, however, to stop at Mannheim, for he
still remembered Eleoisia affectionately. Finding that the Weber family had
moved to Munich, he went there, but as soon as
he came into the presence of the beautiful young singer
(06:12):
her manner showed that her feelings towards him had cooled. Thereupon,
his ardor was likewise chilled, and he continued on his
way to Salzburg, where he arrived, much to his father's relief,
still unattached. When Mozart departed from Munich, he probably thought
that he was leaving behind him forever, not only the
(06:35):
fickle Eloisia, but the rest of the Weber family as well.
How slight our premonition of fate forever the inscrutable ways
of providence brought two people together. Those two were Mozart
and Constance Weber. Nor was Alyosa without further influence on
his career. She married an actor named Lang, with whom
(06:58):
she went to Vienna, where she became a singer at
the opera. There. Mozart composed for her the role of
Constance in his opera The Elopement from the Seraalio. For
the eldest Vabor girl, Josepher, who had a high, flexible soprano,
He wrote one of his most brilliant roles, that of
(07:18):
the Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute. I
am anticipating somewhat in the order of events, that I
may correct an erroneous impression regarding Mozart's marriage, which I
find frequently obtains. He composed the role of Constance for
Eleoisia shortly before he married the real Constance, and this
(07:40):
had led many people to believe that he took the
younger sister out of Peaque because he had been rejected
by Aloisia. Whoever believes this has a very superficial acquaintance
with Mozart's biography. Five years had passed since he had
parted from Aloysia at Munich, the youthful affair had blown over,
and when they met again in Vienna, she was Frau Lange.
(08:05):
Mozart's marriage with Constance was a genuine love match. It
was bitterly opposed by his father, who never became wholly
reconciled to the woman of his son's choice, and met
with no favor from her mother. Fridolin Weber had died Altogether,
the Omens were unfavorable, and they were obstacles enough to
have discouraged any but the most ardent couple. So much
(08:28):
for the Peak story. Mozart went to Vienna in seventeen
eighty one with the Archbishop of Salzburg, by whom, however,
he was treated with such indignity that he left his service.
Whom should he find in Vienna but his old friends
the Webers, the Frau Weber was glad enough of the
(08:51):
opportunity to let lodgings to Mozart, for as in Mannheim
and Munich, the family was in straitened circumstances. As soon
as the composer's farther heard of this arrangement, he began
to expostulate. Finally Mozart changed his lodgings, but this step
had the very opposite effect hoped for by Leopold Mozart,
(09:15):
for separation only increased the love that had sprung up
between the young people. Since they had met again in
Vienna and Mozart had found the little fourteen year old
girl of his Manheim visit grown to young womanhood, there
seems little doubt that the Webers, with the exception of Constance,
were a shiftless lot. They had drifted from place to place,
(09:38):
and had finally come to Vienna because Aloysia had moved
there with her husband. When Mozart finally decided to marry Constance,
come what might, he wrote his father a letter which
shows that his eyes were wide open to the faults
of the family and by the calm, almost judicial man
(10:00):
which he refers to the virtues of his future wife,
that his was no hastily formed attachment based merely on
superficial attractions. He does not spare the family in his
analysis of their traits. If he seems ungallant in his
references to his future Queen of the Knight and to
(10:21):
the Prima Donna of his elopement from the Seralio, to
say nothing of his former attachment for her, one must
remember that this is a letter from a son to
a father in which frankness is permissible. He admits the
intemperance and shrewishness of the mother, characterizes Josepher as lazy
(10:42):
and vulgar, calls Aloisa a malicious person, and Coquette dismisses
the youngest Sophie as too young to be anything but
simply a good, though thoughtless creature. Surely not an attractive picture,
and not a family one would enter lightly. What drew
(11:02):
him to Constance, Let him answer that question himself. But
the middle one, my good dear Constance, he writes to
his father, is a martyr among them, and for that reason,
perhaps the best hearted, cleverest and inner word the best
among them. She is neither homely nor beautiful. Her whole
(11:25):
beauty lies in two small, dark eyes and in a
fine figure. She is not brilliant, but has common sense
enough to perform her duties as wife and a mother.
She is not extravagant. On the contrary, she is accustomed
to go poorly dressed, because what little her mother can
do for her children she does for the others, but
(11:47):
never for her. It is true that she would like
to be tastefully and becomingly dressed, but never expensively. And
most of the things a woman needs she can make
for herself. She does her owner every day. Head dress
must have been something appalling in those days. Understands housekeeping
(12:07):
as the best disposition in the world. We love each
other with all our hearts. Tell me if I could
ask a better wife for myself. The letter is so touchingly,
frank and simple that whoever reads it must feel that
the portrait Mozart Drawers of his constance is absolutely true
to life. He makes no attempt to paint her as
(12:29):
a paragon of beauty and intellect. It is a picture
of the neglected member of a household, neglected because of
her homely virtues, the one fair flower blooming in the
dark crevice of this shiftless minage. And at the end
of the letter, is the one cry which, since the
world was young, has defied and brought to nought the
(12:52):
doubting counsels of wiser heads. We love each other with
all our hearts. The Mozart, fearful for his son's future,
had kept himself informed of what was going on in Vienna.
He knew that when his son's attentions to Constance became marked,
her guardian had compelled him to sign a promise of marriage.
(13:16):
In this the father again saw a trap laid for
his son, who in worldly matters was as unversed as
a child. But Leopold Mozart did not know how the
episode ended, and little suspected that future generations would see
it as one of the most charming incidents in the
love affairs of great men. For when her guardian had
(13:39):
left the house, Constance asked her mother for the paper,
and as soon as she had it in her hands,
tore it up, exclaiming, dear Mozart, I do not need
a written promise from you. I trust your words. Frau
Weber saw in Mozart the suitor a possible contributor to
the household expenses, and as soon as she learned that
(14:03):
he and Constance intended to set up for themselves, she
became bitterly opposed to the match. Finally, a titled lady,
Baroness von Voldstarter took the young people under her protection,
and Constance went to live with her to escape her
mother's nagging. Frau Weber then planned to force her daughter
(14:24):
to return to her by legal process. Immediate marriage was
the only method of escape from the scandal this would entail,
and so August fourth, seventeen eighty two, Mozart and his
Constans were married in the Church of Saint Stephen, Vienna.
When at last they had all obstacles behind them and
stood at the altar as one, they were so overcome
(14:47):
by their feelings that they began to cry, and the
few bystanders, including the priest, were so deeply affected by
their happiness, that they too were moved to tears. Although
poor Atzzart through his music, had become acquainted with titled
personages and was known at court, he and Constance, shortly
after their wedding, were walking in the Praeta with their
(15:10):
pet dog. To make the dog bark, Mozart playfully pretended
to strike Constance with his cane. At that moment, the Emperor,
chancing to come out of a summer house and see
in Mozart's action, which he misinterpreted, began chiding him for
abusing his wife so shortly after they had been married.
When his mistake was explained to him, he was highly amused. Later,
(15:34):
he could not fail to hear of the couple's devotion.
Vienna was witnessed to these relations, wrote a contemporary of
Mozart's and Constant's love for each other. And when Aloysia
and her husband quarreled and separated, the Emperor, meeting Constance,
and referring to her sister's troubles, said, what a difference
it makes to have a good husband in spite of
(15:57):
poverty and its attendant struggles. At Sartz's marriage was a
happy one because it was a marriage of love. Like
every child of genius, he had his moves, but Constance
adapted herself to them, and thereby won his confidence and
gained an influence over him, which, however, she brought into
play only when the occasion demanded. When he was thinking
(16:18):
out of work, he was absent minded, and at such
times she always was ready to humor him, and even
cut his meat for him. At table, as at during
periods of abstraction to injure himself. But when he had
a composition well in mind, to put it on paper
seemed little more to him than copying. And then he
loved to have her sit by him and tell him stories, yes,
(16:42):
regular fairy tales and children's stories, as if he himself
were still a child. He was write and listen, drop
his pen and laugh, and then go on with the
work again. The day before the first performance of Don Giovanni,
when the final rehearsal already had been held, the overture
still remained unwritten. It had to be written overnight, and
(17:06):
it was she who sat by him and relieved the
rush and strain of work with her cheerful prattle. It
is said that, amongst other things, she read to him
the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. Be that,
as it may, she rubbed the lamp, and the overture
to Don Giovanni appeared. Would that their life could be
(17:30):
portrayed in a series of such charming pictures. But grinding
poverty was there also, and the bitterness of disappointed hopes.
His sensitive nature could not withstand the repeated material shocks
to which it was subjected, and the pity is that
it gave way just when there seemed a prospect of
(17:52):
a change. The magic Flute had been produced with great success,
and that in the face of relentless opposition from envious rivals,
and orders from new sources and on better terms were
coming to him. But the turn of the tide was
too late. When he received an order for a requiem
from a person who wished his identity to remain unknown.
(18:15):
He was subsequently discovered to be a nobleman who wanted
to produce the work as his own. Morzart already felt
the hand of death upon him and declared that he
was composing the requiem for his own obsequis. Even after
he was obliged to take to his bed, he worked
at it, saying it was to be his recroem and
(18:37):
must be ready in time. The afternoon before he died,
he went over the completed portions with three friends, and
that the lachrymosa burst into tears. In the evening, he
lost consciousness, and early the following morning, December the fifth,
seventeen ninety one, he passed away. The immediate cause of
(18:57):
death was rheumatic fever with typhoid complicates, and his distracted widow,
hoping to catch the same disease and be carried away
by it, threw herself upon his bed. She was too
prostrated to attend his funeral, which, be it said to
the shame of his friends, was a shabby affair. The
(19:17):
day was stormy, and after the service indoors they left
before the actual burial, which was in one of the
common graves, holding ten or twelve bodies, and intended to
be worked over every few years for new internments. When
as soon as Constant was strong enough she visited the cemetery,
there was a new grave digger, who, upon being questioned,
(19:38):
could not locate her husband's grave, And to this day
Mozart's last resting place is unknown. It must not be
reckoned against constance that eighteen years after Mozart's death she
married again, for she did not forget the man on
whom her heart first was set. Her second husband, Listened,
formerly Danish charged affairs in Vienna, is best known by
(20:02):
the biography of Mozart, which he wrote under her guidance.
They removed to Mozart's birthplace, Salzburg, where Nisson died in
eighteen twenty six. Constant's death was strangely associated with Mozart's memory.
It was as if in her last moment she must
go back to him, who was her first love. For
She died in Salzburg on March sixth, eighteen forty two,
(20:25):
a few hours after the model for the Mozart monument,
which adorns one of the spacious squares of the city
where the composer was born, was received there. She had
been the life love of a child of genius, and,
without being singularly gifted herself, had understood how to humor
his whims and adapt herself to his moods, in which
(20:47):
sunshine often was succeeded by shadow. It was singularly appropriate that,
surviving him many years, she yet died under circumstances which
formed a new link between her and his memory. End
of Chapter one
Chapter one of the Loves of Great Composers. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information, ought to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Peter Tomlinson. The Loves of Great Composers by
(00:20):
Gustav Coby, Chapter one, Mozart and his Constance. Nearly eight
years after Mozart's death, his widow, in response to a
request from a famous publishing house for relics of the composer, sent,
among other Mozartiana, a packet of letters written to her
(00:42):
by her husband. In transmitting these, she wrote, especially characteristic
of his great love for me, which breathed through all
the letters, Is it not true those from the last
year of his life are just as tender as those
written during the first year of our marriage. She added
(01:03):
that she would like to have this fact, especially mentioned
to his honor, in any biography in which the data
she sent were to be used. This request was not
prompted by vanity, but by a just pride in the
love that her husband had borne her and which she
still cherished. The love of his constance was the solace
(01:25):
of Mozart's life. The wonder child, born in Salzburg in
seventeen fifty six and taken by his father from court
to court, where he and his sister played to admiring audiences,
did not, like so many wonder children, fade from public view.
But with manhood, fulfilled the promise of his early years
(01:46):
and became one of the world's great masters of music.
But his genius was not appreciated until too late. The
world of today sees in Mozart the type of the brilliant,
careless bohemian whom it loves to associate with arms, and
long since has taken him to its heart. But the
world of his own day, when he asked for bread,
(02:08):
offered him a stone. Mozart died young, he was only
thirty five. His sufferings were crowded into a few years.
But throughout these years there stood by his side one
whose love soothed his trials and brightened his life, the Constance,
whom he adored. What she wrote to the publishers was
(02:28):
strictly true. His last letters to her breathe a love
as fervent as the first. Some six months before he died,
she was obliged to go to Baden for her health.
You hardly will believe, he writes to her, how heavily
time hangs on my hands. Without you, I cannot exactly
explain my feelings. There is a void that pains me,
(02:50):
a certain longing that cannot be satisfied. Hence never ceases. Continues. Ever,
I grows from day to day when I think how
happy and childlike we would be together in Baden, and
what sad tedious hours I pass here. I take no
pleasure in my work because I cannot break it off
(03:10):
now and then for a few words with you, as
I am accustomed to. When I go to the piano
and sing something from the opera the magic Flute, I
have to stop right away. It affects me so bastar.
If this very hour I would see my way clear
to you, the next hour wouldn't find me here. In
(03:31):
another letter written at this time, he kisses her in
thought two thousand times. When Mozart first met Constance, she
was too young to attract his notice. He had stopped
at Mannheim on his way to Paris, whither he was
going with his mother on a concert tour. Requiring the
services of a music copyist, he was recommended to Fridoline Weber,
(03:56):
who eked out a livelihood by copying music and by
acting as prompter at the theatre. His brother was the
father of Weber, the famous composer, and his own family,
which consisted of four daughters, were musical. Mozart's visit to
Mannheim occurred in seventeen seventy seven, when Constance Weber was
(04:16):
only fourteen. Of her two older sisters, a second Aloysia,
had a beautiful voice and no mean looks, and the
young genius was greatly taken with her From the first.
He induced his mother to linger in Mannheim much longer
than was necessary. Eleoisia became his pupil, and under his
(04:38):
tuition her voice improved wonderfully. She achieved brilliant success in public,
and her father delighted watch with pleasure the sentimental attachment
that was springing up between her and Mozart. Meanwhile, Leopold
Mozart was in Salzburg wondering why his wife and his
son were so long delaying their further journey to Paris,
(05:00):
when he received from Wolfgang letters full of enthusiasm over
his pupil couple with the proposal that instead of going
to Paris, he and his mother should change their destination
to Italy and take the Weber family along in order
that Eleisia might further develop her talents. There, he got
an inkling of the true state of affairs and was furious.
(05:24):
He had large plans for his son. Knew Weber to
be shiftless and the family poor, and concluded that for
their own advantage, they were endeavoring to trap Wolfgang into
a matrimonial alliance. Peremptory letters sent wife and son on
the way to Paris, and the elder Mozart was greatly
relieved when he knew them safely beyond the confines of Mannheim.
(05:49):
Mozart's stay in Paris was tragically brought to an end
by his mother's death. He set out for his return
to Salzburg, intending, however, to stop at Mannheim, for he
still remembered Eleoisia affectionately. Finding that the Weber family had
moved to Munich, he went there, but as soon as
he came into the presence of the beautiful young singer
(06:12):
her manner showed that her feelings towards him had cooled. Thereupon,
his ardor was likewise chilled, and he continued on his
way to Salzburg, where he arrived, much to his father's relief,
still unattached. When Mozart departed from Munich, he probably thought
that he was leaving behind him forever, not only the
(06:35):
fickle Eloisia, but the rest of the Weber family as well.
How slight our premonition of fate forever the inscrutable ways
of providence brought two people together. Those two were Mozart
and Constance Weber. Nor was Alyosa without further influence on
his career. She married an actor named Lang, with whom
(06:58):
she went to Vienna, where she became a singer at
the opera. There. Mozart composed for her the role of
Constance in his opera The Elopement from the Seraalio. For
the eldest Vabor girl, Josepher, who had a high, flexible soprano,
He wrote one of his most brilliant roles, that of
(07:18):
the Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute. I
am anticipating somewhat in the order of events, that I
may correct an erroneous impression regarding Mozart's marriage, which I
find frequently obtains. He composed the role of Constance for
Eleoisia shortly before he married the real Constance, and this
(07:40):
had led many people to believe that he took the
younger sister out of Peaque because he had been rejected
by Aloisia. Whoever believes this has a very superficial acquaintance
with Mozart's biography. Five years had passed since he had
parted from Aloysia at Munich, the youthful affair had blown over,
and when they met again in Vienna, she was Frau Lange.
(08:05):
Mozart's marriage with Constance was a genuine love match. It
was bitterly opposed by his father, who never became wholly
reconciled to the woman of his son's choice, and met
with no favor from her mother. Fridolin Weber had died Altogether,
the Omens were unfavorable, and they were obstacles enough to
have discouraged any but the most ardent couple. So much
(08:28):
for the Peak story. Mozart went to Vienna in seventeen
eighty one with the Archbishop of Salzburg, by whom, however,
he was treated with such indignity that he left his service.
Whom should he find in Vienna but his old friends
the Webers, the Frau Weber was glad enough of the
(08:51):
opportunity to let lodgings to Mozart, for as in Mannheim
and Munich, the family was in straitened circumstances. As soon
as the composer's farther heard of this arrangement, he began
to expostulate. Finally Mozart changed his lodgings, but this step
had the very opposite effect hoped for by Leopold Mozart,
(09:15):
for separation only increased the love that had sprung up
between the young people. Since they had met again in
Vienna and Mozart had found the little fourteen year old
girl of his Manheim visit grown to young womanhood, there
seems little doubt that the Webers, with the exception of Constance,
were a shiftless lot. They had drifted from place to place,
(09:38):
and had finally come to Vienna because Aloysia had moved
there with her husband. When Mozart finally decided to marry Constance,
come what might, he wrote his father a letter which
shows that his eyes were wide open to the faults
of the family and by the calm, almost judicial man
(10:00):
which he refers to the virtues of his future wife,
that his was no hastily formed attachment based merely on
superficial attractions. He does not spare the family in his
analysis of their traits. If he seems ungallant in his
references to his future Queen of the Knight and to
(10:21):
the Prima Donna of his elopement from the Seralio, to
say nothing of his former attachment for her, one must
remember that this is a letter from a son to
a father in which frankness is permissible. He admits the
intemperance and shrewishness of the mother, characterizes Josepher as lazy
(10:42):
and vulgar, calls Aloisa a malicious person, and Coquette dismisses
the youngest Sophie as too young to be anything but
simply a good, though thoughtless creature. Surely not an attractive picture,
and not a family one would enter lightly. What drew
(11:02):
him to Constance, Let him answer that question himself. But
the middle one, my good dear Constance, he writes to
his father, is a martyr among them, and for that reason,
perhaps the best hearted, cleverest and inner word the best
among them. She is neither homely nor beautiful. Her whole
(11:25):
beauty lies in two small, dark eyes and in a
fine figure. She is not brilliant, but has common sense
enough to perform her duties as wife and a mother.
She is not extravagant. On the contrary, she is accustomed
to go poorly dressed, because what little her mother can
do for her children she does for the others, but
(11:47):
never for her. It is true that she would like
to be tastefully and becomingly dressed, but never expensively. And
most of the things a woman needs she can make
for herself. She does her owner every day. Head dress
must have been something appalling in those days. Understands housekeeping
(12:07):
as the best disposition in the world. We love each
other with all our hearts. Tell me if I could
ask a better wife for myself. The letter is so touchingly,
frank and simple that whoever reads it must feel that
the portrait Mozart Drawers of his constance is absolutely true
to life. He makes no attempt to paint her as
(12:29):
a paragon of beauty and intellect. It is a picture
of the neglected member of a household, neglected because of
her homely virtues, the one fair flower blooming in the
dark crevice of this shiftless minage. And at the end
of the letter, is the one cry which, since the
world was young, has defied and brought to nought the
(12:52):
doubting counsels of wiser heads. We love each other with
all our hearts. The Mozart, fearful for his son's future,
had kept himself informed of what was going on in Vienna.
He knew that when his son's attentions to Constance became marked,
her guardian had compelled him to sign a promise of marriage.
(13:16):
In this the father again saw a trap laid for
his son, who in worldly matters was as unversed as
a child. But Leopold Mozart did not know how the
episode ended, and little suspected that future generations would see
it as one of the most charming incidents in the
love affairs of great men. For when her guardian had
(13:39):
left the house, Constance asked her mother for the paper,
and as soon as she had it in her hands,
tore it up, exclaiming, dear Mozart, I do not need
a written promise from you. I trust your words. Frau
Weber saw in Mozart the suitor a possible contributor to
the household expenses, and as soon as she learned that
(14:03):
he and Constance intended to set up for themselves, she
became bitterly opposed to the match. Finally, a titled lady,
Baroness von Voldstarter took the young people under her protection,
and Constance went to live with her to escape her
mother's nagging. Frau Weber then planned to force her daughter
(14:24):
to return to her by legal process. Immediate marriage was
the only method of escape from the scandal this would entail,
and so August fourth, seventeen eighty two, Mozart and his
Constans were married in the Church of Saint Stephen, Vienna.
When at last they had all obstacles behind them and
stood at the altar as one, they were so overcome
(14:47):
by their feelings that they began to cry, and the
few bystanders, including the priest, were so deeply affected by
their happiness, that they too were moved to tears. Although
poor Atzzart through his music, had become acquainted with titled
personages and was known at court, he and Constance, shortly
after their wedding, were walking in the Praeta with their
(15:10):
pet dog. To make the dog bark, Mozart playfully pretended
to strike Constance with his cane. At that moment, the Emperor,
chancing to come out of a summer house and see
in Mozart's action, which he misinterpreted, began chiding him for
abusing his wife so shortly after they had been married.
When his mistake was explained to him, he was highly amused. Later,
(15:34):
he could not fail to hear of the couple's devotion.
Vienna was witnessed to these relations, wrote a contemporary of
Mozart's and Constant's love for each other. And when Aloysia
and her husband quarreled and separated, the Emperor, meeting Constance,
and referring to her sister's troubles, said, what a difference
it makes to have a good husband in spite of
(15:57):
poverty and its attendant struggles. At Sartz's marriage was a
happy one because it was a marriage of love. Like
every child of genius, he had his moves, but Constance
adapted herself to them, and thereby won his confidence and
gained an influence over him, which, however, she brought into
play only when the occasion demanded. When he was thinking
(16:18):
out of work, he was absent minded, and at such
times she always was ready to humor him, and even
cut his meat for him. At table, as at during
periods of abstraction to injure himself. But when he had
a composition well in mind, to put it on paper
seemed little more to him than copying. And then he
loved to have her sit by him and tell him stories, yes,
(16:42):
regular fairy tales and children's stories, as if he himself
were still a child. He was write and listen, drop
his pen and laugh, and then go on with the
work again. The day before the first performance of Don Giovanni,
when the final rehearsal already had been held, the overture
still remained unwritten. It had to be written overnight, and
(17:06):
it was she who sat by him and relieved the
rush and strain of work with her cheerful prattle. It
is said that, amongst other things, she read to him
the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. Be that,
as it may, she rubbed the lamp, and the overture
to Don Giovanni appeared. Would that their life could be
(17:30):
portrayed in a series of such charming pictures. But grinding
poverty was there also, and the bitterness of disappointed hopes.
His sensitive nature could not withstand the repeated material shocks
to which it was subjected, and the pity is that
it gave way just when there seemed a prospect of
(17:52):
a change. The magic Flute had been produced with great success,
and that in the face of relentless opposition from envious rivals,
and orders from new sources and on better terms were
coming to him. But the turn of the tide was
too late. When he received an order for a requiem
from a person who wished his identity to remain unknown.
(18:15):
He was subsequently discovered to be a nobleman who wanted
to produce the work as his own. Morzart already felt
the hand of death upon him and declared that he
was composing the requiem for his own obsequis. Even after
he was obliged to take to his bed, he worked
at it, saying it was to be his recroem and
(18:37):
must be ready in time. The afternoon before he died,
he went over the completed portions with three friends, and
that the lachrymosa burst into tears. In the evening, he
lost consciousness, and early the following morning, December the fifth,
seventeen ninety one, he passed away. The immediate cause of
(18:57):
death was rheumatic fever with typhoid complicates, and his distracted widow,
hoping to catch the same disease and be carried away
by it, threw herself upon his bed. She was too
prostrated to attend his funeral, which, be it said to
the shame of his friends, was a shabby affair. The
(19:17):
day was stormy, and after the service indoors they left
before the actual burial, which was in one of the
common graves, holding ten or twelve bodies, and intended to
be worked over every few years for new internments. When
as soon as Constant was strong enough she visited the cemetery,
there was a new grave digger, who, upon being questioned,
(19:38):
could not locate her husband's grave, And to this day
Mozart's last resting place is unknown. It must not be
reckoned against constance that eighteen years after Mozart's death she
married again, for she did not forget the man on
whom her heart first was set. Her second husband, Listened,
formerly Danish charged affairs in Vienna, is best known by
(20:02):
the biography of Mozart, which he wrote under her guidance.
They removed to Mozart's birthplace, Salzburg, where Nisson died in
eighteen twenty six. Constant's death was strangely associated with Mozart's memory.
It was as if in her last moment she must
go back to him, who was her first love. For
She died in Salzburg on March sixth, eighteen forty two,
(20:25):
a few hours after the model for the Mozart monument,
which adorns one of the spacious squares of the city
where the composer was born, was received there. She had
been the life love of a child of genius, and,
without being singularly gifted herself, had understood how to humor
his whims and adapt herself to his moods, in which
(20:47):
sunshine often was succeeded by shadow. It was singularly appropriate that,
surviving him many years, she yet died under circumstances which
formed a new link between her and his memory. End
of Chapter one
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