August 19, 2025 • 29 mins
Mozarts earthly journey was remarkably brief, yet it was rich with extraordinary achievements that left an indelible mark on the world. In this booklet, the author grapples with the challenge of capturing the essence of a life so densely packed with events—from early triumphs to profound tragedies. Rather than attempting a comprehensive evaluation of Mozarts immense creative legacy, the author offers a glimpse into the pivotal moments that shaped the master’s unforgettable story. - Summary by Authors Preface
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by David Wales. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Herbert F. Peyser,
Part one preface. Mozart's earthly career was so poignantly short,
(00:25):
yet so filled with incalculable achievement, that the author of
this booklet finds himself confronted with an impossible task. He
has consequently preferred to outline, as best he could in
the space at his disposal, a few successive details of
a life that was amazingly crowded with incident, early triumphs
(00:46):
and subsequent crushing tragedies, rather than to consider, let alone
evaluate the staggering creative abundance the master bequeathed mankind. It
is scarcely necessary to disclaim or this thumbnail sketch any
new slant or original illumination if it moves any reader
to renew his acquaintance with the standard biographies of the composer,
(01:10):
or better still, to deepen his artistic enrichment by a
study of modern interpretations of contemporary Mozart scholars like Alfred
Einstein and Bernard Palmgardner, its object will be more than achieved. Beginning,
if the Mozartian family tree was nothing like the prodigious
(01:33):
trunk of the box, it was still not without striking features.
There were Mozarts in South Germany as far back as
the end of the sixteenth century and as remotely as
the thirteenth The name stood on a document in Cologne.
To be sure, various spellings of Mozart existed in those
distant times. It appeared as Mosshard, Mozat, Mozette, and in
(01:59):
still other variantants. Bernard Paumgartner, director of the Salzburg Mozartiam,
thinks it derived from the Old German root mud or mutt,
from which came the word mout courage. Be this as
it may, German Mozarts were anything but exceptional. A couple
of hundred years before Leopold Mozart or his son Wolfgang
(02:21):
came into the picture, in Augsburg, there was an Anton
Mozart who painted landscapes in the manner of Breugel. Another
Mozart from the same town, one Johann Michael was a
sculptor who in sixteen eighty seven moved to Vienna and
became an Austrian citizen. But of all these Mossharts, Mozarts
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and the rest, only one, the mason apprentice David Mozet,
born in the village of Fersea, close to Augsburg, really
belongs to our story. The Augsburger Bugebuk of sixteen forty
three mentions him and sets his fortune at one hundred florins.
By his marriage with the jungfer Maria Nageler, he was
(03:06):
to become the great great grandfather of the creator of
Don Giovanni. In the fullness of time, David's grandson, Johang Geog,
abandoned the occupation of his forebears for that of a bookbinder.
His second wife blessed him with two daughters and six sons.
One of these sons, Franz Alois, gained a kind of
(03:27):
immortality as the father of Maria Anna Tekla Wolfgan's cousin
the Basil, to whom he wrote that series of notoriously
smutty letters with which this lively young lady's name is
eternally linked. Johann Gaeog's first born johang Geog. Leopold became
for posterity simply Leopold Mozart, composer of arid music, author
(03:53):
of a celebrated violin method, and father of Wolfgang and
of Maria Anna Valpurga ignor Nacia, whom the world remembers
almost solely as Nannerl. It is Naneral incidentally that we
have to look for a sort of continuation of the
Mozart line down almost to our own time. On January ninth,
(04:15):
nineteen nineteen, there died in the Feldoff insane asylum near Graz.
The seventy seven year old Alberta Forster, a great granddaughter
of Nanerl, who had lived on in Salzburg till eighteen
twenty nine, highly revered because of her exalted kinship. Early
life in Salzburg what brought Leopold Mozart to Salzburg in
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the first place. A choir singer in the Augsburg Church
of Saint Ulrich and a graduate of the Augsburger Jesuit Lacium,
he seemed to be shaping for a priestly career. He
did not, at all events follow the Bookbinder's trade, like
his brothers Alfred Einstein finds it difficult to grasp why
he should have preferred Salzburg to Munich or Ingolstadt for
(05:03):
an Orthodox theological education. Possibly a suggestion of the Canons
of Saint Ulrich had something to do with it. Whatever
the reason, he enrolled at the university in the town
of the Salzdach July twenty second, seventeen thirty eight. There
he studied philosophy, logic and music, understood Latin composed passion,
(05:25):
cantatas and instrumental works, acquired some proficiency on the violin,
and obtained a smattering of legal knowledge. Five years later
he became fourth violinist in the court orchestra of the archbishop,
but he maintained his close family connections with Augsburg and
later encouraged his son not to relax these ties. It
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is not quite certain when he met Anna Maria Pertel,
whose father was superintendent of a clerical institution at Saint
Gilgen on the nearby Wolfgangsee, in the fall of seventeen
seven two. He wrote her from Milan. It was twenty
five years ago. I think that we had the sensible
idea of getting married, one which we had cherished for
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many years. All good things take time. Anna Maria was
her husband junior by a year. Jan questions if she
rose in any way above the average woman of her type.
A good provincial she had not the suspicious, mistrustful qualities
of Leopold. She lacked intellectual depth, but she was a
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good wife, an affectionate mother, a genuinely lovable creature, a
receptacle of all the community gossip and local tittle tattle.
She judged with an eye just as friendly as her
husband's was critical and sarcastic. And from his mother, Bolfgang
inherited his gaiety and some of his more incorrigible Hansverst characteristics.
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Though the Mozart couple had seven children, only two of
these survived, Infancy nan Earl, the fourth and her her
great brother who came last. Wolfgang was born on January
twenty seventh, seventeen fifty six, at eight o'clock in the evening,
in the house belonging to Lorenz Hagenauer on the narrow
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Gatryda Gaza, Salzburg. The very next morning, the newcomer, whose
birth came near costing the mother's life, was carried to
church and baptized with the name Johannus Chrysostomus bof gangas
Theophilus the Last, in honor of his godfather Johann Theophilis Pergmaier. Subsequently,
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the Greek Theophilus was changed to its more euphonious Latin equivalent,
Amadeus Wofgang. Like the other Mozart children, was at first
nourished with water instead of milk, according to a preposterous
superstition of the time. We have to thank the good
health of the infant that he did not succumb as
did most of the other Mozart offspring, and even withstood
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later illnesses. A sense sative and affectionate lad bof Gang
was extraordinarily devoted to his parents, especially to his father,
despite Leopold's humorless and obstinate nature. Next to God comes
Papa was a childhood expression of the boy. To be sure,
the inflexible martinet commanded a certain respect by reason of
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his very genuine love for his family and his determination
to rear his children according to what he considered their
best interests. But he seemed unable to rise above his
middle class prejudices, and when all is said, his attitude
toward his son was like that of a conventional Victorian
father who guided the footsteps of his son according to
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his lights, yet refused to permit him any freedom whatever
for explorations of his own. All the same Leopold could
be self sacrificing in the interest of his children, and
therein lay one of the saving features of an unlovable character.
It was one of his merits to have perceived at
(09:04):
once the musical predispositions of his children, to have cultivated them,
even to have grasped early the most advantageous ways of
exploiting them. Naneerle was by no means slow in showing
uncommon aptitude for music, and Leopold lost no time in
embarking upon her training. Bulfgang in his cradle listened to
(09:25):
his sister's lessons in the adjoining room, and we can
only surmise what mystical instincts vibrated in the childish consciousness.
He was hardly more than three when these impelled him
to the keyboard, there to search for consonant intervals, and
to shout with delight when he discovered and sounded thirds.
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He had an abnormally refined and sensitive hearing, was distressed
by impurities of pitch and perturbed by any violence of sound,
who does not remember the story of the child Mozart
fainting on hearing the tone of a trumpet. We are
told that he was very soon able to play light
piano pieces without any signs of effort, and to memorize
(10:10):
and perform them without notes, cleanly and in perfect time,
in less than half an hour. Nor was the violin
unfamiliar to him, And though he is not supposed to
have started his studies on that instrument till his sixth year,
Nissen tells that a certain Herr von Mur heard Wolfgang
(10:30):
play the violin at four. Leopold Mozart's chief trouble lay
not in making his son practice, but in getting him
away from the piano. Music occupied his waking hours almost exclusively,
and for the customary games and amusements of childhood the
boy showed little interest, or if it was a question
(10:51):
of fun, it had to be in some way associated
with music. Before putting him to bed in the evening,
his father would stand him on a chair to give
him a good night kiss, whereupon the child would declaim
Italian nonsense syllables like ogonna, figstaffa and such to some
scrap of folk tune, as if imitating an opera singer.
(11:15):
Then he would return his father's caresses, kissing him on
the tip of his nose, and promising when he grew up,
to enclose him in a capsule and carry him about
at all times. In later years, Leopold reminisced in a
letter to his son, when you sat at the piano
or otherwise occupied yourself with music, nobody was allowed to
(11:36):
joke with you in any way. Indeed, the expression on
your face would become so serious that many, struck by
what they considered your prematurely ripened talent, feared that your
life might be short, fears that were to be only
too well founded. And when barely six, he stubbornly refused
to play before any audience that did not include at
(11:59):
least one musically cultured listener. Abraham Mendelssohn used to say
that whereas he had once been famous as the son
of his father, he was now celebrated as the father
of his son. Leopold Mozart was most indisputably the father
of his son. His juiceless compositions, his violin method, and
(12:21):
the rest of his dreary talents and moral virtues have
a kind of museum value only as they contributed to
Wolfgang's artistic upbringing and guidance. Alfred Einstein observes that the
first signs of musical talent in Wolfgang completely changed the
direction of Leopold's life, and thought unquestionably it was better
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so and in the long run he was far more
richly rewarded for cultivating the fruitful soil committed to his tillage.
Systematic piano instruction was the first thing on which he
seems to have concentrated. Composition was a byproduct. Bofgang improved unceasingly,
which meant that numerous minuets and simple pieces of various
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types took shape under his fingers. The father, writing down
industriously what his sons fancy dictated, Naneerl extemporized no less actively.
Leopold spurred his children by acquainting them with short works
by himself, and recognized musicians to divert them after dry
technical exercises. Each had a little study book of pieces.
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The one that Wolfgang received from his father on October
thirty one, seventeen sixty two, has come down to us
complete and contains one hundred and thirty five examples for study.
Among them, Wolfgang tried his hand at brief works of
his own. In the father's writing, we can read the
following Divofgngo Mozart May eleventh, seventeen sixty two unt Julie sixteen,
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seventeen sixty two. Some of the masters given the boy
to study were Wagenzel, telemonn Has and Philippe manuel Bach.
Wolfgang's compositions include an innocent minuet and trio with very
simple basses, and a little allegro in three part song form.
In these and other childish efforts, the improving hand of
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Leopold can be repeatedly detected. It was to be so
for some time to come, and when the father did
not have a correcting finger in the pie, we become
aware of it. It is evident in a sketch book
Wolfgang was given in London a year or two later,
when Leopold fell ill, and in order not to be
disturbed by the sounds of practicing, asked the boy to
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write something and refrain from noise. The book is filled
with a great variety of minuets, contradances, Rondo's GI's Siciliano's preludes,
and even an unfinished sketch for a fugue Here one
season d disputable genius in conflict with technical lapses and
(15:04):
other evidences of inexperience that somewhat modify the notion that
Wolfgang had acquired all his skill by instinct rather than
by carefully disciplined study. First visit to Vienna, the five
year older naneerl being a remarkable clavier performer, and Wolfgang
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absorbing his father's instructions with the utmost facility. Leopold was
not long in deciding that he might profitably bring his
pair of prodigies before the public and make them known
in aristocratic circles, where he had a good chance of
capitalizing on their talents. Besides, there were new artistic currents
astir in the world to which the boy in particular
(15:49):
might be exposed to his advantage. If ever I knew
how priceless time is for youth, I know it now,
and you know that my children are used to work.
He wrote to h Hagenhauer, insisting he had no idea
of permitting the youngsters to fall into habits of idleness.
He seems to have given little thought to the strain
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of travel, especially since The children were healthy, and both Gang,
though small, appears to have been of wiry physique. So
in January seventeen sixty two he took them on a
three weeks excursion to Munich, where they appeared before the
Elector Maximilian of Bavaria with success. The following September, however,
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the family began their travels in earnest. With a small
clavier strapped to their vehicle, the little band of wanderers
set out along the Danube by way of Linz and
several smaller localities to Vienna. By October sixth they had
reached the capitol, and they drank in its wonders with
the astonished eyes of small town folk. A week later
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they stood in the presence of the music loving Empress
Maria Theresa and her family court at the palace of Cherenbrun.
The children played and were admired and duly rewarded. There
have come down to us a quantity of pretty anecdotes
about the pair. How Wulfgang climbed up in the lap
of the Empress and was kissed by her, how he
(17:15):
insisted on having the composer gay or Christian Wagenzel in
the room when he was to play because he understands
such things. How, when he slipped on the polished floor
and was helped to his feet by the Princess Marie Antoinette,
he thanked her and then added, I shall marry you
for this when I grow up. Unquestionably, the motherly tenderness
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of Maria Theresa went out to the child from Salzburg.
Yet it is a question whether she actually saw in
Wolfgang and his sister more than a pair of precocious
little people. In spite of Leopold's extravagant claims. Certainly she
was less agreeable several years later when she wrote her son,
the Archduke Ferdinand Governor Jens General of Lombardy, who contemplated
(18:02):
taking Wolfgang into his service, I do not know why
you need saddle yourself with a composer or useless people.
It discredit your service when such individuals run about the
world like beggars. At all events. Leopold was voluble in
the letters he wrote to his Salzburg landlord Hagenauer about
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the wonders of the Vienna visit and the impression exercised
everywhere by Wolfgang's talents and his lively intelligence and unaffected manner,
Leopold built towering air castles. Two weeks later, Wolfgang came
down with what was said to be scarlet fever, but
which was actually, according to Bernhard Baumkautner, diagnosed by a
(18:45):
German doctor, Felix huch As arethema nodosum, which could have
had serious consequences and may have planted the seeds of
Mozart's last illness. Before returning to Salzburg, Leopold accepted the
invitation of a Hungarian magnet to make a flying trip
to neighboring Presbourg after Wolfgang had recovered. Finally, on January five,
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seventeen sixty three, the Mozarts came home to Salzburg. It
is uncertain how much musical stimulation Wolfgang obtained from this
first Viennese visit. The one important event in Vienna at
this period, the premiere of glux or Feo, went unmentioned
by either Wolfgang or his father. However, the success of
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the trip whetted Leopold's appetite for more of the same thing.
After a brief period for recuperation, plans were laid for
a much more elaborate odyssey, to include nothing less than
Paris and London. On June ninth, seventeen sixty three. Consequently,
the family carriage set out for the Bavarian Frontier, the
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same road by which Leopold Mozart, then a hopeful student,
had wandered into Salzburg. This trip was to keep the
Mozarts away from home for three years. Success in Paris
and London, the celebrity tour began, strictly speaking, in Munich,
where the pair of prodigies performed with sensational success before
(20:16):
the Bavarian Elector, Maximilian the Third, who wished to hear
the young people soon and often. But Leopold was out
for bigger game and wanted, incidentally to exhibit his wonder
children to his relatives in Augsburg before proceeding to world conquests.
Besides old acquaintances, the Herkapellmeister had the good luck to
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present his gifts of God to the noted Italian violinist
Pietro Nardini, then concertmaster of the Court Orchestra of Stuttgart,
and to the Italian composer worthy Niccolo Jomelli, who was
struck by Wolfgang's abilities, but against whom the mistrustful Leopold
harbored various unjust suspicions. In Schwetzingen, the Mozarts had the
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first opportunity to hear the then unrivaled Mannheim Orchestra, which
was to play a significant part in Bolfgang's development. He
and his sister were put through all their paces as
the weeks went by. Besides playing and improvising, they were
made to perform all manner of showy stunts. Both Gang
had to name tones and chords sounded on keyboards covered
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with a cloth, as well as guests the exact pitch
of bells, glasses and clocks. The travelers went on to Bond,
Cologne and Achen, where lived the Princess Amalia, sister of
Frederick the Great, whose pressing invitations to Berlin left Leopold
cold as soon as he realized she had no money.
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He reflected that the kisses without number which she gave
the children would have pleased him better if they had
had cash value. Finally, after further progress through the low countries,
the little man reached Paris, where the father discovered that
most of his letters of recommendation and introduction amounted to
little only when they were taken in charge by the
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Bavarian born Baron Melchior Grimm, a literary figure of some distinction,
did results began to shape themselves a first rate publicity man.
Grimm launched a campaign for the youngsters in his correspondence Litteraire,
with the result that doors promptly opened and invitations began
(22:30):
to pour in. On New Year's Eve seventeen sixty four,
the Mozarts were asked to a grand couvert at the
court in Versailles. Bolfgang stood next to the Queen, who
fed him dainties and translated for the King Louis the
fifteen what the boy said to her in German. The
great Madame Pompadour was on hand, and the elder Mozart
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noted that she must once have been a great beauty,
for all her present stoutness. Later, when Wolfgang offered to
give her a kiss, she drew back, whereupon the boy
indignantly asked, who does she think she is? Anyhow, our
Empress herself did not refuse to kiss me. Leopold was
careful to note the countless features of the Parisian scene.
(23:16):
For one thing, the abundance of make up on the
faces of the frenchwomen was something to revolt an honest German.
He saw eye to eye with Baron Grimm in his
preference for Italian over French music, declaring that the latter
was not worth a farthing. Wolfgang was eventually to share
his distaste for French customs, French art, even the French language.
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Leopold brought his son to the attention of several prominent
German musicians who happened to be in Paris, such as
Johann Schobert, Gottfried Eckhardt and Lancey Hanauer, all of whom
registered appropriate astonishment and presented the children with some of
their own compositions, suitably inscribed for sonatas for clavier with
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ad libitum violin, parts by Wolfgang were printed, and on
the title page it was duly noted that their author
was only seven years old. For all their charm and freshness,
these works clearly betrayed the improving touch of Leopold. On
April twenty three, seventeen sixty four, after an easy channel crossing,
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the Mozarts arrived in London, where the children were announced
as Miss Mozart of eleven and Master Mozart of seven
years of age, Prodigies of Nature. The Honorable Danes. Barrington
subjected the boy to scientific tests, which demonstrated that his
talents were indeed out of the ordinary. The musical George
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the Third and Queen Charlotte received them at Saint James's
Palace on April twenty seven. A few weeks later, there
was another concert before the royal couple, when the King
asked Wolfgang to play at sight pieces by Wogenzel, Johann
Christian Bach Handel and Karl Friedrich Cabelle. The monarch praised
the lad's performance on the organ even more than on
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the clavier, and had him accompany the Queen in a
song and improvise a melody on a figured base of Handels.
Leopold wrote home that what his son knew now completely
overshadowed his earlier abilities. At a charity concert in Ronleigh Gardens,
they made over a hundred guineas. Yet these successes did
(25:29):
not last. Several concerts had to be postponed because of
Leopold's sudden indisposition. A mental illness of George the Third
increased alarmingly. The political situation was unfavorable, and the public
began to lose interest in the Wonder Children. But apart
from the sympathy Wolfgang was always to feel with the
(25:50):
English people. One experience of his London sojourn really outweighed
all others. This was the friendship he and Johann Christian Bach,
the son of Johann Sebastian, formed for each other, and
the influence the older musician exercised on the creative genius
beginning to blossom in the child. As Hermann Abbert has written,
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Christian Bach signified for Mozart a lithe, elegant counterpart to
Schobert by virtue of the modernized Italianism that came to
pervade his style. The gallant manner, the fresh, playful rhythms
of his finales, and the relaxation modifying the dry composition
technique of Leopolds are elements for which Mozart is deeply
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indebted to the London Bach. Both Gang's earlier symphonies and
piano music make it plain how much he looked upon
Johann Christian as his model, and how fully this master
was the chief inspiration of that singing allegro that became
a hallmark of the mature Mozart, not only for his
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boyhood symphonies and sonatas, but for his piano concertos vaz
Wolfgang obliged to his great London friend. His earliest clavier
concertos are largely copies or re arrangements of the concertos
and sonatas of Johann christian As, of Schobert Hanauer and
similar masters. From these siegs came those glorious fruits of
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concerto literature that stand among his grandest and most original achievements.
Leopold had overstayed his leave from his Salzburg post, but
he seemed in no hurry about returning to it. He
had originally planned to go home by way of Italy,
since an Italian trip was regarded as an indispensable finishing
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touch to an artistic education. At the beginning of August
seventeen sixty five, the Mozarts landed once more on the continent.
Both father and son fell ill, and then Narnerol came
down with pneumonia and was actually given the last rites.
Both Gang, scarcely convalescent from a seage of fever, composed
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a medley for piano and orchestra, a quadlibit of popular tunes,
the Galimataius Musicum, a thing of rough humors, revealing in
its contrapuntial workmanship, the tastes and teachings of his father,
variations on a Dutch patriotic song, six sonatas for violin
and piano, a mollifluous symphony in B flat, and various
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other trifles indicate that sickness was not regarded as a
valid excuse for idling. Paris, to which they returned in
May seventeen sixty six, seemed less stirred by the prodigies
than it had been on the earlier visit, though Prince
Carl Wilhelm of Brunswick, on hearing both Gang, exclaimed in amazement,
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many a kapellmeister dies without ever having learned anything like
what this child knows. In July they left the French
capital and arrived in Salzburg the last day of November
seventeen sixty six, laden with gifts and rich in glowing memories.
A considerable quantity of new music from both Gang's pen
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filled their luggage. The artist was supplanting the prodigy Bofgang
had seen something of the world and had made many
valuable contacts. The Archbishop Segizimund von Schrotenbach, skeptical of the
brilliant reports, he had heard, asked him to compose a
cantata di schulikaik dess esteebotis, and isolated him for a
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week to see how much truth there was in all
the talk. End of Part one,
Part one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by David Wales. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Herbert F. Peyser,
Part one preface. Mozart's earthly career was so poignantly short,
(00:25):
yet so filled with incalculable achievement, that the author of
this booklet finds himself confronted with an impossible task. He
has consequently preferred to outline, as best he could in
the space at his disposal, a few successive details of
a life that was amazingly crowded with incident, early triumphs
(00:46):
and subsequent crushing tragedies, rather than to consider, let alone
evaluate the staggering creative abundance the master bequeathed mankind. It
is scarcely necessary to disclaim or this thumbnail sketch any
new slant or original illumination if it moves any reader
to renew his acquaintance with the standard biographies of the composer,
(01:10):
or better still, to deepen his artistic enrichment by a
study of modern interpretations of contemporary Mozart scholars like Alfred
Einstein and Bernard Palmgardner, its object will be more than achieved. Beginning,
if the Mozartian family tree was nothing like the prodigious
(01:33):
trunk of the box, it was still not without striking features.
There were Mozarts in South Germany as far back as
the end of the sixteenth century and as remotely as
the thirteenth The name stood on a document in Cologne.
To be sure, various spellings of Mozart existed in those
distant times. It appeared as Mosshard, Mozat, Mozette, and in
(01:59):
still other variantants. Bernard Paumgartner, director of the Salzburg Mozartiam,
thinks it derived from the Old German root mud or mutt,
from which came the word mout courage. Be this as
it may, German Mozarts were anything but exceptional. A couple
of hundred years before Leopold Mozart or his son Wolfgang
(02:21):
came into the picture, in Augsburg, there was an Anton
Mozart who painted landscapes in the manner of Breugel. Another
Mozart from the same town, one Johann Michael was a
sculptor who in sixteen eighty seven moved to Vienna and
became an Austrian citizen. But of all these Mossharts, Mozarts
(02:43):
and the rest, only one, the mason apprentice David Mozet,
born in the village of Fersea, close to Augsburg, really
belongs to our story. The Augsburger Bugebuk of sixteen forty
three mentions him and sets his fortune at one hundred florins.
By his marriage with the jungfer Maria Nageler, he was
(03:06):
to become the great great grandfather of the creator of
Don Giovanni. In the fullness of time, David's grandson, Johang Geog,
abandoned the occupation of his forebears for that of a bookbinder.
His second wife blessed him with two daughters and six sons.
One of these sons, Franz Alois, gained a kind of
(03:27):
immortality as the father of Maria Anna Tekla Wolfgan's cousin
the Basil, to whom he wrote that series of notoriously
smutty letters with which this lively young lady's name is
eternally linked. Johann Gaeog's first born johang Geog. Leopold became
for posterity simply Leopold Mozart, composer of arid music, author
(03:53):
of a celebrated violin method, and father of Wolfgang and
of Maria Anna Valpurga ignor Nacia, whom the world remembers
almost solely as Nannerl. It is Naneral incidentally that we
have to look for a sort of continuation of the
Mozart line down almost to our own time. On January ninth,
(04:15):
nineteen nineteen, there died in the Feldoff insane asylum near Graz.
The seventy seven year old Alberta Forster, a great granddaughter
of Nanerl, who had lived on in Salzburg till eighteen
twenty nine, highly revered because of her exalted kinship. Early
life in Salzburg what brought Leopold Mozart to Salzburg in
(04:39):
the first place. A choir singer in the Augsburg Church
of Saint Ulrich and a graduate of the Augsburger Jesuit Lacium,
he seemed to be shaping for a priestly career. He
did not, at all events follow the Bookbinder's trade, like
his brothers Alfred Einstein finds it difficult to grasp why
he should have preferred Salzburg to Munich or Ingolstadt for
(05:03):
an Orthodox theological education. Possibly a suggestion of the Canons
of Saint Ulrich had something to do with it. Whatever
the reason, he enrolled at the university in the town
of the Salzdach July twenty second, seventeen thirty eight. There
he studied philosophy, logic and music, understood Latin composed passion,
(05:25):
cantatas and instrumental works, acquired some proficiency on the violin,
and obtained a smattering of legal knowledge. Five years later
he became fourth violinist in the court orchestra of the archbishop,
but he maintained his close family connections with Augsburg and
later encouraged his son not to relax these ties. It
(05:47):
is not quite certain when he met Anna Maria Pertel,
whose father was superintendent of a clerical institution at Saint
Gilgen on the nearby Wolfgangsee, in the fall of seventeen
seven two. He wrote her from Milan. It was twenty
five years ago. I think that we had the sensible
idea of getting married, one which we had cherished for
(06:09):
many years. All good things take time. Anna Maria was
her husband junior by a year. Jan questions if she
rose in any way above the average woman of her type.
A good provincial she had not the suspicious, mistrustful qualities
of Leopold. She lacked intellectual depth, but she was a
(06:30):
good wife, an affectionate mother, a genuinely lovable creature, a
receptacle of all the community gossip and local tittle tattle.
She judged with an eye just as friendly as her
husband's was critical and sarcastic. And from his mother, Bolfgang
inherited his gaiety and some of his more incorrigible Hansverst characteristics.
(06:52):
Though the Mozart couple had seven children, only two of
these survived, Infancy nan Earl, the fourth and her her
great brother who came last. Wolfgang was born on January
twenty seventh, seventeen fifty six, at eight o'clock in the evening,
in the house belonging to Lorenz Hagenauer on the narrow
(07:13):
Gatryda Gaza, Salzburg. The very next morning, the newcomer, whose
birth came near costing the mother's life, was carried to
church and baptized with the name Johannus Chrysostomus bof gangas
Theophilus the Last, in honor of his godfather Johann Theophilis Pergmaier. Subsequently,
(07:34):
the Greek Theophilus was changed to its more euphonious Latin equivalent,
Amadeus Wofgang. Like the other Mozart children, was at first
nourished with water instead of milk, according to a preposterous
superstition of the time. We have to thank the good
health of the infant that he did not succumb as
did most of the other Mozart offspring, and even withstood
(07:57):
later illnesses. A sense sative and affectionate lad bof Gang
was extraordinarily devoted to his parents, especially to his father,
despite Leopold's humorless and obstinate nature. Next to God comes
Papa was a childhood expression of the boy. To be sure,
the inflexible martinet commanded a certain respect by reason of
(08:20):
his very genuine love for his family and his determination
to rear his children according to what he considered their
best interests. But he seemed unable to rise above his
middle class prejudices, and when all is said, his attitude
toward his son was like that of a conventional Victorian
father who guided the footsteps of his son according to
(08:43):
his lights, yet refused to permit him any freedom whatever
for explorations of his own. All the same Leopold could
be self sacrificing in the interest of his children, and
therein lay one of the saving features of an unlovable character.
It was one of his merits to have perceived at
(09:04):
once the musical predispositions of his children, to have cultivated them,
even to have grasped early the most advantageous ways of
exploiting them. Naneerle was by no means slow in showing
uncommon aptitude for music, and Leopold lost no time in
embarking upon her training. Bulfgang in his cradle listened to
(09:25):
his sister's lessons in the adjoining room, and we can
only surmise what mystical instincts vibrated in the childish consciousness.
He was hardly more than three when these impelled him
to the keyboard, there to search for consonant intervals, and
to shout with delight when he discovered and sounded thirds.
(09:46):
He had an abnormally refined and sensitive hearing, was distressed
by impurities of pitch and perturbed by any violence of sound,
who does not remember the story of the child Mozart
fainting on hearing the tone of a trumpet. We are
told that he was very soon able to play light
piano pieces without any signs of effort, and to memorize
(10:10):
and perform them without notes, cleanly and in perfect time,
in less than half an hour. Nor was the violin
unfamiliar to him, And though he is not supposed to
have started his studies on that instrument till his sixth year,
Nissen tells that a certain Herr von Mur heard Wolfgang
(10:30):
play the violin at four. Leopold Mozart's chief trouble lay
not in making his son practice, but in getting him
away from the piano. Music occupied his waking hours almost exclusively,
and for the customary games and amusements of childhood the
boy showed little interest, or if it was a question
(10:51):
of fun, it had to be in some way associated
with music. Before putting him to bed in the evening,
his father would stand him on a chair to give
him a good night kiss, whereupon the child would declaim
Italian nonsense syllables like ogonna, figstaffa and such to some
scrap of folk tune, as if imitating an opera singer.
(11:15):
Then he would return his father's caresses, kissing him on
the tip of his nose, and promising when he grew up,
to enclose him in a capsule and carry him about
at all times. In later years, Leopold reminisced in a
letter to his son, when you sat at the piano
or otherwise occupied yourself with music, nobody was allowed to
(11:36):
joke with you in any way. Indeed, the expression on
your face would become so serious that many, struck by
what they considered your prematurely ripened talent, feared that your
life might be short, fears that were to be only
too well founded. And when barely six, he stubbornly refused
to play before any audience that did not include at
(11:59):
least one musically cultured listener. Abraham Mendelssohn used to say
that whereas he had once been famous as the son
of his father, he was now celebrated as the father
of his son. Leopold Mozart was most indisputably the father
of his son. His juiceless compositions, his violin method, and
(12:21):
the rest of his dreary talents and moral virtues have
a kind of museum value only as they contributed to
Wolfgang's artistic upbringing and guidance. Alfred Einstein observes that the
first signs of musical talent in Wolfgang completely changed the
direction of Leopold's life, and thought unquestionably it was better
(12:44):
so and in the long run he was far more
richly rewarded for cultivating the fruitful soil committed to his tillage.
Systematic piano instruction was the first thing on which he
seems to have concentrated. Composition was a byproduct. Bofgang improved unceasingly,
which meant that numerous minuets and simple pieces of various
(13:07):
types took shape under his fingers. The father, writing down
industriously what his sons fancy dictated, Naneerl extemporized no less actively.
Leopold spurred his children by acquainting them with short works
by himself, and recognized musicians to divert them after dry
technical exercises. Each had a little study book of pieces.
(13:32):
The one that Wolfgang received from his father on October
thirty one, seventeen sixty two, has come down to us
complete and contains one hundred and thirty five examples for study.
Among them, Wolfgang tried his hand at brief works of
his own. In the father's writing, we can read the
following Divofgngo Mozart May eleventh, seventeen sixty two unt Julie sixteen,
(13:57):
seventeen sixty two. Some of the masters given the boy
to study were Wagenzel, telemonn Has and Philippe manuel Bach.
Wolfgang's compositions include an innocent minuet and trio with very
simple basses, and a little allegro in three part song form.
In these and other childish efforts, the improving hand of
(14:21):
Leopold can be repeatedly detected. It was to be so
for some time to come, and when the father did
not have a correcting finger in the pie, we become
aware of it. It is evident in a sketch book
Wolfgang was given in London a year or two later,
when Leopold fell ill, and in order not to be
disturbed by the sounds of practicing, asked the boy to
(14:44):
write something and refrain from noise. The book is filled
with a great variety of minuets, contradances, Rondo's GI's Siciliano's preludes,
and even an unfinished sketch for a fugue Here one
season d disputable genius in conflict with technical lapses and
(15:04):
other evidences of inexperience that somewhat modify the notion that
Wolfgang had acquired all his skill by instinct rather than
by carefully disciplined study. First visit to Vienna, the five
year older naneerl being a remarkable clavier performer, and Wolfgang
(15:26):
absorbing his father's instructions with the utmost facility. Leopold was
not long in deciding that he might profitably bring his
pair of prodigies before the public and make them known
in aristocratic circles, where he had a good chance of
capitalizing on their talents. Besides, there were new artistic currents
astir in the world to which the boy in particular
(15:49):
might be exposed to his advantage. If ever I knew
how priceless time is for youth, I know it now,
and you know that my children are used to work.
He wrote to h Hagenhauer, insisting he had no idea
of permitting the youngsters to fall into habits of idleness.
He seems to have given little thought to the strain
(16:10):
of travel, especially since The children were healthy, and both Gang,
though small, appears to have been of wiry physique. So
in January seventeen sixty two he took them on a
three weeks excursion to Munich, where they appeared before the
Elector Maximilian of Bavaria with success. The following September, however,
(16:31):
the family began their travels in earnest. With a small
clavier strapped to their vehicle, the little band of wanderers
set out along the Danube by way of Linz and
several smaller localities to Vienna. By October sixth they had
reached the capitol, and they drank in its wonders with
the astonished eyes of small town folk. A week later
(16:54):
they stood in the presence of the music loving Empress
Maria Theresa and her family court at the palace of Cherenbrun.
The children played and were admired and duly rewarded. There
have come down to us a quantity of pretty anecdotes
about the pair. How Wulfgang climbed up in the lap
of the Empress and was kissed by her, how he
(17:15):
insisted on having the composer gay or Christian Wagenzel in
the room when he was to play because he understands
such things. How, when he slipped on the polished floor
and was helped to his feet by the Princess Marie Antoinette,
he thanked her and then added, I shall marry you
for this when I grow up. Unquestionably, the motherly tenderness
(17:38):
of Maria Theresa went out to the child from Salzburg.
Yet it is a question whether she actually saw in
Wolfgang and his sister more than a pair of precocious
little people. In spite of Leopold's extravagant claims. Certainly she
was less agreeable several years later when she wrote her son,
the Archduke Ferdinand Governor Jens General of Lombardy, who contemplated
(18:02):
taking Wolfgang into his service, I do not know why
you need saddle yourself with a composer or useless people.
It discredit your service when such individuals run about the
world like beggars. At all events. Leopold was voluble in
the letters he wrote to his Salzburg landlord Hagenauer about
(18:23):
the wonders of the Vienna visit and the impression exercised
everywhere by Wolfgang's talents and his lively intelligence and unaffected manner,
Leopold built towering air castles. Two weeks later, Wolfgang came
down with what was said to be scarlet fever, but
which was actually, according to Bernhard Baumkautner, diagnosed by a
(18:45):
German doctor, Felix huch As arethema nodosum, which could have
had serious consequences and may have planted the seeds of
Mozart's last illness. Before returning to Salzburg, Leopold accepted the
invitation of a Hungarian magnet to make a flying trip
to neighboring Presbourg after Wolfgang had recovered. Finally, on January five,
(19:09):
seventeen sixty three, the Mozarts came home to Salzburg. It
is uncertain how much musical stimulation Wolfgang obtained from this
first Viennese visit. The one important event in Vienna at
this period, the premiere of glux or Feo, went unmentioned
by either Wolfgang or his father. However, the success of
(19:31):
the trip whetted Leopold's appetite for more of the same thing.
After a brief period for recuperation, plans were laid for
a much more elaborate odyssey, to include nothing less than
Paris and London. On June ninth, seventeen sixty three. Consequently,
the family carriage set out for the Bavarian Frontier, the
(19:52):
same road by which Leopold Mozart, then a hopeful student,
had wandered into Salzburg. This trip was to keep the
Mozarts away from home for three years. Success in Paris
and London, the celebrity tour began, strictly speaking, in Munich,
where the pair of prodigies performed with sensational success before
(20:16):
the Bavarian Elector, Maximilian the Third, who wished to hear
the young people soon and often. But Leopold was out
for bigger game and wanted, incidentally to exhibit his wonder
children to his relatives in Augsburg before proceeding to world conquests.
Besides old acquaintances, the Herkapellmeister had the good luck to
(20:39):
present his gifts of God to the noted Italian violinist
Pietro Nardini, then concertmaster of the Court Orchestra of Stuttgart,
and to the Italian composer worthy Niccolo Jomelli, who was
struck by Wolfgang's abilities, but against whom the mistrustful Leopold
harbored various unjust suspicions. In Schwetzingen, the Mozarts had the
(21:03):
first opportunity to hear the then unrivaled Mannheim Orchestra, which
was to play a significant part in Bolfgang's development. He
and his sister were put through all their paces as
the weeks went by. Besides playing and improvising, they were
made to perform all manner of showy stunts. Both Gang
had to name tones and chords sounded on keyboards covered
(21:27):
with a cloth, as well as guests the exact pitch
of bells, glasses and clocks. The travelers went on to Bond,
Cologne and Achen, where lived the Princess Amalia, sister of
Frederick the Great, whose pressing invitations to Berlin left Leopold
cold as soon as he realized she had no money.
(21:47):
He reflected that the kisses without number which she gave
the children would have pleased him better if they had
had cash value. Finally, after further progress through the low countries,
the little man reached Paris, where the father discovered that
most of his letters of recommendation and introduction amounted to
little only when they were taken in charge by the
(22:09):
Bavarian born Baron Melchior Grimm, a literary figure of some distinction,
did results began to shape themselves a first rate publicity man.
Grimm launched a campaign for the youngsters in his correspondence Litteraire,
with the result that doors promptly opened and invitations began
(22:30):
to pour in. On New Year's Eve seventeen sixty four,
the Mozarts were asked to a grand couvert at the
court in Versailles. Bolfgang stood next to the Queen, who
fed him dainties and translated for the King Louis the
fifteen what the boy said to her in German. The
great Madame Pompadour was on hand, and the elder Mozart
(22:53):
noted that she must once have been a great beauty,
for all her present stoutness. Later, when Wolfgang offered to
give her a kiss, she drew back, whereupon the boy
indignantly asked, who does she think she is? Anyhow, our
Empress herself did not refuse to kiss me. Leopold was
careful to note the countless features of the Parisian scene.
(23:16):
For one thing, the abundance of make up on the
faces of the frenchwomen was something to revolt an honest German.
He saw eye to eye with Baron Grimm in his
preference for Italian over French music, declaring that the latter
was not worth a farthing. Wolfgang was eventually to share
his distaste for French customs, French art, even the French language.
(23:40):
Leopold brought his son to the attention of several prominent
German musicians who happened to be in Paris, such as
Johann Schobert, Gottfried Eckhardt and Lancey Hanauer, all of whom
registered appropriate astonishment and presented the children with some of
their own compositions, suitably inscribed for sonatas for clavier with
(24:02):
ad libitum violin, parts by Wolfgang were printed, and on
the title page it was duly noted that their author
was only seven years old. For all their charm and freshness,
these works clearly betrayed the improving touch of Leopold. On
April twenty three, seventeen sixty four, after an easy channel crossing,
(24:23):
the Mozarts arrived in London, where the children were announced
as Miss Mozart of eleven and Master Mozart of seven
years of age, Prodigies of Nature. The Honorable Danes. Barrington
subjected the boy to scientific tests, which demonstrated that his
talents were indeed out of the ordinary. The musical George
(24:44):
the Third and Queen Charlotte received them at Saint James's
Palace on April twenty seven. A few weeks later, there
was another concert before the royal couple, when the King
asked Wolfgang to play at sight pieces by Wogenzel, Johann
Christian Bach Handel and Karl Friedrich Cabelle. The monarch praised
the lad's performance on the organ even more than on
(25:07):
the clavier, and had him accompany the Queen in a
song and improvise a melody on a figured base of Handels.
Leopold wrote home that what his son knew now completely
overshadowed his earlier abilities. At a charity concert in Ronleigh Gardens,
they made over a hundred guineas. Yet these successes did
(25:29):
not last. Several concerts had to be postponed because of
Leopold's sudden indisposition. A mental illness of George the Third
increased alarmingly. The political situation was unfavorable, and the public
began to lose interest in the Wonder Children. But apart
from the sympathy Wolfgang was always to feel with the
(25:50):
English people. One experience of his London sojourn really outweighed
all others. This was the friendship he and Johann Christian Bach,
the son of Johann Sebastian, formed for each other, and
the influence the older musician exercised on the creative genius
beginning to blossom in the child. As Hermann Abbert has written,
(26:13):
Christian Bach signified for Mozart a lithe, elegant counterpart to
Schobert by virtue of the modernized Italianism that came to
pervade his style. The gallant manner, the fresh, playful rhythms
of his finales, and the relaxation modifying the dry composition
technique of Leopolds are elements for which Mozart is deeply
(26:35):
indebted to the London Bach. Both Gang's earlier symphonies and
piano music make it plain how much he looked upon
Johann Christian as his model, and how fully this master
was the chief inspiration of that singing allegro that became
a hallmark of the mature Mozart, not only for his
(26:57):
boyhood symphonies and sonatas, but for his piano concertos vaz
Wolfgang obliged to his great London friend. His earliest clavier
concertos are largely copies or re arrangements of the concertos
and sonatas of Johann christian As, of Schobert Hanauer and
similar masters. From these siegs came those glorious fruits of
(27:20):
concerto literature that stand among his grandest and most original achievements.
Leopold had overstayed his leave from his Salzburg post, but
he seemed in no hurry about returning to it. He
had originally planned to go home by way of Italy,
since an Italian trip was regarded as an indispensable finishing
(27:40):
touch to an artistic education. At the beginning of August
seventeen sixty five, the Mozarts landed once more on the continent.
Both father and son fell ill, and then Narnerol came
down with pneumonia and was actually given the last rites.
Both Gang, scarcely convalescent from a seage of fever, composed
(28:01):
a medley for piano and orchestra, a quadlibit of popular tunes,
the Galimataius Musicum, a thing of rough humors, revealing in
its contrapuntial workmanship, the tastes and teachings of his father,
variations on a Dutch patriotic song, six sonatas for violin
and piano, a mollifluous symphony in B flat, and various
(28:25):
other trifles indicate that sickness was not regarded as a
valid excuse for idling. Paris, to which they returned in
May seventeen sixty six, seemed less stirred by the prodigies
than it had been on the earlier visit, though Prince
Carl Wilhelm of Brunswick, on hearing both Gang, exclaimed in amazement,
(28:46):
many a kapellmeister dies without ever having learned anything like
what this child knows. In July they left the French
capital and arrived in Salzburg the last day of November
seventeen sixty six, laden with gifts and rich in glowing memories.
A considerable quantity of new music from both Gang's pen
(29:07):
filled their luggage. The artist was supplanting the prodigy Bofgang
had seen something of the world and had made many
valuable contacts. The Archbishop Segizimund von Schrotenbach, skeptical of the
brilliant reports, he had heard, asked him to compose a
cantata di schulikaik dess esteebotis, and isolated him for a
(29:30):
week to see how much truth there was in all
the talk. End of Part one,
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