There was a time when silence was heard, when trees were in harmony with the grass and the song of flowers, when the afternoons were gardens of fragrances and twilights threaded their velvety harps near to the weary eyelids of the day, when the moment lasted an eternity and the longing, the reverie, the melancholy would subdue the impassioned gestures of love…
There was the realm of the pre-classical, of sensibility touched by the music of spheres, of perfect, unaffected hearing, at whose gate sublime inspirations would turn up…
Then lived on earth an Albinoni, a Pergolesi, a Marcello, a Vivaldi, a Corelli, a Haendel, a Bach. They lived, they composed, they accomplished, meeting the universal stillness with whispers of the genius dressed in transparency and serenity, and from a certain moment they disappeared in the turmoil of a world who had begun moving its armors.
Never again will there be a servant more modest and humble than the composer of paradisiacal callings which we can hear – graceful blessings for the spirit – in the four seasons of perfect music…
Pre-classical.
Georg Friedrich Händel: 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759
“Heavy snows and freezing temperatures accompanied Leopold and Heinrich to Vienna. They arrived on 11 February 1785 to find the apartment a hive of activity as Mozart oversaw the copying of a new piano concerto he was to play that evening at his first Mehlgrube concert of the season. During the performance, Leopold marveled at the orchestra’s ability to cope with the “superb” concerto it had to play well at sight.”
On a stormy evening in February 1785, the elite of Vienna gathered to hear a new work of Austria’s leading virtuoso pianist, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The importance of what lay within this masterpiece was known to only one man: Leopold Mozart, the composer’s estranged father…
The d Minor Piano Concerto was first performed by Mozart at the Mehlgrube Casino on 11 February 1785 (one day after he had entered the work in his Thematic Catalogue). This was the first of six weekly ‘Friday concerts’ given by Mozart during spring 1785. Leopold Mozart arrived in Vienna, after a very difficult trip, just in time for the Premiere of The d Minor Concert. In a long letter written between 14 and 16 February, Leopold described the event to Nannerl, Mozart’s sister:
“On 11 February we drove to his first subscription concert, at which a great many members of the aristocracy were present. Each person pays a souverain d’or or three ducats for these Lenten concerts. Your brother is giving them at the Mehlgrube. … The concert was magnificent and the orchestra played splendidly. … we had a new and very fine concerto by Wolfgang, which the copyist was still copying as we arrived, and the rondo of which your brother did not even have time to play through, as he had to supervise the copying.”
Mozart played The d Minor Concerto again – this time in rather less haste – at a concert on 15 February in the Burgtheater, organised by the singer Elisabeth Distler. Leopold reported that on this occasion Mozart “played his new grand concerto in d minor magnificently”.
“We never get to bed before one o’clock and I never get up before nine. We lunch at two or half past. … Every day there are concerts (note: either Mozart’s own, or performances that he gave in concerts arranged by others); and the whole time is given up to teaching, music, composing and so forth. … If only all the concerts were over! It is impossible for me to describe the rush and bustle. Since my arrival (note: on 11 February) your brother’s fortepiano has been taken at least a dozen times to the theatre or to some other house. He has had a large fortepiano pedal made, which stands under the instrument and is about two feet longer and extremely heavy. It is taken to the Mehlgrube every Friday, and has also been taken to Count Zichy’s and Prince Kaunitz’s.” (Leopold Mozart – letter to Nannerl)
Mozart’s piano concertos were performed in a variety of settings during his lifetime. Since relatively few halls in the eighteenth century were built expressly for presenting concerts, places originally designed for other purposes were most commonly used. Setting aside the option of outdoor concerts, Neal Zaslaw has identified three settings in which piano concertos were performed: the salon (a room intended for social gatherings of various kinds in a middle-class or aristocratic home), the hall (a large room with a high ceiling, such as might be found in palaces, stately homes, colleges, monasteries, taverns) and the theater.
The Premiere of the Piano Concerto in D minor, K 466, took place in a hall: a large room on the second floor of the Mehlgrube, a city-owned building located on the Neuer Markt. A restaurant occupied the ground floor, and the large room on the floor above was used not only for concerts, but also for banquets and balls. In smaller adjoining rooms food and beverages were served, and gaming tables were available. According to Leopold Mozart’s reports, there were more than 150 subscribers, including “a great many members of the aristocracy”, to the concert series that Mozart presented at the Mehlgrube between 11 February and 18 March 1785. Since Leopold seemed so pleased with the attendance, we might estimate a seating capacity for the hall of around 150-200.
If we take a look on the Subscriber List to Mozart’s Concerts of 1784, we have reason to believe that many of them were among the subscribers for the 1785 Concerts, so we can just imagine them taking their seats in the Mehlgrube Hall: Prince Kaunitz, Prince Galitsin, Therese von Trattner, Baroness Waldstatten, Count and Countess Thun, Princess Lichnowsky, Prince Lobkowitz, Prince Liechtenstein, Count Zichy, Count Esterhazy, Count Nostitz, Baron van Swieten, Councillor Greiner, Countess Waldstein, Count Zinzendorf, Baron Wetzlar, Princess Auersperg, Count Banffi, Ignatz von Born, Count Czernin, Prince Schwartzenberg, Countess Hatzfeld, Count Esterhazy… and many others, all people of importance and position in the Viennese society.
Iconographic evidence suggests that in halls like the Mehlgrube the players would probably have occupied a low platform situated not at the end of the room, but against one of the long walls. The seating plan for K.466 would probably have been similar to the one recommended in 1802 by the piano-maker and Mozart pupil Nannette Stein Streicher:
“In performing concertos, especially Mozart’s, one should move the fortepiano several feet nearer (the audience) than the orchestra is. Directly behind the piano leave just the violins. The bass-line and wind instruments should be further back, the latter more than the former.”
“For concerts like Mozart’s, for which the featured artist actually hired the orchestra, it was usual to have only a single rehearsal, the morning of the performance. For the Premiere of The d Minor Concerto, on 11 February 1785, there was not even time to read through the finale, since Mozart was busy supervising the copying of the parts. Leopold’s report that “the orchestra played splendidly” is hard to believe, given the circumstances. (In contrast, when Leopold’s seventeen-year-old pupil Heinrich Marchand rehearsed the concerto for a performance in Salzburg on 22 March 1786, it took three playings of the finale to get the orchestra to play together and keep up with the soloist.) Adalbert Gyrowetz, one of whose symphonies was programmed in Mozart’s Mehlgrube series, noted in his presumed autobiography that Mozart had hired a “full theater orchestra” for these concerts. This was most likely the orchestra of the Burgtheater, where, four days later, on 15 February 1785, Mozart again played The D-minor Piano Concerto, in a concert given by the singer Elisabeth Distler.”
The next day, Joseph Haydn, visiting Mozart’s apartment on Domgasse for a celebration that included a reading of Mozart’s last three quartets, met Leopold and remarked to him: “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name…”, gratifying praise from the master Europe now acknowledged as supreme. The following evening at the Burgtheater Leopold sat in a box near that of “the very beautiful” Princess of Wurttemberg. “Your brother”, he reported to Nannerl, “played a glorious concerto, which he composed for Mlle Paradis to perform in Paris… Tears of sheer delight came to my eyes… When your brother made his exit, the Emperor saluted him with his hat and called out: “Bravo, Mozart!”
Mozart sent Leopold his autograph score of the work (along with that of K 467, the 21st Concerto, and engraved copies of the six string quartets dedicated to Haydn) at the end of November 1785. The solo part of The d Minor Concerto was sent to Nannerl (in St Gilgen) early in 1786. Describing a subsequent performance in Salzburg by Heinrich Wilhelm Marchand on 22 March 1786, Leopold remarked that:
“As you have the clavier part, he (Marchand) played it from the score and (Michael) Haydn turned over the pages for him and at the same time had the pleasure of seeing with what art it is composed, how delightfully the parts are interwoven and what a difficult concerto it is… We rehearsed it in the morning and had to practise the rondo three times before the orchestra could manage it, for Marchand took it rather quickly.”
A rather later performance of The d Minor Concerto is recorded by Thomas Attwood in a letter to an unnamed correspondent, probably dating from 1828-1830 (Eisen). According to Attwood’s recollection of events occurring some forty years previously, Mozart “was very kind to all of Talent who came to Vienna and generally played at their Benefit Concerts with the Pianofortes … The last time I heard him, He play’d his concerto in D minor & ‘Non temere’ (…) atStorace’s Benefit (concert).” This was probably Nancy Storace’s farewell concert at the Karntnerthortheater on 23 February 1787 (Erich Deutsch).”
The autograph of The d Minor Piano Concerto (on 12-stave ‘Querformat’ paper) is in the collection of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna . It bears, on the first music-page, the legend ‘Concerto Di Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart’. Previously, it was owned by Mozart’s colleague, the Abbé Maximiliam von Stadler (1748-1833). After Mozart’s death, Stadler, at Constanze’s request, began to put the remaining autograph manuscripts in order, completing a few fragmentary compositions, and cataloguing others. The first edition was published by André (Mozart, 1796), that is, three years before he purchased from Constanze a large quantity of autographs upon which his early editions of Mozart’s works were based (the exemplar for this print is not known). The autograph of The d Minor Concerto was not among those autographs purchased by André in November 1799. Possibly it had already been given to Stadler by this time. A set of playing parts survives at St Peter’s, Salzburg, in which detailed instructions for ‘ripieno’ performance appear in the violin parts. Although no cadenzas to this work by Mozart are known, Beethoven composed examples for the first movement and finale. Beethoven performed the work at a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow (also attended by Count Zinzendorf) in the Karntnerthortheater, Vienna, on 31 March 1795.
(Excerpts from Robert W. Gutman – Mozart: A Cultural Biography, John Irving: Mozart’s Piano Concertos, David Grayson: Mozart’s Piano Concertos nos. 20 and 21)
On the site where Mozart premiered some of his most beautiful piano concertos, the Mehlgrubehas turned into Hotel Ambassador. A timeline of this change can be seen on the History page the Ambassador Hotel.
“the 10th of February. A Piano concerto. Accompaniment. 2 violins, 2 violas, 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 clarinets, timpani and bass”.
It is Mozart’s entry in his hand-written catalogue of works, on a Thursday the 10th of a cold, harsh February, in Vienna. Two lines announcing the birth of one of the most beautiful musical creations that humanity has ever known: The d minor Piano Concerto.
Of all his wonderful piano concertos, it’s the d minor I love the most. It is in resonance with my profound being. I sense each note deep in my heart… the music is breathtaking, majestic, tremendous, it moves and troubles my soul, leaving within it a longing I am not able to understand…
To turn the pages of Mozart’s Thematic Catalogue is pure emotion! The manuscript is Mozart’s record of his compositions in the last seven years of his life. Thanks to The British Library, we can feel this emotion, even without touching the precious paper.
“Mozart wrote the Piano Concertos K.466 and 467 for his own use during the 1785 Lenten season, a period of hectic concert activity. He began K.466 during the third week of January, immediately after he had completed the String Quartets in A major, K.464, and C major (the so-called “Dissonant” or “Dissonance” Quartet), K.465, the last of the six quartets later dedicated to Franz Joseph Haydn. The D-minor Concerto, K.466, was completed on 10 February, the day before its premiere, which was given at the first in a series of six weekly concerts that Mozart was presenting at the Mehlgrube on successive Friday nights.
These concerts proved to be quite lucrative, attracting more than 150 subscribers, each of whom paid a souverain d’or for the series. (As a point of reference, Mozart’s annual rent for his “upper-bracket” furnished apartment was 460 gulden, or around 35 souverains d’or.) Of course he had expenses connected to the concert series, including payments to the orchestra musicians, though the hall rental for each concert was only half a souverain d’or.” (David Grayson – Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 21)
Advocate Peter Gutmann, on Classical Notes, writes about the 20th Concerto. “A piece”, he calls his work, “an essay of the heart”, I would call it, because apart his very fine writing and excellent research, this page was written from the heart! With the generous permission he himself expresses, I will end my post with excerpts from his Classical Note on the 20th Concerto.
227 years have passed since the Birth Day of The d minor Concerto. Its beauty will last as long as the idea of humanity will.
“Friederich Blume pinpoints its unique historical importance as the moment in which the decisive turn to the modern concerto took place. For Blume, K. 466 was the very first concerto in which conventionalisms cede to the spontaneous expression of artistic individuality and “the language of the heart.”
The impulse for Mozart to have created the 20th is curious indeed and perhaps forever beyond our knowledge. While it is tempting to relate it to a newfound maturity or dark events in his life, biographers caution that such efforts are deceptive – Mozart wrote many of his most upbeat works at times of depression and searching ones during periods of contentment. Indeed, he often wrote his piano concerti in pairs and the very next one, # 21 in C Major, K. 467, given only weeks later, is among his most delicate and affirmative. (…) In any event, Arthur Hutchins warns that since we don’t know how long a given work gestated before it appeared, a precise set of stimuli is impossible to trace.
Alone among the Mozart concertos, the 20th cast a strong and lasting influence. Veinus notes that it served as a springboard for the turbulence of Beethoven’s capitulation to the tragic muse which, in turn, revolutionized serious music as we know it and paved the way to the music of the next century. Indeed, it comes as no surprise that Beethoven played the work, going so far as to write out his own cadenzas which, as reflections of his own overpowering personality, exploit the dramatic implications of the material at the expense of its inherent elegance and occasional charm, bearing less stylistic similarity to the cadenzas Mozart left us for other of his concerti, which tended to be bright and often a brief fantasy built on a subsidiary theme.
Mozart never wrote out cadenzas for this work, as he had for his nine prior concerti, for a simple and practical reason – preparations for the February 11, 1785 premiere were so rushed that the copyist was still working on the orchestral parts as the audience arrived, and so Mozart improvised on the spot. (Nor did he get a chance to rehearse the rondo, so even with the usual allowances for first performances of unfamiliar music, this one must have been especially rough.) As most concerts of the time boasted new work, and as this one was an academie – part of a subscription series in which Mozart introduced his music to well-heeled patrons – Mozart may have never performed the 20th again but merely moved on to introduce other concerti in subsequent concerts. Indeed, John Culshaw has suggested that the thinness of the solo part in the andante is deceptive, as it may not reflect the full piano role that Mozart had intended and actually played, but rather is a mere outline that he planned to flesh out during the performance and never bothered to complete. Even so, we know that at least one member of the audience was hugely impressed – the next day, Joseph Haydn, the most respected musician of the time, proclaimed Mozart to be the greatest composer he knew.
Mozart was widely considered the greatest pianist of his time. How did he play his own work? While others’ descriptions often are partisan, vague and of varying reliability, fortunately Mozart left us copious correspondence in which he freely praised and disparaged his colleagues and thus provides a remarkably full portrait of his own ideals, which presumably he followed when performing himself. (After all, he wrote nearly all of his piano pieces for the purpose of personal performance, and so clearly they suit his own aesthetic intentions and exhibit his own strengths and inclinations.) As catalogued by Harold Schonberg, Mozart straddled and served as a transition between the rigid mechanics and florid ornamentation of his Baroque forebears and the expressive freedom and permissive inflection of the Romantic age that was to follow. While he insisted upon technical accuracy and precision, he had no tolerance for virtuosity unless it was to be applied with moderation and taste and placed at the service of the music. Yet, the result was not to be dry or mechanical, nor slavish adherence to the written score, as Mozart was known for liberally embellishing his own work during performances as a famed improviser. He sat at the center of the keyboard and maintained a calm demeanor without facial gestures. Tempos were to be strictly maintained, with no speed or slowing for emphasis or variation in repeated sections. All legato was to be in the right hand, and then temperate and regulated, so the notes “flowed like oil” without distending the basic pulse. Each extended note was to be held for its full value, without emphatic clipping.
The fascinating question still remains, of how (or even if) Mozart would have structured and scored K. 466 (and much of his other work) had he lived a generation or two later – not in the classical era which he epitomized, but rather in the heart of the Romantic era which he anticipated and enabled in so many ways, and never as much as with his 20th piano concerto.”
A fortepiano after Walther, wonderfully crafted in our time! Visit the site of harpsichord maker Keith Hill, to see a Walther fortepiano similar to the one on which Mozart composed and played.
Or click herefor a sound sample of one of Keith Hill’s Walther fortepianos in a Mozart Piano Concerto, played by Robert Hill with orchestra.
Then go wander through the Vienna of Mozart’s time…
Every year in January, to celebrate the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg hosts the Mozart Week: a series of opera performances, orchestral, chamber and soloist concerts. World-renowned Mozart interpreters sustain the peerless reputation of this unique event. Between 27 January – 5 February 2012, classical music lovers from all over the world are invited to rejoice in the everlasting beauty of the great composer’s music.
Mozarts Geburtshaus, the house in which Mozart was born on 27 January 1756, on Getreidegasse, is now one of the most frequently visited museums in the world. The exhibition, which spreads over three floors, carries the visitors into Wolfgang’s world, telling when he began to make music, who his friends and patrons were, how the relationship with his family looked like, how strong was his passion for the opera… Here can be seen portraits, original manuscripts and documents, as well as personal objects and musical instruments on which he has played: his childhood violin and the clavichord on which he composed a few of his wonderful works.
In Makartplatz there is Mozarts Wohnhaus, the residence where Mozart lived between 1773 and 1781 (the year when he left for Vienna). The building was severely damaged in the Second World War’s bombings, but it was faithfully reconstructed and today hosts the second important Mozart museum in Salzburg.
In the spacious rooms visitors can see portraits and original documents, manuscripts of Mozart’s works from the Salzburg years, Wolfgang’s original fortepiano, as well as the famous Family Portrait in the Master’s Dance Hall (Tanzmeistersaal).
Salzburg is a city of music: during the year extraordinary performances take place in churches, in palaces, in concert halls… Salzburger Schlosskonzerte is one of the biggest musical events in the world: the concerts take place in the marble hall of the Mirabell Palace, there where, in another time, young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played himself!
On Mozart Week, or whenever you are in Salzburg, give yourself the joy of discovering the beauties of a city whose cultural, historical and memorial values have always been respected by its rulers and inhabitants!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 and left our world on 5 December 1791. Thirty five years was the time on earth of this wonderful child of humanity. God loved him too much and called him back. The angel who lightened our life returned to heaven. His body rests in the peace of the St Marx Cemetery, but his kind and generous soul, his free spirit, his tremendous genius will live eternally through his divine Music…
Thank you, Mozart, for the gift of your uneven music!… Eternal gratitude, flowers and tears… a moving homage carrying within it all the loving thoughts which wend your way today and for ever…
Leopold Mozart from Salzburg, 9 February 1756
“… on January 27, at 8 pm, my wife fortunately gave birth to our son. Praise God, at this moment both mother and son are alright. We have named the boy Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb.”
Vienna, 16 October 1762
“The order to go to the Court arrived immediately after it was known we had arrived in Vienna. We were received with such extraordinary kindness by their majesties that if ever I tell them about it, people will say I have made it all up. Suffice it to say that Wolferl jumped up into the empress’ lap, grabbed her round the neck and kissed her right and proper. In short, we were with her from 3 till 6, and the emperor himself came in from the next room and took me to hear the infant play the violin.”
Paris, 1 February 1764
“You can easily imagine, then, how impressed and amazed were these French people, who are so infatuated with the customs of their court, when the king’s daughters stopped stock still not only in their apartments but in the public gallery when they say my children and approached them… But the most extraordinary thing of all in the eyes of these French people was that at the grand couvert after nightfall on New Year’s Day, not only was it necessary to make room for us all to go up to high table, but my Herr Wolfgangus was privileged to stand next to the queen, speaking to her constantly, entertaining her, repeatedly kissing her hands and consuming the dishes that she handed him from the table.”
Paris, 1 February 1764
“4 sonatas by Monsieur Wolfgang Mozart are currently being engraved. Just imagine the stir that these sonatas will make in the world when it says on the title-page that they are the work of a 7-year-old child. You’ll hear in due course how good these sonatas are; one of them has an Andante in a very unusual style. And I can tell you that every day God works new wonders through this child. He is always accompanying other performers at public concerts. He even transposes the arias while accompanying them a prima vista; and everywhere people place Italian and French works before him that he has no difficulty in sight-reading.”
London, 28 May 1764
“The kindness with which both their majesties – the king as well as the queen – received us is indescribable. Their common touch and friendly manner allowed us to forget that they were the king and queen of England; we have been received at every court with extraordinary courtesy, but the welcome that we were given here surpasses all the others . All will be well as long as we stay healthy with God’s help and if He keeps our invincible Wolfgang in good health. The king gave him not only works by Wagenseil to play, but also Bach, Abel and Haendel, all of which he rattled off prima vista. He played the king’s organ so well that everyone rates his organ playing far higher than his harpsichord playing. He then accompanied the queen in an aria that she sang and a flautist in a solo. Finally he took the violin part in some Haendel arias and played the most beautiful melody over the simple bass, so that everyone was utterly astonished. In a word, what he knew when we left Salzburg is a mere shadow of what he knows now. You can’t imagine it.”
Munchen, 15 November 1766
“God – who has been far too good to me, a miserable sinner – has bestowed such talents on my children that, apart from my duty as a father, they alone would spur me on to sacrifice everything to their decent education.Every moment I lose is lost for ever. And if I ever knew how valuable time is for young people, I know it now. You know that my children are used to work: if – on the excuse that one thing prevents another – they were to get used to hours of idleness, my entire edifice would collapse; custom is an iron shirt. And you yourself know how much my children, especially Wolfgangerl, have to learn. But who knows what’s being planned for us on our return to Salzburg? Perhaps we’ll be received in such a way that we’ll be only too pleased to shoulder our bundles and go on our way. But, God willing, I shall at least be bringing my children to their fatherland; if they are not wanted, it won’t be my fault; but people won’t get them for nothing.”
Vienna, 30 January 1768
“Now, in order to convince the public of what is involved here, I decided on a completely exceptional course of action, namely, to get him to write an opera for the theatre. And what kind of an uproar do you think immediately arose among these composers?… What? Today we are to see a Gluck and tomorrow a boy of 12 sitting at the harpsichord and conducting his own opera?… Yes, despite all those who envy him! I’ve even won Gluck over to our side…”
Vienna, 30 July 1768
“His Grace has no liars, charlatans and swindlers in his service who with his prior knowledge and gracious permission go to other towns and like conjurors throw dust in people’s eyes; no, they are honest men who to the honour of their prince and their country announce to the world a miracle that God allowed to see the light of day in Salzburg. I owe it to the Almighty God to see this through, otherwise I’d be the most thankless of creatures: and if it were ever my duty to convince the world of this miracle, it is now, when people are ridiculing all that is called a miracle and denying all such miracles. And so they have to be convinced: and was it not a great joy and a great triumph for me to hear a Voltairean say to me in amazement: ‘For once in my life I have seen a miracle; it is the first!’”
The first morning of a new year… Light of commencement, hopes and dreams born in fireworks, thoughts of love for loved ones, wishes of good for those in whose soul Good speaks and Beauty sings… A new year’s ephemeral morning, with Bach’s eternal music…
“It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart” (Karl Barth)
A Christmas morning dressed in the quietness of snow flakes… a little house adorned with snow… a snowfall from a fairy tale, gentle and pure… from the snowbound street, now and then, tinkling of bells and children’s merry laughter… inside the house scent of fir tree and vanilla, festive lights and Mozart’s music: of commencement and without end…
The other day I was remembering the special feeling of finding a real letter in the mailbox… the thoughts came to my mind while admiring some beautiful stationery: the finest writing paper embellished with an exquisite Florentine pattern. Yes, e-mail is ok, so fast, so convenient, we couldn’t do without it in our time… but we have lost something that we might never experience again: the warmth of that intimate feeling imprinted in a letter, the pleasure of writing with a pen on a beautiful paper, which will be carefully folded and wrapped in its matching envelope, to be sent to someone who in a few days will open the mailbox and find it there… the same joy that we feel when we turn the pages of a book and let ourselves become one with it, while it grows alive in our mind…
Today the doorbell rang and when I opened I saw the postwoman holding a small envelope and a big one, “too big to fit the mailbox”, she said, smilingly. The small envelope had travelled over the ocean, from my beloved aunt: adorned with delicate Christmas figures, it nested a beautiful card with her loving thoughts and Christmas wishes. The second envelope wore the mark of the Austrian Post, and was coming from Wien Tourismus, offering me the wonderful surprise of a book, “Wien Walks” (won in Wien.info’s competition, a few days ago), and the excellent 2012 magazine of Vienna Tourist Board
Together with Merisi’s beautiful blog, the Vienna.info page is one I visit each day, because it is the perfect place to keep in touch with the news and most of all with the feeling of the Great City! Through their page my eyes see Vienna and my heart feels it. And today, when I received “the big envelope”, it was that special emotion of touching the letter, and with it a little part of Vienna… I hope to be able to use “Wien Walks” next year – it is a precious wish on my Wishlist!
Heartfelt thanks to Ms Birgit, to the Vienna Tourist Board, for their dedicated and professional work, for everything they are doing to bring Vienna closer to us!
If you haven’t decided yet which city to visit before Christmas, maybe this wonderful image of the Vienna Rathausplatz dressed in Christmas lights will show you the way!
In the evening of 10 December 1791 the Requiem was heard for the first time! Gathered in St Michael’s Church to attend the memorial for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the audience, holding their breath, listened to the heavenly masterpiece that Mozart only heard within himself. As the Requiem unfolded to the world, Mozart was offering humanity his last, most precious gift, and the proof that he will go on living forever, through his divine Music.
20 November 1791 – Mozart takes to his bed with the illness that will eventually kill him.
4 December 1791 – Around 2 p.m. some of the movements of the Requiem are sung through by Mozart, Süssmayr, Constanze, Schak, Hofer and Gerl. Among them the ‘Recordare‘, which Mozart loved dearly.
5 December 1791 – Around 1 a.m. Mozart dies. He leaves an unfinished score of the Requiem, as well as some sketches and “scraps of paper”.
6 December 1791 – Mozart is buried in St. Marx Cemetery.
Before 10 December 1791 – Freystadtler enters strings and woodwinds in the “Kyrie” fugue of Mozart’s Requiem score (by and large merely doubling the vocal parts) in preparation for the upcoming performance.
10 December 1791 – A requiem mass for Mozart is held in St. Michael’s Church in Vienna, at which a part or parts of the unfinished Requiem are sung. The staff of the Theather auf der Wieden participate in the memorial.
Mozart remained completely conscious during his illness right to the end and died calmly, although regretfully. This can be readily understood, when one considers that Mozart had beeen officially appointed to the post of Kapellmeister in the Church of St. Stephen, and had the happy prospect of living peacefully without financial worries. He had also received, almost simultaneously, commissions from Hungary and Amsterdam, as well as many orders and contracts for works to be delivered at regular intervals.
This extraordinary accumulation of happy auguries for a better future, the sad state of his financial affairs as they actually existed, the sight of his unhappy wife, the thought of his two young children; all these did not make the bitterness of his death any sweeter, particularly as this much admired artist, in his thirty-fifth year, had never been a stoic: “Just now”, thus he often lamented in his illness, “when I could have gone on living so peacefully, I must depart. I must leave my art now that I am no longer a slave of fashion, am no longer tied to speculators; when I could follow the flights of my fantasy, the path along which my spirit leads me, free and independent to write only when I am inspired, whatever my heart dictates. I must leave my family, my poor children, just when I would have been in a better condition to care for them….”
On the day of his death he had the score of the Requiem brought to his bed. “Did I not say before that I was writing this Requiem for myself?” After saying this, he looked yet again with tears in his eyes through the whole work. This was the last sad sight of his Music and the painful farewell to his beloved Art, which was destined to become immortal.
Gravediggers deposited Mozart in a “normal simple grave” (allgemeines einfaches Grab), not a communal (gemeinschaftlich) pit. Excepting the mausoleums of the aristocratic and wealthy, all burial sites constituted not personal property, but leaseholds of ten years: every decade the authorities plowed them, sowing back into the soil whatever stray bones turned up and thus preparing for new occupants. Such a furrowing dispersed whatever remained of Mozart and demolished a memorial marking his grave. Within a month of his death, a notice in the Wiener Zeitung (31 December 1791) had alluded to this stone table, the contributor suggesting an epitaph in Latin for it:
“As a child, he who lies here,
through his harmonies, added to the wonders of the world;
as a man, he surpassed Orpheus.
Go your way
and pray earnestly for his soul.”
Four days after the burial, so the Auszug aller europäischen Zeitungen (European Press Digest) of 13 December reported, the Viennese “celebrated solemn obsequies for the great composer Mozart” in St. Michael’s. (Accross from the Hofburg and the Burgtheater, it functioned as both parish church to the court and chapel to its musicians’ special society, the Congregation of St. Cecilia, to which Mozart had belonged.) On the sixteenth, the Viennese journal Der heimliche Botschafter (The Secret Messenger), which circulated in scribes’ copies, identified the music at this service as “the requiem he composed during his final illness…” With remarkable speed, disciples had extracted from the score those parts that had reached performable state as, with no less urgency, singers and instrumentalists learned them. In view of the manuscript’s unfinished condition, only the first movement, and perhaps the second with some instrumental touches added, could have been performed with orchestra; the other sections very likely took the form of Mozart’s choruses sung by a quartet and supported by organ continuo; plainchant might have filled the missing sections.
Prague marked Mozart’s death four days later with a requiem (a setting by Franz Anton Rossler, also known as Antonio Rosetti) in St. Nicholas’s, packed by a throng of more than four thousand overflowing into the surrounding streets.
It has taken perhaps two hundred years for the world to realize fully and in all its aspects what this loss has meant to music – and to humanity. Haydn said: “Posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years!” Posterity has not seen it in two hundred.
(Excerpts from: Niemetschek: Leben des Kappellmeisters Mozart (Life of Mozart), published 1798; Christoph Wolff: Mozart’s Requiem (Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score); Robert W. Gutman: Mozart, a Cultural Biography; Anton Herzog: True and Detailed History of the Requiem by W.A. Mozart. From its inception in the year 1791 to the present period of 1839 – incorporating information found in Stadler: Vertheidigung der Echtheit des Mozartischen Requiem)
Finally Süssmayr was persuaded to complete the unfinished great work, and he admits in letters to the music publishers (Breitkopf & Härtel) in Leipzig that during Mozart’s lifetime he played and sang through with him the pieces that had already been composed, namely “Requiem”, “Kyrie”, “Dies irae”, “Domine” and so forth, and that he (Mozart) very often discussed the completion of this work and communicated (to Süssmayr) the way and the reasons of his orchestration.
From this point, and up to the dispatch of the score to Herr Count, I am obliged to turn to Herr Abbe Stadler’s account, which I will quote here, because his two pamphlets may well not be in everyone’s possession. He says:” The first movement, ‘Requiem’ with the fugue, and the second, ‘Dies irae’, up to ‘Lacrimosa’, were for the most part orchestrated by Mozart himself, and there was not much more for Süssmayr to do than what most composers leave for their amanuenses to do. Süssmayr’s work really began with the ‘Lacrimosa’. But here too Mozart had written out the violins himself; and Sussmayr only finished it from after ‘judicandus homo reus’ to the end. Similarly, in the third movement, ‘Domine’, Mozart had written the violins’ music in this score, where the voices are silent; where the voices enter he had indicated the motives for the instruments here and there, but quite clearly. He gave the violins two and a half bars to perform alone before the ‘Quam olim’ fugue. He wrote two bars for the violins before the entry of the voices at ‘Hostias’, and eleven bars at ‘Memoriam facimus’, in his own hand.
“We see nothing more from his pen after the end of ‘Hostias’ except the words ‘Quam olim da Capo’. This is the end of Mozart’s original autograph score.
The Michaelerkirche, dedicated to the Archangel Michael, is one of the oldest churches in Vienna, a late Romanesque, early Gothic building, dating from about 1220-1240. Its present day aspect is unchanged since 1792. This church, close to the Michaeler wing of the Hofburg, used to be the parish church of the Imperial Court (it was then called ‘Zum heiligen Michael’).
He drew his last breath on the day of 5 December, at one in the morning, watched by his wife’s sister. His body was washed by loyal friends. They accompanied him when he left his house for the last time. It was them again who brought him to the Saint Stephen Cathedral, in a chapel in which he would wait for the religious ceremony – a simple one, according to the low fee of the third class funeral paid for by Baron Van Swieten. His wife had left the house a few hours after his death, “out of too much pain”, and would stay with friends for the next days. She didn’t keep vigil over his dead body, she didn’t follow him on his last journey. It was winter in Vienna, it was cold, it was almost night… God, what a terrible night of mankind!… One by one, the living abandoned the funeral convoy, and so by the time the hearse had passed the Stubenthor and reached the graveyard of St Marx, Mozart‘s lifeless body was being attended only by the driver of the carriage. By that time, in St Marx there had already been two pauper funerals. Mozart was the third. His body was deposited in the common grave, uppermost, by the gravedigger’s assistant and the driver of the hearst. Then came the night.
Mozart left alone. He remained alone. His wife, “dearest, most beloved little wife”, as he would address her in his letters, didn’t look for his grave for seventeen years. Although her state of health seemed to have quickly improved, since only a few weeks after his demise she was already corresponding with a few well-known editors with a view of selling his manuscripts. And never again, after his death, was she in need to go to Baden for cures; she capitalized his musical inheritance, she remarried, she rewrote his life together with her second husband, and she outlived her first husband fifty years.
None of his close friends, none of those who knew and loved his music and being, no one looked for his grave, not after one day, not after one month, not after one year. The regulations of the time indicated the deposition in a “common” grave according to the amount of money paid by the Baron, but they did not forbid the placing of a funeral stone on the cemetery wall. Neither Constanze Mozart nor his friends, nor the nobles he had ennobled with his feeling and creation, neither the Viennese who would hum his melodies in cafes, no one searched for him… No one felt the need to prove their respect and affection by marking the place where, on top of other bodies, he found his rest – he, the angel God had sent to the earth of humans who never understood and loved him in truth…
Ten years after, the common grave was opened, the bones taken out, to make space for other mortals. This was what the third class funeral meant: a grave which confined more bodies together for ten years, and that was all. After ten years, a pile of bones, taken out to be deposited where?… we will never know. A higher class funeral would have meant a grave in the family’s property in the St Marx Cemetery. But it would have cost more: for his wife, for his close friends, for his admirers, for Vienna! And none of those who knew him, who were close to him, no one of those whom he had honored with the divine touch of his being, no one felt that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart deserved a funeral of a higher class.
The papers of divorce between the world and the genius were deposited in the common grave of the Vienna cemetery on 6 December 1791, there where, to its glory, the World threw Mozart under the septic lime of final oblivion. And since then the scene has kept repeating.
It is 5 December. For 220 years humanity has been waiting for you to come back. Your music has survived and will go on. But we miss your living heart, your soul enlightened by a divine feeling of harmony! For you have been His gift, which we have not loved enough when He took you back.
You, Mozart, harrowing light of the darkness which surrounds us! In your park clad in mourning dress, the leaves of winter are whispering your name. It is 5 December. A serene calm overtaken by the night until the world abandoned itself to the despair of understanding it had lost you for ever! If only we could, through our love, resurrect your fragile being, so you could smile to us again, you, Mozart majestically sleeping in our soul! If only you could hear the hurt of our knowing you were summoned for ever there where only angels shiver as they listen to you. Oh, Mozart, it is night, the total, endless night in a day of 5 December! A day in which both you and we died a little…
Mozart, Mozart, Mozart, celestial echo of humanity’s child…
Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of the musicians and her Feast Day is celebrated on November 22. Born in 2nd Century Rome, the story says she heard heavenly music in her heart when she was married, and at the end of her short life, as she lay dying a martyr’s death, she praised God, singing to Him. It is the reason for which Christian Churches celebrate her as the patroness of musicians and Church music. John Dryden and Alexander Pope, Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel and Benjamin Britten have dedicated music and poems to Saint Cecilia, and their works were presented in musical concerts and festivals held on her Feast Day.
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was born on 14 November 1719 in Augsburg and spent the largest part of his life in Salzburg. He was a talented and hard working composer, conductor, teacher and violinist. He received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy and wrote a comprehensive treatise on violin playing, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule - A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing, a work which was influential in its day and continues to serve as a scholarly source concerning 18th century performance practice.
But above all he was the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
“God, who has been far too good to me, a miserable sinner, has bestowed such talents on my children that, apart from my duty as a father, they alone would spur me on to sacrifice everything to their successful development. Every moment I lose is lost for ever. And if I ever guessed how precious for youth is time, I realize it now. You know that my children are accustomed to work. But if with the excuse that one thing prevents another they are to accustom themselves to hours of idleness, my whole plan would crumble to pieces. Habit is an iron shirt. And you yourself know how much my children and especially Wolfgang have to learn. But who knows what plans are being made for us after our return to Salzburg? Perhaps we shall be received in such a way that we shall be only too glad to shoulder our bundles and clear out. But at least, God willing, I am going to bring back my children to their native town. If they are not wanted, it is not my fault. But people shall not get them for nothing.”
Leopold Mozart – Letter from Munich, November 15th, 1766
His Princely Highness does not keep in his service liars or charlatans or cheaters of people, who would travel to all places with his Grace’s permission and deceive people, but honest men who, to honor the homeland and its Prince, are announcing to the world a miracle which God allowed to be born in Salzburg.
I owe this to God Almighty, otherwise I would be the most ungrateful creature. And if it would ever be my duty to convince the world of this miracle, then I would have to do it right now, when all that is called wonder is laughed at and every miracle is contradicted. So I will have to convince them! Wasn’t it a great joy and victory for me to hear a follower of Voltaire tell me in astonishment: “It is the first miracle I’ve seen in my life!
Leopold Mozart – Letter from Vienna, July 13th, 1768
Leopold Mozart has brought to completion God’s Work. Without his attentive, meticulous and loving guidance, maybe Wolferl would not have become Mozart – the sublime musician! The family letters are priceless Moments stolen to Time. They let us have a glimpse into the life of Wolfgang and Nannerl, of Leopold and Anna Maria. And looking at Mozart as a child, we can see an exceptional educator-father beside him. Leopold Mozart was an advocate of the illuminist ideals of the time, attaching much value to high education, for both his son and his daughter. In modern terms we could say that Leopold Mozart is the first teacher to have applied the principles of non-formal education: that education in which the child learns through self-discovery, an education which privileges the child, his/her talent, natural inclinations and abilities, discovers and cultivates them.
Leopold was the first to understand that in his family a miracle had been born, and that he owed it to the world to cultivate that miracle! Wolferl had a happy childhood, unlike Ludwig van Beethoven. Leopold Mozart instructed his son not only with professionalism and method, but most of all with affection and care. Nannerl confesses, in a letter written after her brother’s tragic death, that never in their childhood had Wolfgang been obliged to study, but on the contrary, he had to be taken away from the piano after many long hours in which he would not do anything but play or write music! It is clear that his children’s natural gifts could only make Leopold’s work more pleasurable, but even in this situation his qualities of a teacher remain extraordinary.
Of this Leopold Mozart, as well as of Anna Maria and the environment of love and respect in which the Mozart children have grown up, Enrik Lauer speaks in a book written with tenderness and humour, Mozart und die Frauen.
Years after having seen the two Mozart children perform in London, violinist Stephen Storace, impressed by “the Mozart Model”, would raise his own son and daughter in the light of the same principles and methods that Leopold Mozart had used. Stephen junior and Anna (who would become the famous singer Anna Storace, Mozart’s first Susanna) have learned to play the piano and read musical scores, in addition the son has had violin lessons and the daughter harp and guitar lessons, and has also learned napoletan songs and popular arias from italian operas, thus bringing into light her innate passion for singing, her greatest talent. The two Storace children have grown up in the musical and theatrical environment, they assisted in performances and rehearsals and have had social relations with the artists in their father’s circle of friends. After a few years they left for Italy, in order to continue the improvement of their artistic talent in the Naples Conservatory, where their father had also studied.
Neither of the Storace children became “a second Mozart”. Since 1756 no second Mozart was born, and will never be again. But Mozart is alive in every human being who is guided to discover him! It is the way in which his spirit, his soul, his divine creation will be preserved for ever!
