BRILLIANT BOY WHO NEVER GREW UP
A child prodigy with a fondness for gutter humour, Mozart was feted across Europe – but his spendthrift wife and taste for riotous living left him penniless
We join Mozart, aged six, and his 11year-old sister Marianne, nicknamed ‘Nannerl’, whom their father, Leopold, had taken on a tour of Europe.
13 OCTOBER 1762 Vienna. I played for the Empress [Maria Theresa, Empress of the Hapsburg Empire] in a huge room full of mirrors. I was so good, everyone said I was the best musician they had ever heard! I kissed the Empress, it was so funny. Papa was very pleased: he got a bag of gold. Afterwards I played with the Empress’s children. One, called Marie Antoinette, was very kind to me. She gave me a snuff box.
12 JULY 1763 I am so tired. Papa takes us to a new city almost every day. I think we are in Munich. We did not arrive until after midnight because the wheel came off our carriage. Then the replacement was too small and we went bumpety, bumpety all over the road. Nannerl was as sick as a dog. I got another snuff box. It was gold.
AUGUST 1763 We are in Augsburg, a boring little place full of boring people – except me! I got given another snuff box. Papa said if it carries on like this, we could soon open a snuff box shop.
SEPTEMBER 1763 Now we are in Aachen. I did my trick of playing a Bach concerto on a harpsichord keyboard with my hands covered by cloth so I couldn’t see them. Everyone says I am so clever to be able to do this. But it’s easy peasy. Papa was cross because we got another snuff box and no gold.
10 APRIL 1770 Papa and I have arrived in Rome. I wish Nannerl were here, she would gasp at St Peter’s, the most enormous church I’ve ever seen. Our lodgings are worse than a pigsty. I have to share a bed with Papa, who trumps like he’s playing a horn concerto. Papa says tomorrow, being Wednesday of Holy Week, we must go to the Sistine Chapel. It will be a rare chance to hear Allegri’s Miserere [a musical setting of Psalm 51], which the Holy Father is so precious about that it cannot be written down or copied. Papa says if anyone copies it they are excommunicated.
11 APRIL 1770 What a service. The Allegri Miserere was stupendous, the two choirs sounding as if they were sometimes four, with each verse adding embellishments. I have sat up all night transcribing it. I am pretty certain I have faithfully reproduced the great work. Papa was at first fearful I would be in terrible trouble, but then he said I was a genius and we should return to hear it again at the Good Friday service to check I have memorised it correctly.
4 JULY 1770 Would you believe it? I have been made a knight of the Vatican at the age of 14. This afternoon I attended a ceremony hosted by His Holiness Clement XIV. The Pope said he heard of my transcription of the Allegri Miserere and thought it was amazing
that I had managed to copy it so perfectly after just hearing it once. I did not tell him I had heard it twice. Ha! Aged 25, Mozart is now employed by Prince-Archbishop Count von Colloredo, the ruler of Salzburg, and has written his first opera, Idomeneo, based on an Ancient Greek tragedy.
7 JUNE 1781 I cannot abide Salzburg and the tedium of the court. Count von Fathead makes me eat with his servants. He forgets that he is lucky to have me in his court. He sees me as some performing monkey, not as the great composer of the opera Idomeneo, and of the Paris Symphony, which have been lauded across Europe. I am determined to quit his ‘service’ but Arco, the archbishop’s chamberlain, has forbidden me. I shall try tomorrow one more time to release myself from this stupid contract.
8 JUNE 1781 That’s it, I am finished in Salzburg. Arco called me a ‘knave’, a ‘clown’ and then kicked me – yes, on the behind! – out of the room. I shall be a composer in Vienna, unattached to some stupid court. If anyone wants to pay me to write music, I’ll write.
11 NOVEMBER 1781 I toil and toil, and seem to spend more time teaching than writing. But a man has to eat. And I am working on my second opera. Gottlieb Stephanie, the boss of the National Singspiel – a company set up by Emperor Joseph II to champion German-language singing and operas – has commissioned me. He has written a libretto set in the Ottoman Empire for me, called Abduction From The Seraglio. Crucially, Stephanie has changed some of the words to fit my music. For opera to take off, I think the words must be subservient to the music.
6 DECEMBER 1781 Father is right, it is time I found a wife. I need a woman to set straight my chaotic domestic affairs. I can hardly do up my own waistcoat. I have been seeing a lot of the Weber girls [four daughters of Fridolin Weber, a double bass player] recently, whom I taught when I was 21 and staying in Mannheim. When I was younger I enjoyed Aloysia – all of her. But she is no longer on the market, married to some actor. Her younger sister Constanze is free though. She is 18, no great beauty, it is true, but she has a good figure. She would make me a fine wife, I am sure – in the bedroom as well as the kitchen. Father is also right that the only composer who seems to count in the eyes of the Emperor is Salieri.
APRIL 1782 Papa keeps writing letters about the wickedness of the Weber family and how I cannot possibly afford to marry Constanze and keep her as a wife. He’s an idiot. He cannot appreciate what a success I am here and Constanze is a good girl.
17 JULY 1782 I am a Viennese triumph, despite the favouritism shown to Italians like Salieri. Last night I conducted my Abduction From The Seraglio opera, a comic affair in German, and the music was allowed to shine. There was a standing ovation. Two, in fact. Emperor Joseph II, who commissioned it, truly understands that we must strive for new sounds, new textures in our music. Afterwards he congratulated me and joked there were too many notes in the piece. At least, I think he was joking. I was paid quite decently for it, but my pay packet will barely cover the cost of wine and coffee shop bills for a couple of weeks, especially now that I am to become a married man next month. 15 DECEMBER 1784 Last night I was admitted into a Masonic Lodge in Vienna. I am hoping the Freemasons will be a rich source, if not of commissions, then certainly of credit. Despite all my success, I always seem to be short of money. And Constanze has gone off to Baden-Baden to take the waters. I don’t know what she does there but she seems to spend money faster than the Danube flows. 12 FEBRUARY 1785 Last night it was the premiere of my Piano Concerto In D Minor. I was playing the piano and did not have time to copy out my own part – I have been so snowed under with work – so I improvised a section of it there and then with no music in front of me. It was terrifying, but the 150 aristocrats in the audience lapped it up. Even the great Joseph Haydn, Vienna’s number one
composer, was there and congratulated me. Afterwards we had such a party in our lodgings. Oysters, plates of meat, glacé fruits, Champagne and lots of punch. We danced until 7am. Constanze was the life and soul of the party. 29 APRIL 1786 I finished The Marriage Of Figaro, another opera, today. It’s great fun, with the words, or libretto, written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The Imperial Italian Opera Company has paid me 450 florins for the work. It’s three times what I was paid as an annual salary when I was in Salzburg as court composer to Count von Fathead. I went out with some friends on the town last night to celebrate and we ordered the finest wines. Constanze says I should stop spending my money so freely. 19 JANUARY 1787 Constanze and I have travelled to Prague, where tonight a concert of my music was put on for my benefit. I chose a new symphony, my 38th, in D major. And after the rapturous reception, I’m calling it my Prague Symphony.
22 JANUARY 1787 I put on Figaro in Prague. They really like it. And Pasquale Bondini, the singer and impresario, has commissioned me and Da Ponte to write another one for Prague. We’ll set to work straight away. 11 MARCH 1787 Da Ponte says we should do a version of Don Juan – the tale of a rake who gets his comeuppance. I’m determined to get to the heart of Don Juan, or Don Giovanni as he’ll be called. If he refuses to repent at the end, it’ll add a fabulous dark element. That’s what I want to do with operas: get the audience’s juices flowing, get them on the edge of their seats. 10 AUGUST 1787 I’m working so hard on the second act of Don Giovanni. Da Ponte’s libretto is good, but I know my music is even better. Together, they’ll bring the house down. During a break this afternoon before I hit the tavern, I knocked off a little trifle, a serenade in G major for two violins, viola, cello and bass: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. I hope I can sell it. The tunes are quite catchy. 6 DECEMBER 1787 I have been appointed the Court Chamber Composer by Joseph II. But the guy before me got 2,000 florins a year and I am being offered 800. The emperor says he needs money for muskets, not music. How am I to earn enough money?
10 AUGUST 1788 Never have I worked so hard for so little money. In just two months I have churned out three symphonies, including one in C major, whose opening chords a friend says sounds like Jupiter in the heavens raining down thunderbolts. But who will pay to listen to it? I write for money, not for love, and Vienna is impoverished. This bloody war against the Ottoman Empire has sent the aristocrats packing, and the price of bread has shot up. I cannot go on like this for much longer.
20 FEBRUARY 1790 A disaster has befallen not just Vienna, but the house of Mozart. Emperor Joseph II is dead. All the theatres are closed. Così Fan
Tutte, my comic opera, was starting to really pick up steam – but all performances are now cancelled.
23 SEPTEMBER 1790 I have pawned my furniture to travel to Frankfurt for the coronation of Leopold, the new emperor, who is being crowned in various cities around the Empire. I’m taking a risk, but I must ingratiate myself with the new court.
26 JULY 1791 I have been commissioned to write an opera for Leopold’s Prague coronation. Could this bring in enough money? I pray it will because Constanze has given birth to our sixth baby, Franz Xaver. Four of his siblings have been already sent to God. Please let the Lord grant that this pup shall be spared.
24 AUGUST 1791 The strangest thing – Constanze said a messenger has come from a great family, commissioning a requiem. But he will not say for whom he works. No matter. They have already paid me the first instalment and that is all that matters. 19 NOVEMBER 1791 My hands and feet have swollen to the size of melons. I can hardly move, I am in such pain, but I am so close to finishing this requiem. Just a few bars need tidying up, no more.
20 NOVEMBER 1791 I’ve had to take to bed. Please God, let this not be a long illness. I need to work. Mozart died on 5 December.