By John Ardoin
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Salzburg, Austria.
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It was in the archbishopric of Salzburg, Austria, that the most perfect, the best equipped, and the most natural musician the world has ever known was born -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As a composer, he was supreme in every musical form. He produced the greatest operas; he helped to forge the symphony, concerto, and string quartet as we know them today; his sacred music is deeply spiritual; and his lightest pieces wonderfully secular.
He could read any piece of music at sight perfectly, and he could hear a complex score once and write it down note-for-note afterwards. As if this wasn't enough, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the foremost pianist and organist of his day, and, had he wished, he might have been the age's leading violinist as well. In short, there was literally nothing musically he could not do better than anyone else. "I tell you before God, and as an honest man," Joseph Haydn said to Mozart's father, "that your son is the greatest composer I know either personally or by reputation." There has been no reason to reverse that opinion in over two centuries.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91). |
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But what of the man Mozart? His life and particularly his early death have often been romanticized, almost beyond recognition. The truth of the matter is that Mozart had far less of a genius for living than he had for music. His outsized talents virtually assured that he would grow up in a stifling, hothouse atmosphere, and he did. He was too reliant on his father, who overprotected the child, while exploiting his awesome musical gifts, and the boy never really learned to cope with the realities of day-to-day living.
How strong was the contrast between the pretty, adored child, who crawled into the lap of Austria's empress, Maria Theresa -- and then asked her daughter, Marie Antoinette, to marry him when he grew up -- and the plain, struggling musician he came to be? The adult Mozart was short, his face pockmarked, his head overly big for his body, his eyes protrudent, his nose large, and his hands stubby and fat. It was a case of a lovely duckling who grew up to be an ugly swan. But, you say, surely his unique gifts as performer and composer overrode all other considerations.
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Mozart was born in an apartment at No. 9 Getreidegasse, which is now a museum.
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But they didn't. The closest he came to securing a court position -- in an age
when royal patronage was everything -- was to be given (the same
year "Don Giovanni" premiered, 1787) the minor post of chamber musician/composer
to Emperor Joseph II, Maria Theresa's son. The pay was equally minor.
"It is," Mozart lamented, "too much for what I do and too little
for what I could do."
Clearly, it could not have been enviable to have been Mozart during his lifetime: to see beyond your age, to know your worth, and to see men you knew to be inferior become wealthy and receive great honors, while you spent your days scrambling for money to support your wife and children. Even his death brought a sigh of relief in some quarters. Antonio Salieri, one of the most popular and successful composers of the time, and a man once accused of poisoning Mozart, said, "A genius has departed. Let us rejoice, for soon no one would have given us a piece of bread for our own music."
Although Mozart was not for his times, he was for the ages. As W. J. Turner puts it in his splendid Mozart biography, citing Sir Charles Stanford: "When you are a child, Mozart speaks to you as a child ... but when you are a man, you find to your astonishment that this music, that seemed childlike, is completely adult and mature. At every age, this pure pellucid day, this intangible transparency, awaits you and envelops you in its unruffled light."
Photos, from top to bottom: Salzburg: Austrian National Tourist Office/Weinhaeupl W. W.A. Mozart by Barbara Kraft: Austrian National Tourist Office/Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Mozart's birthplace: Austrian National Tourist Office/Bartl.
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