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MOZART'S SALZBURG
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Mozart's Salzburg was an ecclesiastic state ruled by prince-archbishops (the notion of separation of church and state took its sweet time reaching the town). Mozart's father, Leopold, himself a gifted musician, held a good job in the court orchestra of Colloredo's predecessor, Sigismund Christoph Graf von Schrattenbach. The young Mozart, after touring Europe as a prodigy, followed his father into court service in Salzburg, but his mind was clearly on all those other, more glamorous and culturally lively places he had visited. Places where big breaks for composers -- commissions for operas, high-profile concert venues -- were more likely.
When Colloredo was installed as Salzburg's princely cleric, he retained the services of Leopold and son. But Colloredo expected his musicians to devote themselves to him, an attitude destined to conflict with Mozart's needs and wants. For one thing, the former archbishop more or less went along with Mozart's (and his father's) desire to make frequent, lucrative tours, but Colloredo was less enthusiastic, at one point saying he didn't like his musicians going about Europe like beggars. But Mozart, who was starting to make a name for himself beyond Salzburg as a serious composer (his first trips, as child star with his father, were not always artistically rich), couldn't be kept down on the Salzach River for long.
It wasn't that he didn't have outlets for his talents during his teens and early 20s, when he worked for the archbishop. There was always a need for sacred choral works, along with instrumental music. Mozart wrote his five elegant violin concertos and the exquisite "Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola" for Colloredo's orchestra. But he couldn't resist the lure of the outside world.
By 1777, Mozart and his father were ready to leave Salzburg behind. "Neither could find a good word for the city," writes Robert W. Gutman in MOZART: A CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY. "Their superior manner gave offense precisely because it declared their disdain for Salzburg." When they petitioned the archbishop for a leave of absence, they were both fired instead. Leopold groveled sufficiently to get his old job back, but his son wasn't about to bend. After leaving town with his mother, Mozart advised his father in a letter "to laugh heartily and be jolly and cheerful and always remember, as we do, that (Colloredo) is a prick, but that God is compassionate."
The trip ended sadly; Mozart's mother died in Paris. In 1779, the composer was back in Salzburg, playing the prodigal son card. It worked. He was rehired by Colloredo and soon producing such gems as the "Coronation Mass" and a couple of promising little operas (one was staged in a Salzburg theater managed by Emanuel Schikaneder, who would become a good friend of Mozart and, years later in Vienna, provide the spark that resulted in "The Magic Flute").
But Mozart was far from thrilled to be back home, and the archbishop wasn't exactly thrilled to have him back. "The prevailing climate in the months that followed," writes Hugh Ottaway in his Mozart biography, "was one of mutual mistrust." Mozart bristled at the relatively inferior status accorded to court musicians and at what he took to be an unappreciative response to his music. "When I play, or when works of mine are performed," Mozart wrote of this period in Salzburg, "it is as if the audience consisted of nothing but tables and chairs."
Top banner photos: Soprano Patricia Petibon; tenor Michael Schade, conductor Daniel Harding, and the Vienna Philharmonic (photo courtesy ORF/Ali Schafler); and soprano Anna Netrebko (photo courtesy ORF/Ali Schafler).
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The Felsenreitschule has been a festival venue since 1926. |
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Daniel Harding conducts the Vienna Philharmonic. |
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No CD or DVD available. |
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