by Glover, Jane
The coarseness of these ‘Bäsle’ letters can seem profoundly puzzling, and hard to equate with a composer whose music is of the utmost sublimity. And yet, as the letters of all the Mozart family regularly demonstrate, the discussion of basic bodily functions was a matter of complete normality. That the excitable and sexually aroused Wolfgang developed this practice to such startling proportions should, in truth, be no surprise, for it was no more than what he did when improvising with infinite brilliance and originality at a keyboard. And amidst all the ‘muck’ and nonsense, he did produce some real poetic fantasy:
Do go on loving me, as I love you, then we shall never cease loving one another, though the lion hovers round the walls, though doubt’s hard victory has not been weighed and the tyrant’s frenzy has crept to decay; yet Codrus, the wise philosopher, often eats soot instead of porridge, and the Romans, the props of my arse, have always been and ever will be – half-castes.131
Like all the women he loved, the ‘Bäsle’ certainly inspired Wolfgang’s brilliant creativity.
AS 1777 TURNED into 1778, dramatic events took place in Bavaria. The Elector Maximilian III died on 30 December, and Carl Theodor (‘our’ Elector, as Maria Anna approvingly called him) was declared his successor, leaving for Munich immediately. Both Munich and Mannheim went into mourning, and everything closed down. ‘There are no operas, for which I am truly sorry,’ wrote Maria Anna, ‘all plays, balls, concerts, sleigh-rides, everything has been stopped . . . it is deadly quiet and thoroughly boring . . . Salzburg will be a much jollier place this winter.’132
The Mozart family exchanged New Year greetings, and both Maria Anna and Nannerl revealed deep dissatisfaction with their current unresolved situations. Maria Anna hoped that the new year would be ‘better than the last’,133 and Nannerl expressed her longing to see her mother and brother again, ‘provided it is not in Salzburg’.134 She kept in her sights the original goal, that Wolfgang would land a plum job in a plum Court, and they would all move to join him. (‘We are both longing for you to make your fortune’135). But her life in ‘this dull Salzburg’ was still enlivened by music-making, especially when more new compositions arrived from Wolfgang. She greatly admired his latest piano sonata, K309 (284b), observing astutely, ‘One can see from its style that you composed it in Mannheim’136 (by which she presumably meant its sudden changes of mood and dynamic, and its sense throughout of orchestral colour and texture). And while Leopold had peevish reservations about its ‘Mannheim mannerisms’ (perhaps he was now determined to be negative about every aspect of Mannheim), he proudly reported how both the new sonata and Nannerl’s faultless performance of it had thrilled some fellow musicians at the Tanzmeisterhaus. And indeed, these evenings of music at home, when Nannerl joined her father and other Salzburg colleagues to play through piece after piece by her brother, were ever the happiest of times for her. In a curious way, it was Wolfgang’s music that was providing her with the release that she needed, just as corresponding with their cousin was a release for him. The tyranny of life at home with Leopold can only have been stifling. (‘Nannerl has had a cold,’ Leopold wrote on 12 January 1778, ‘and I am not letting her go out.’137 Nannerl was twenty-six years old.)
Leopold continued to fuss about the forthcoming travel arrangements, weighing up every possible permutation of Maria Anna’s proposed return journey to Salzburg. She herself seemed to be steadier at this prospect, encouraging her husband: ‘Do not worry, for we shall think of the best way to arrange it.’138 On Wolfgang’s behalf Leopold wrote letters to old contacts in Paris who might be useful to him, and made more elaborate arrangements for his journey there. Two Mannheim wind-players, the oboist Friedrich Ramm and the flautist Johann Baptist Wendling, would accompany him. Not having met either of these men, Leopold fretted too about the temptations that might beset Wolfgang in Paris, where he would be without any parental supervision whatsoever. Mindful perhaps of his son’s previous antics with the Wider girls in Venice, which had so dismayed him, Leopold was forthright on the subject of French women. ‘You should refrain from all familiarity with young Frenchmen,’ he wrote on 29 January, ‘and even more so with the women, who run after people of talent in an astonishing way in order to get at their money, draw them into their net, or even land them as husbands.’139 A week later he returned obsessively to his theme: ‘I shall say nothing about the women, for where they are concerned the greatest reserve and prudence are necessary, Nature herself being our enemy. Whoever does not use his judgement to the utmost to keep the necessary reserve with them, will exert it in vain later on when he endeavours to extricate himself from the labyrinth, a misfortune which often ends in death.’140 (For all that Leopold had a loyal and devoted wife, he was fundamentally riddled with misogyny.) But, regardless of all these anxieties, plans for both Wolfgang and Maria Anna at last seemed to be taking shape, and the Mozarts were discussing which bits of their luggage should go in which direction. And then Wolfgang suddenly changed his mind. He had become infatuated with another young woman.
Aloysia Weber was the daughter of Fridolin Weber, a Court singer in Mannheim who supplemented his lowly salary by prompting at the opera theatre, and by hiring himself out as a music copyist. His four daughters, then aged between fifteen and nineteen, were all gifted musicians, especially the seventeen-year-old Aloysia. Wolfgang first mentioned her in a letter to Salzburg on 17 January 1778, as he prepared to go for a long weekend to Kirchheim-Bolanden with her and her father, to play for the Princess of Orange. ‘She sings most admirably, and has a lovely pure voice,’141 he wrote. So they packed up arias for her, and sonatas and symphonies for him, and set off to earn, they hoped, good money. Maria Anna was left alone in Mannheim.
With everything still closed for official mourning, the city was eerily silent. ‘One hears nothing at all here,’ she wrote on the 24th, ‘it is as quiet as if one were no longer in the world.’142 She seized on kindnesses of young people who occasionally visited her ‘to see how I was getting along without Wolfgang’, and tried to enliven the evenings she was obliged to spend with her host family by getting them to play games: ‘We do needlework until it gets dark, and after supper we play “fire and murder” (which I have taught them).’ She was no doubt happy to receive an immensely lively poem from Wolfgang, clearly in the best of spirits with his new friends. But its central message must have caused her to raise her eyebrows. In between his customary family references to shitting and farting, she would have detected the beginnings of a new plan in her son’s mind:
Die Wahrheit zu gestehen, so möcht ich mit den Leuten
Viel lieber in die Welt hinaus und in die große Weiten,
Als mit der Tac-gesellschaft, die ich vor meiner seh,
So oft ich drauf gedenke, so thut mir der Bauch weh;
Doch muß es noch geschehen, wir müssen noch zusamm –
Der Arsch vom Weber ist mehr werth als der Kopf von Ramm
Und auch von diesem Arsch ein Pfifferling
Ist mir lieber als der Mons: Wendling.
(Indeed I swear ’twould be far better fun
With the Webers around the world to run
Than go with those bores, you know who I mean,
When I think of their faces, I get the spleen.
But I suppose it must be and off we shall toddle,
Though Weber’s arse I prefer to Ramm’s noddle.
A slice of Weber’s arse is a thing
I’d rather have than Monsieur Wendling.)143
Their carefully considered strategy, laboriously agreed through lengthy correspondence between Mannheim and Salzburg, was about to be ditched.
Wolfgang announced his change of heart as soon as he returned from his jolly week away. (They were having such a good time that they spent a few extra days extending their return journey.) He wrote to his father on 4 February 1778, at first describing his experience in Kirchheim-Bolanden in detail, and in the process continuing his praise of Aloysia’s singing and playing. He enumerated everything they
had all performed for the Princess, and complained about the fees they had been paid. Then came the bombshell – and here Wolfgang pulled his mother into the argument (‘Mamma and I have talked the matter over’144). Wendling and Ramm were now considered disreputable types (‘libertines’, with ‘no religion whatever’), and were therefore not trustworthy. As his little poem had implied, it would be far better not to go to Paris at all, but to travel with the Webers to Italy. Wolfgang warmed to his theme: ‘I have become so fond of this unfortunate family that my dearest wish is to make them happy’; and added the supremely tactless miscalculation, ‘[Fridolin Weber] is just like you and has exactly your way of thinking’. He therefore asked his father to write to all their contacts in Verona, Venice and so on, and help him launch Aloysia on the Italian stage. On their way to Italy they would of course stop in Salzburg, when (dragging Nannerl now into the argument) ‘my sister will find a friend and companion in Mlle Weber, for, like my sister in Salzburg, she has a reputation for good behaviour’.
Later that night while Wolfgang was out, Maria Anna added a postscript to his letter, beginning with the wry observation, ‘You will see from this letter that when Wolfgang makes new acquaintances, he immediately wants to give his life and property for them.’ But she was much shaken by her son’s complete abandonment of all they had agreed. She continued:
True, she [Aloysia] sings exceedingly well; still, we must not lose sight of our own interests. I never liked his being in the company of Wendling and Ramm, but I never ventured to raise any objection, nor would he have listened to me.
But as soon as he got to know the Webers, he immediately changed his mind. In short, he prefers other people to me, for I remonstrate with him about this and that, and about things which I do not like; and he objects to this. So you yourself will have to think over what ought to be done. I do not consider his journey to Paris with Wendling at all advisable. I would rather accompany him myself later on. It would not cost so very much in the mail coach. Perhaps you will still get a reply from Herr Grimm. Meanwhile we are not losing anything here. I am writing this quite secretly, while he is at dinner, and I shall close, for I do not want to be caught.
While Wolfgang was writing his bombshell letter, and his mother was adding her anxious postscript, Leopold in Salzburg was composing a letter of his own. Confidently expecting this to be his last before Wolfgang left for Paris, he was nevertheless extremely perturbed about him going without any parental guidance at all, and therefore tried to instil some adult responsibility in his son. Hauling out all their family history to strengthen his arguments, including the children who had died in infancy, and – as in his earlier petition to Archbishop Colloredo – invoking the Almighty, he applied the most appalling pressure:
It must be clear as noonday to you that the future of your old parents and of your good sister who loves you with all her heart, is entirely in your hands. Since you were born, or rather since my marriage it has been very difficult for me to support a wife, seven children, two maids and Mamma’s own mother on my monthly pay . . . and to meet the expenses of childbirths, deaths and illnesses . . . When you were children, I gave up all my time to you in the hope that not only would you be able to provide later on for yourselves, but that also I might enjoy a comfortable old age, be able to give an account to God of the education of my children, be free from all anxiety, devote myself to the welfare of my soul and thus be able to meet my death in peace . . . My dear Wolfgang, . . . I place all my trust and confidence in your filial love. Our future depends on your abundant good sense.145
And in a postscript to Maria Anna, he confessed that he had written his appeal with tears in his eyes, and would not even let Nannerl read it.
These two desperately unfortunate letters crossed on the road between Mannheim and Salzburg. Upon their respective arrival, there was inevitable dismay on both sides. Leopold worked himself into such a state that he could not sleep, and only after two days could he begin to reply. But when he did sit down to write, on 11 February, his floodgates opened. ‘I have read your letter of the 4th with amazement and horror,’146 he began, and continued for over 3,000 words – quite his most monumental letter yet. With the fiercest possible intensity he reminded Wolfgang of the whole purpose of his journey: to get a good appointment so that he might support his mother and sister, and of course his father. He pointed out the alternative endings that Wolfgang might face, as a result of a good or bad choice made at that moment, either earning himself an honest place in history as a famous Kapellmeister, or (with melodramatic flourish), ‘utterly forgotten by the world, captured by some woman, you die bedded on straw in an attic full of starving children’. He listed the girls with whom Wolfgang had become infatuated, including ‘your little romance . . . with my brother’s daughter’. He redoubled his criticisms of his son’s administrative and behavioural hopelessness on the tour so far. He ridiculed the notion that an inexperienced German girl of eighteen could have a chance on the Italian opera stage: ‘Tell me, do you know of any prima donna who, without having first appeared many times in Germany, has walked on to the stage in Italy as a prima donna?’ (In fact, some foreign singers of less than eighteen were doing just that.) If Wolfgang was to hitch his fortunes to those of the impoverished Weber family, the Mozarts would be the object of derision in Salzburg. The only possible course therefore was that Wolfgang should continue on his way to Paris, as planned. (‘Off with you to Paris! And that soon! Aut Caesar, aut nihil!’) He had a few dismissive words for Aloysia Weber (she should take advice from an experienced singer, like the elderly Mannheim tenor Anton Raaff). And finally he returned to the effect that all this had had on him: ‘Think of me as you saw me when you left us, standing beside the carriage in a state of utter wretchedness. Ill as I was, I had been packing for you until two o’clock in the morning, and there I was at the carriage again at six o’clock, seeing to everything for you. Hurt me now, if you can be so cruel!’ Only in his postscript did he remember his wife and daughter, but still managed to find them useful. Nannerl was an emotional tool, Maria Anna a physical one: ‘Nannerl has wept her full share during these last two days’; and, on the cover of the letter, the bluntest of instructions, ‘Mamma is to go to Paris with Wolfgang, so you had better make the arrangements.’
Wolfgang and his mother were naturally devastated by Leopold’s letter. Wolfgang replied very carefully, retracting most of his plans, but maintaining a certain scorched dignity. He answered Leopold’s postscript with one of his own: ‘Tell [Nannerl] she must not cry over every trifle, or I will never go home again.’147 And then, having written his difficult reply (and as so often with the Mozart family in times of stress), he became ill and took to his bed for two days. Maria Anna unquestionably took her son’s side. ‘We are both awfully sorry that our letter horrified you so. On the other hand, your last letter of the 12th distressed us greatly.’ But she continued calmly, ‘Why, everything can be made right again.’148 She agreed to go to Paris with Wolfgang, never once mentioning that in so doing she obviously had to abandon her own great desire to return home. And indeed, in the many exchanges of letters during the four weeks before they did leave, it was Maria Anna who was the steadiest of them all. Throughout this family crisis, Leopold was hysterical, self-pitying, often irrational, melodramatic, verbose and manipulative. Wolfgang was defensive, wounded, a little petulant, but fundamentally guarded now (although he did defiantly continue to praise Aloysia Weber’s musicianship to the skies). Nannerl was virtually silent. She did, however, and with the utmost generosity, send her brother 50 gulden from her own savings, for which Wolfgang thanked her seriously and sweetly – almost operatically in fact (‘Happy is that brother who has such a good sister’149). Maria Anna was calm and practical, never directly expressing her homesickness. She now pinned her hopes on reuniting her family in Paris: ‘I do hope that Wolfgang will make his fortune in Paris quickly, so that you and Nannerl may follow us soon. How delighted I should be to have you both with us, for nothing
could be better.’ But her sad little postscript about her beloved dog revealed her real longings: ‘A kiss for Bimperl, who will by this time have forgotten me and will no longer recognize me.’150
And so Wolfgang and his mother prepared to depart. Leopold rallied and instructed, worrying as ever about every single detail. Maria Anna could not wait for the transition period to be over (‘I shall be delighted to be out of this’151). And Wolfgang found time to write once more to the ‘Bäsle’, releasing the tensions and pressures of the past dreadful weeks in his old familiar mixture of nonsense, fantasy and lavatorial humour. ‘Perhaps you think or are even convinced that I am dead? That I have pegged out? Or hopped a twig? Not at all,’152 he began, and continued: ‘Don’t believe it, I implore you. For believing and shitting are two very different things! How could I be writing such a beautiful hand if I were dead? How could that be possible? I shan’t apologize for my very long silence, for you would never believe me. Yet what is true is true. I have had so many things to do that I had time indeed to think of my little cousin, but not to write, you see.’