by Glover, Jane
Very soon his letter deteriorated into a childish refrain (‘Muck! – Muck! – Ah, muck! – Sweet word! Muck! Chuck!’ and so on); but then recovered as he spun the ‘Bäsle’ a long, hilarious, veritably surreal tale about a shepherd and 11,000 sheep. His head and heart may have been turned by Aloysia Weber, but his passionate friendship with his cousin – a member of the family, but (unlike Nannerl) at a safe remove from Leopold – was still essential to his spiritual equilibrium.
WOLFGANG AND MARIA Anna left Mannheim on 14 March 1778. Wolfgang was distraught at having to tear himself away from his Aloysia and her family. In his first letter home after their arrival in Paris, he described in great detail the ‘farewell’ concert of his music at Cannabich’s house in Mannheim, at which Aloysia had both sung and played the piano, and then the tearful two hours he had spent with the Weber family on the very eve of his departure. Maria Anna’s letter, as usual briefer than her son’s, described more directly the conditions of their journey: ‘We had the most beautiful weather for eight days, bitterly cold in the morning and warm in the afternoon. But during the last two days we were nearly choked by the wind and drowned by the rain, so that we both got soaking wet in the carriage and could scarcely breathe.’153 By the time they arrived in Paris on 23 March they were exhausted, and Maria Anna was probably not in the best of health.
But they were determined to be optimistic about Wolfgang’s prospects. He had been a sensational success in Paris as a child, and the Mozarts still had extremely good and influential contacts there, notably Baron Grimm and his mistress, Madame d’Epinay. There were two concert series to which Wolfgang might contribute; and since Paris had seen his first-ever publications (at the age of seven), he was hopeful that he might also publish some of his latest works. He hurried about the city in his first days, renewing all his old acquaintances and making new ones, and within weeks had established quite a network of support. Family tension eased. Leopold’s letters became altogether more relaxed, approving his family’s presence now in a capital offering so much more opportunity than Mannheim had: ‘Thank God, Nannerl and I are both well, and I am now free from all worry and thoroughly happy, knowing that our excellent friend Baron de Grimm is taking an interest in you and that you are in a place which, if you are industrious, as you are by nature, can give you a reputation throughout the world.’154 Remembering the gifts that Madame d’Epinay had bestowed on Maria Anna when they had last left Paris in 1766, he gaily observed, ‘So my dear wife has seen Paris again, and so have Madame d’Epinay’s red satin gown and fan.’155 He continued to advise his wife and son on every aspect of diet, health and expenditure. But he also reported at length on Salzburg activities, on much music-making for both himself and his daughter (‘Nannerl accompanies . . . like a first-rate Kapellmeister’156), on their respective pupils, and on their various friends in town – exactly the sort of gossip, in fact, that Maria Anna always adored.
But while relationships between father and son were improving, Maria Anna was still very unsettled. By the beginning of April she could report proudly and positively on Wolfgang’s activity (‘Words fail me to tell you how famous and popular our Wolfgang is’157), but she could not conceal her continuing anxieties about the small amount of money they had, and how she was trying to economize ever more. Nor could she hold back her gathering misery at her own circumstances: ‘As for my own life, it is not at all a pleasant one. I sit alone in our room the whole day long as if I were in gaol, and as the room is very dark . . . I cannot see the sun all day long and I don’t even know what the weather is like. With great difficulty I manage to knit a little by the daylight that struggles in.’158 Her depression was no doubt exacerbated by not feeling well – that cold, wet journey had taken its toll – and, on 1 May, in her first letter for three weeks, she confessed that she had been ‘plagued with toothache, sore throat and earache’.159 Her composure had recovered a little, but she was still basically miserable: ‘I don’t get out much, it is true, and the rooms are cold, even when a fire is burning. You just have to get used to it.’ And, worryingly, she asked if somebody from Salzburg could bring her some more black powders (pulvis epilecticus niger – a fever-reducing preparation taken by the Mozart family at the first sign of any malady), as she had ‘almost come to an end of our supply’. Clearly she had been dosing herself for weeks.
Leopold replied a week later. Most of his letter was as usual full of instruction and exhortation to his son, and it was only in the postscript that he finally turned his attention to his wife. He urged her to be bled, and suggested that she try to find their black powders ‘at some chemist’s shop’. And indeed Maria Anna’s next letter, on 14 May, was altogether more cheerful. She was a little calmer about money, because Wolfgang had better prospects, particularly once the slack summer season was over. She had extremely practical plans to halve their outgoings by renting rooms, buying furniture, and doing the cooking herself. Like the rest of Paris she was fascinated by the pregnancy of Marie Antoinette, whom of course she had known as a child in Schönbrunn (‘The Queen is pregnant; this is not yet public property, but there is no doubt about it, and the French are absolutely delighted’160). Her constant thirst for Salzburg news prompted another of her eager questionnaires: ‘How is Frau Adlgasser? Is little Victoria still with her? And how are Barbara Eberlin and Berantzky? Do they still come to our house sometimes? Does Nannerl go to Andretter’s every week as usual? Is young Andretter still in Neu-Otting? I mean since all these changes have taken place in Bavaria? Do Fräulein von Schiedenhofen and Nannerl Kranach still come to shoot?’ Maria Anna was intrigued by how much Paris had changed in the twelve years since their last visit (‘I have a new map of the town, which is quite different from our old one’). For her daughter (‘Here is something for Nannerl’) she was full of news of Paris fashions, describing minutely the jewellery, hairstyles, hats and necklines, and telling her to get herself ‘a pretty walking stick’, as all the women in Paris carried them. By the end of May she was extremely interested in the current political situation (there was the War of Bavarian Succession between Austria and Prussia, and a possible war also between France and England), and she summarized succinctly and intelligently the various relationships between Russia, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark and Prussia. And she was equally lucid about prices, enumerating them for her husband and concluding, ‘Everything is twice as dear as it used to be.’161 But amidst all this excellent detail, she revealed that she was still not well, and furthermore desperately homesick: ‘Wolfgang and I . . . often and often . . . talk about our friends in Salzburg when we sit at supper together in the evenings.’ And Wolfgang’s postscript confirmed their shared depression: ‘I often wonder if life is worth living.’ Mother and son were both truly miserable, but bravely trying to be cheerful.
In Salzburg, however, Leopold and Nannerl were in excellent spirits. Leopold was indulging in distinct Schadenfreude since Colloredo, seeking a new Kapellmeister, had sent messages all over Europe with no result. After he himself had been passed over, he was resigned to observing these manoeuvres from the sidelines, and it amused him that nobody seemed to want the job. His relationship with his new Archbishop had never recovered from that poor start, but he was on good terms with the Archbishop’s sister, who seemed in a position of influence with her brother, and Leopold was fairly confident that she would be useful in getting Wolfgang a better position at Court should he ever want one. And meanwhile, as always, he and Nannerl were continually in the thick of music-making. (Between them, though, they had completely neglected to pay their maid Theresa in the nine months since Maria Anna had left. On 11 June Leopold had to ask ‘what wages Theresa should get’.162 He clearly had no idea.)
In Paris, spring turned to summer, and there were signs of hope. Although Maria Anna and Wolfgang were now borrowing money, Wolfgang had two significant performances in June. His music for his old friend Noverre’s ballet Les Petits Riens, KAnh.1 (299b), was performed at the Opéra on the 11th, and then his ‘Paris’
symphony in D, K297 (300a), was played at the Concert Spirituel on the 15th. The weather was glorious, and Maria Anna claimed to be feeling better. She had been enjoying the company of Anton Raaff, the Mannheim tenor who was also now in Paris. He came to see her every day, called her ‘Mamma’ (he was actually six years older than she), and often sang to her (‘for I am quite in love with his singing’163). Another friend was the horn-player Franz Joseph Heina, whom Leopold had first met in 1763. He and his wife also visited Maria Anna regularly, and on 10 June invited her for lunch and then to visit a picture gallery in the Jardin du Luxembourg. But this day out exhausted her. Although her next letter was animated, intelligent and wide-ranging (it included a carefully considered explanation of lightning conductors), she confessed that on the day after her outing with the Heinas she had been bled, and she ended her letter rather abruptly (‘I must stop, for my arm and eyes are aching’). It was the last letter she ever wrote. A few days after that, according to Wolfgang, she ‘complained of shivering and feverishness, accompanied by diarrhoea and headache’.164 They had of course long since run out of their black powders, and failed to find any more. Maria Anna’s condition deteriorated rapidly; she lost her voice and then her hearing. But she refused to let Wolfgang call a doctor, probably because they could not afford one. Eventually Baron Grimm and Madame d’Epinay, appalled to hear of her plight, sent their own doctor; and Wolfgang was now so anxious about his mother that he stopped composing (‘I could not have written a note’165). By 26 June he was told that she should make her final confession, which she did on the 30th. At 10.21 on the evening of 3 July, with a nurse and Heina and her beloved Wolfgang beside her, Maria Anna died.
Maria Anna Mozart’s lifespan of fifty-eight years has an almost circular shape to it. She was born into a family facing great financial and medical crises, and her childhood was one of bereavement, humiliation and dependence upon the support of others. Her last years too were threaded with melancholy, illness and deprivation, and her end, virtually alone in a strange city, has many hallmarks of genuine tragedy. And yet her life, as she herself would surely have agreed, was in its way glorious. From the most troubled of beginnings she had made a good marriage and found domestic security. She had borne and raised not one but two children of prodigious talent, and through them gained an experience of the world which very few women of her time, of whatever social background, could ever enjoy. She had travelled extensively, lived in many different cities and absorbed their language and their culture. She had moved in the highest circles, meeting a huge roster of people, including the Empress Maria Theresa, France’s King Louis XVI and England’s King George III. After the family’s move to the Tanzmeisterhaus in 1773 she found herself at the respectable hub of Salzburg’s social and musical life, and she enjoyed the company of extremely good friends. And, most important of all, one of her children was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As she attended his performances across Europe and witnessed the astounded admiration that he universally aroused, and probably too as she just listened to him playing at home, the joy and loving pride that she must have felt are unimaginable. Maria Anna was a woman of immense fortitude, loyalty, patience and love, who struggled and suffered probably more than most of her female acquaintance. But in the final analysis, her life was quite singularly blessed.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER MARIA Anna’s death, Wolfgang sat down and wrote two letters. The first was to his father, warning him of ‘sad and distressing news’,166 but by no means telling him the whole truth. He claimed merely that his mother was ‘very ill’, and that, while everything was being done to save her, her ultimate fate was in the hands of God. Astonishingly in the circumstances, he then went on to describe in the greatest detail the rehearsals and performance of his symphony on 18 June, and his prospects at the opera; to report the death of Voltaire; to advise on the wages of the maid Theresa; and to explain his reluctance to accept the post of organist at Versailles. To all intents and purposes this was almost a normal letter. But then, at what was now two o’clock in the morning, he wrote to his good friend in Salzburg, the Abbé Bullinger. In an unbearably moving letter, he told him the whole truth (‘Her life flickered out like a candle’167), and begged Bullinger to prepare Leopold and Nannerl for the shock (‘Watch over my dear father and my dear sister for me’). Later that day, 4 July, Maria Anna was buried in the churchyard of Saint-Eustache, in the presence of Wolfgang and Heina.
Wolfgang’s strategy worked. On 13 July Leopold was writing to Paris, ironically to congratulate his wife on her forthcoming name-day (26 July), when he received Wolfgang’s letter. Both he and Nannerl were knocked sideways. She wept and vomited, and eventually took to her bed, while he too was distraught for some time. Nevertheless he went back to his letter, a typical admixture of grief, desperation and accusation, before breaking off again to greet friends arriving for lunch and one of their shooting parties. Bullinger was among them; and after the rest of the group had left, he stayed behind and confirmed the awful truth. Leopold went back yet again to his letter, and begged Wolfgang to let him know everything about his Maria Anna’s death. Yet in these first moments of unendurable bereavement, he offered no consolation to his son, no sympathy for the terrible ordeal he had witnessed. Rather, he initiated a little seam of blame, holding Wolfgang at least partly responsible for the death of his mother. To greater or lesser degrees, he would shamefully return to this for the rest of his life.
In the following weeks Wolfgang complied with his father’s demands, supplying in the greatest detail repeated accounts of Maria Anna’s final illness. He also then attempted to divert Leopold with other news and narrative. But he could not staunch the flow of recrimination. He himself was certainly in a wretched state of grief and shock and loss (‘I have been dreadfully sad and depressed,’168 he confessed on 20 July). His friends had helped: Heina had made the funeral arrangements, and Baron Grimm and Madame d’Epinay had immediately taken Wolfgang into their house, away from the deathbed apartment. But in truth he probably did feel guilty. He certainly became more overtly, and touchingly, concerned about his sister, and wrote to congratulate her on her name-day (the same, of course, as their mother’s). Without a shred of the familiar, crude sibling banter that had characterized most of his messages to her, this letter was as sweet and tender as anything he ever wrote:
Dearest Sister!
Your name-day has arrived! I know that you, like myself, do not care a lot about words and that you realize that not only today but every day I wish you with all my heart all the happiness you desire – and that too as sincerely as is to be expected from a true brother, who loves his sister.
I am sorry not to be able to send you a present of a musical composition, such as I did a few years ago. But let us hope that the happy future is not far off when a brother and sister, so united and affectionate, will be able to talk to one another and tell one another all their most intimate thoughts and feelings. Meanwhile farewell – and love me, as I do you. I embrace you with all my heart, with all my soul, and ever remain your sincere – your true brother
W. Mozart169
And when, ten days later, he did send her a prelude (which she memorized on the day she received it), he repeated, ‘Remember that you have a brother who loves you with all his heart and will always think of your welfare and happiness.’170
In many ways, the twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang had behaved admirably in these terrible circumstances. He had considered carefully how best to inform his family. With the help of the devoted Heina, he had dealt with the disposal of his mother’s body, attended her funeral, and packed up her possessions, dispatching them to Salzburg. (The only omission, which of course was spotted by Leopold on the arrival of these effects, was the amethyst ring given to Maria Anna by Madame d’Epinay. Wolfgang explained much later that he had removed this from his mother’s body and given it to the nurse who had attended her – presumably in lieu of payment.) But all the professional frustrations that he had been harbouring for some time were exacerbat
ed in his state of scattered bereavement. He was clearly becoming irritated by the indifference of the Parisians, writing, with some astuteness, to Leopold on 31 July, ‘What annoys me most of all is that these stupid Frenchmen seem to think I am still seven years old, because that was my age when they first saw me.’171 He began to fall out with those closest to him, most seriously his greatest supporter, Baron Grimm. And in fact he was also preoccupied with another matter, which could indeed have been distracting him during his mother’s last days. He was once more corresponding with the Webers.
After the death of Maximilian III and the accession of Carl Theodor as Elector of Bavaria, the structure and routine of the Mannheim Court were disrupted. Most of the Court employees were transplanted to Munich, and the musicians had to choose between making this move or staying behind in a centre of depleted activity. Fridolin Weber and Wolfgang were evidently in vigorous correspondence about this throughout the month of June. It would clearly be to everyone’s advantage to go to Munich, but, as Fridolin confessed, he had debts in Mannheim which prevented him from leaving. He therefore appealed for advice. Wolfgang, still besotted with ‘my beloved Mlle Weber’ as he rather thoughtlessly referred to her in a letter to his father, made some earnest but thoroughly impractical suggestions, one of them being that the Webers should all come to Paris where he would take care of them. (At the time he was virtually penniless and living on the kindness of Madame d’Epinay.) In trying to enlist Leopold’s help as well, Wolfgang only made matters worse. The letters from father to son throughout those high-summer months of 1778 are among the most domineering, self-pitying and ultimately distressing they wrote to each other.
And so eventually Wolfgang left Paris on 26 September. For the first time in his life he was truly alone, without any parental presence to consider. Although he inevitably received streams of advice and instruction from his father (‘Take care of yourself! Do not strike up a friendship with anyone on the journey! Trust no one! Keep your medicines in your night-bag, in case you should need them. Look after your baggage when you get in and out of the coach’,172 and so on), he had to make all arrangements and take all decisions entirely for himself. So he dawdled on his long journey home. First he lingered for over a week in Nancy, causing Leopold, who had not heard from him for days, to dread the very sight of poor Bullinger (‘I watch his features with the greatest attention’173) lest some new catastrophe had occurred. He spent three weeks in Strasbourg where he gave two concerts but lost money. He then continued on to Mannheim to stay with the Cannabichs, and had many joyful reunions. Frau Cannabich and he became ‘best and truest friends’,174 and he spent hours in her company: perhaps at last he had found someone to whom he could really bare his soul. But the Webers were no longer there. With Cannabich’s help, Fridolin had sorted out his debts, and both he and Aloysia were now earning good salaries in the newly constituted establishment in Munich. So Wolfgang headed off there, with Leopold continually issuing instructions and recriminations in the background. But if Wolfgang’s main intent was to be reunited with Aloysia, he was planning another reunion too. He wrote to his cousin, the ‘Bäsle’, and asked her to join him in Munich.