by Glover, Jane
The ‘Bäsle’ did not disappoint Wolfgang, but Aloysia did. She was utterly changed towards him, appearing cool and condescending, and he was devastated. While he managed to maintain an air of defiant nonchalance in her presence, his letters home do reveal his distress: ‘I really cannot write, my heart is too full of tears.’175 Aloysia’s rejection of him was the last straw. He was already suffering from his bereavement (and all the concomitant trauma of dealing with it on his own); from his failure in Paris, and his ignominious departure from it, having finally also offended those who had most helped him; from the build-up of rage and emotional pressure from his father; and from the humiliation of his only visible future prospect, a lowly job in a place he had convinced himself he loathed. Repeatedly he expressed his contempt for the Salzburg musicians, whom he considered to be slovenly, dissolute and, as he wrote damningly to Bullinger, ‘rich in what is useless and superfluous, but very poor in what is necessary, and absolutely destitute of what is indispensable’.176 He had certainly worked himself into a fierce state of negative prejudice. After his glittering childhood in the grandest circles in Europe, was he reduced to this? Truly Wolfgang was at an emotional nadir.
His one saviour, as ever, was his cousin. The ‘Bäsle’ cheered him up, to the extent that by the beginning of 1779 they wrote jointly to Leopold suggesting that she came back to Salzburg with Wolfgang. (He certainly wanted an ally as he re-entered the city as some sort of disgraced renegade.) Leopold grudgingly offered a welcome to his niece – anything to bring Wolfgang home – and issued final instructions for the last leg of the journey. Wolfgang was back in Salzburg, a changed man, by the middle of January. Through the good offices of Leopold’s friends at Court (he did actually have some), there was indeed a job waiting for him. And although the post of Court organist with some orchestral duties was far below the status he had been seeking, it really was necessary that he take it, and start collecting a salary. On top of everything else, the journey with Maria Anna to Germany and France had been a financial disaster. A period at home, where of course Leopold could keep an eye on his prodigal son, was essential. His appointment was confirmed on 17 January 1779, and Wolfgang was to remain in Salzburg for nearly two years.
LITTLE IS KNOWN about the reunion of the broken family, of their adjustment to life in the Tanzmeisterhaus without Maria Anna, of what recrimination and resentment hovered above or below the surface of reconciliation. The neutral presence of the ‘Bäsle’ must have eased the situation. For all that Leopold fundamentally disapproved of her influence on Wolfgang, she was a close member of the family, and could spend time with both her cousins. After she had returned to Augsburg, Wolfgang wrote her another of his nonsense letters of zany poetry and sexual innuendo (‘one has the purse and the other the gold’177 again), and, almost a year later, in a slightly calmer letter, he referred to her stay with them, and to the activities she had shared with him and Nannerl. She was probably good for both her cousins.
Certainly the relationship between brother and sister seems to have been restored. Nannerl’s diaries, still fundamentally detached chronicles of daily events, survive from much of 1779, and again were considerably enlivened by additions from her brother. She was probably delighted with his annotations (she certainly did nothing to stop him making them), for she retrieved the jokey, sibling relationship of their childhood. At first Wolfgang imitated her style, listing their guests and reporting the weather. But, as so often in his letters to her and to others, he gradually distorted these accounts. On 20 April 1779, for instance, he improvised poetically on the weather conditions: ‘The sun went to sleep in a sack – at 10 o’clock it rained, with a pleasant stench; – odour; – the clouds lost themselves, the moon allowed itself to be seen, and a fart allowed itself to be heard, a promise of good weather tomorrow.’178
One entry, however, is eloquent of Wolfgang’s pervading mood in these long Salzburg months. On 27 May 1780 he punctuated every thought and itemization of their day with the expression ‘or something like that’: ‘At half past seven I went to Mass, or something like that, then was at the Lodronpalais, or something like that . . . played cards at Countess Wicka’s, or something like that.’179 Here the banality of his contributions reflects the banality of a restrained and repetitive existence in Salzburg. Although he could take some refuge in his composing (he produced symphonies, concertos and some church music in these years), the very fact that even these activities were restricted was a source of the utmost frustration to him. After over a year of it, Wolfgang was almost screaming with claustrophobia.
One positively enjoyable development was the arrival of theatre troupes. Colloredo had opened a public theatre in Salzburg in 1775, and it was situated directly across the square from the Tanzmeisterhaus. Travelling companies visited regularly, performing plays, operettas, ballets and melodramas. One such company, led by Johann Böhm, had already often appeared at the Court theatres in Vienna. They became well acquainted with the Mozart family, who entertained them often at the Tanzmeisterhaus. In the winter of 1780–81 another troupe arrived, led by Emanuel Schikaneder. He and Wolfgang struck up a deep friendship, which was to become the basis for artistic collaboration in the future. But not only was this daily proximity of intense theatrical activity some kind of training ground for Wolfgang; the very presence of these companies enlivened the winters for Nannerl too, who kept lists of the plays she had seen and the artistes she had entertained. When the companies left in the springtime, Salzburg must have seemed a much duller place again.
In the autumn of 1780 Nannerl was very ill with what seems to have been a severe bronchial infection. Her father nursed her faithfully, as he had done when she was a child, supervising every meal and every form of medication with even more determination and intensity. By the time she had fully recovered, Wolfgang had left Salzburg. He had obtained six weeks’ leave from the Archbishop to fulfil a commission for the opera Idomeneo, re di Creta, K366, in Munich. The librettist, Giambattista Varesco, was also Salzburg-based, and the two of them had worked on the structure of the opera during the summer months. Wolfgang left on 5 November 1780, waved off by his father and his new friend Schikaneder.
This major commission from the Elector of Bavaria, for an opera to be performed by musicians and singers whom Wolfgang had got to know so well in Mannheim before they were transplanted to Munich, was an enormous piece of good news. After nearly two years of frustration and boredom, he felt his spirits soar as he escaped his loathed employer and returned to operatic work among people he loved. Idomeneo was to be played by the best orchestra in Europe, which no doubt accounts for the brilliance of its orchestral writing. Wolfgang corresponded vigorously as usual with his father, who acted as an intermediary between him and Varesco in Salzburg, and was in fact extremely helpful and knowledgeable in the musical advice that he offered. Nannerl too was occasionally involved, as for instance when an intelligent and practical act on her part facilitated a necessary speedy decision, as Leopold proudly reported to Wolfgang: ‘As your letter arrived while I was out, your sister read it, looked up the passage in Metastasio, and sent the letter and the book after me to Varesco’s.’180
Leopold and Nannerl were both planning to travel to Munich for the premiere of Idomeneo. Leopold was particularly excited about hearing the orchestra. (‘You can imagine that I am looking forward with childish delight to hearing that excellent orchestra.’181) But his old autocratic habits died hard. At first he seemed to want to slip back into his customary dictatorial role in his letters, issuing formidable instructions on every possible non-musical topic, and even applying his emotional thumb-screws again. He complained about his own health, and Nannerl’s; he described his melancholy on the eve of his wedding anniversary; and, worst of all, he referred to Maria Anna’s death again, implying that he could have saved her life if he had been there. And Wolfgang was still potentially vulnerable, with his heavy workload and the knowledge that he must make a success of the opera. (He did even seem to have a sort
of composer’s block, most rarely for him, though eventually he came triumphantly through it.) But he was stronger about dealing with pressure from his father. ‘Pray do not write any more melancholy letters to me,’ he wrote, ‘for I really need at the moment a cheerful spirit, a clear head and an inclination to work, and one cannot have these when one is sad at heart.’182 And, as the time of the premiere approached, and Leopold was still giving him trouble, he was increasingly firm in dealing with him: ‘Join me in Munich soon – and hear my opera – and then tell me whether it is wrong of me to be sad when I think of Salzburg!’183
Wolfgang was in fact extremely well sustained by his old Mannheim circle in Munich. The elderly tenor Anton Raaff, who had been so good to Maria Anna in Paris, was struggling a little with the title role. The female leads were taken by two members of the Wendling family: Ilia by Dorotea, wife of Wolfgang’s flute-playing friend Johann Baptist, and Elettra by Elisabeth Augusta, wife of Johann Baptist’s brother Franz Anton. And the fine orchestra was led by Christian Cannabich, whose whole family were hugely supportive to their young friend. Wolfgang reported to Leopold on 1 December 1780: ‘The Cannabichs and all who frequent their house are really true friends of mine. When I walked home with Cannabich to his house after the rehearsal . . . Madame Cannabich came out to meet us and embraced me, delighted that the rehearsal had gone off so well . . . The good lady – a true friend of mine – who had been alone in the house with her sick daughter Rosa, had been absorbed in a thousand anxieties on my account.’184
BACK IN SALZBURG, Nannerl was recovering from her debilitating illness and beginning to go out again. On 30 November 1780, at Wolfgang’s request, she sent him a list of all the plays presented by Schikaneder’s company since he had left, and described her own attendance – her first outing since taking to her sickbed – at a completely disastrous performance of Uezel’s Rache für Rache. (It was four hours long, and dismal in execution; the Archbishop left before the end, and Schikaneder was roundly booed.) But Nannerl was looking forward inordinately to her first journey out of Salzburg since attending the premiere of La finta giardiniera nearly five years earlier, so much so that she was rather cavalier about the final illness of the Empress Maria Theresa, no less. ‘You probably know already that the Empress is so ill that at any moment she may play us a pretty prank,’ her letter continued. ‘If she dies now, your opera may still be performed; but if she dies later, my whole pleasure may be spoiled.’185 In fact Maria Theresa had obligingly died the previous day, and Nannerl’s next concerns were with her mourning clothes. A very expensive black dress was made (which Leopold assumed Wolfgang would pay for, since he was the one member of the family earning well at the time). She was also, as always, greatly concerned about her hair, for the Mozarts were once more having their joint portrait painted. On 30 December she wrote to her brother: ‘I am writing to you with an erection on my head and I am very much afraid of burning my hair. The reason why the Mölks’ maid has dressed my hair is that tomorrow for the first time I am sitting for the painter.’186 She must also have been brushing up her keyboard skills again, for she too was going to perform while in Munich. Wolfgang had sent her some teasing cajolement back in November: ‘My sister must not be lazy, but practise hard, for people are already looking forward to hearing her play.’187
Leopold and Nannerl arrived in Munich on 26 January 1781. On the following day, Wolfgang’s birthday, there was the dress rehearsal of Idomeneo, and the premiere took place on the 29th. Other friends had come from Salzburg too – the Barisanis and the Robinigs, though not in the end Nannerl’s great friend Katherl Gilowsky, much as she had wanted to come. There must have been real family celebration at Wolfgang’s triumph again at the Court of Bavaria. They all stayed throughout the Carnival season which Nannerl had so much enjoyed on her previous visit, and she joined in some of the music-making, as planned. And after the Carnival was over the three Mozarts went to Augsburg where Wolfgang and Nannerl played together. For Nannerl this must have been an incredibly precious time. She had recovered some of the limelight of her childhood, performing again with her brilliant brother in the most illustrious of company, and there was a moment of real family harmony after the horrific tensions of the previous years. But it was only a moment. Both Leopold and Wolfgang had been granted leave from Salzburg, and both had outstayed it by considerable periods. Archbishop Colloredo had moved his household to Vienna, partly out of deference to the death of Maria Theresa and the full accession of her son Joseph II, and partly also because his own father Prince Rudolph Joseph was extremely ill. He had taken much of his Court with him, and was expecting some obedience now from the troublesome, truant Mozarts. When the family arrived back in Munich from Augsburg, there were stern orders awaiting them. Wolfgang went swiftly to join his employer in Vienna. Leopold, with Nannerl, equally swiftly returned to Salzburg to resume his own duties.
Upon his arrival in Vienna Wolfgang was immediately put to work as a lowly member of the Archbishop’s household. Idomeneo still rang in his ears, as a little postscript in a letter home, on 4 April 1781, surely demonstrates. ‘My compliments to all – all – all,’188 he wrote, in a direct quotation of the repeated ‘tutto, tutto, tutto’ in the chorus ‘Placido è il mar’. After his triumphant success he deeply resented his Cinderella status, so eloquently denoted in the dining arrangements where, as he reported with disgust, he had to sit ‘above the cooks but below the valets’.189 This was a humiliating anticlimax to Munich, and over the next three months his anger and frustration simmered, seethed and eventually exploded. He had a series of insolent meetings with the Archbishop or his representatives, in which first voices and then fists too were raised. On 8 June 1781, Wolfgang was literally thrown down the stairs of Colloredo’s Viennese residence and dismissed for ever from his service, ‘with a kick on the arse, by order of our worthy Prince Archbishop’,190 as Wolfgang reported to his father the following day.
Tensions in Salzburg must have been unbearable as these events unfolded in Vienna. It was Paris all over again, except that now the future of the whole Mozart family was threatened. Leopold could not bring himself to sympathize, let alone side with his son; far too much was at stake. He received Wolfgang’s lengthy descriptions of conflict (‘I hate the Archbishop to madness’191) and his verbatim reports of exchanged insults, with total horror, and responded with what must have been increasingly hysterical explosions of his own. None of Leopold’s letters from these months survives. But their content can be easily surmised from the intensity of Wolfgang’s detailed replies. (‘I do not know how to begin this letter, dearest father, for I have not yet recovered from my astonishment and shall never be able to do so, if you continue to think and write as you do.’192) When Wolfgang, not at all unreasonably, suggested to his father that they all cut their losses and come to Vienna, which offered so much opportunity for all three of them to do well, Nannerl was absolutely considered part of the package too. But Leopold simply could not countenance such an upheaval. For all the shame that Wolfgang’s dismissal had brought upon the family, he and Nannerl would not leave the security of their life at the Tanzmeisterhaus. Nannerl herself might have been tempted by the notion – especially when her brother sent her ribbons for her dresses, and offered to find anything else she might want – but she clearly had no say in the matter.
This was the real turning point in the lives of all the Mozarts. Wolfgang’s amputation from the Salzburg Court effectively meant breaking away also from his tyrannical father. They continued to correspond regularly, but the umbilical cord was at last severed, and Wolfgang really did achieve independence in Vienna, building a new life and a new family all of his own. And to an extent Nannerl began to fade from the picture. Her life as a first-class performer had effectively ended with those evenings in Augsburg. She and her brother corresponded sparingly, though always with affection, and at first he was eager for her to send him some form of her diaries which he knew so well: ‘You are the living chronicle of Salzburg, for you
write down every single thing that occurs.’193 He continued to admire and encourage her playing. When, in 1783 for instance, he heard that she was working on some sonatas by Clementi (whom he dismissed as a charlatan), he wrote, ‘I implore my sister not to practise these passages too much, so that she may not spoil her quiet, even touch, and that her hand may not lose its natural lightness, flexibility and smooth rapidity.’194 He really did appreciate her talent.