by Glover, Jane
But Wolfgang was most interested in Nannerl’s suitors. Especially during and after his own courtship and marriage, he wanted her to find happiness, as he had. Towards the end of 1780, one important admirer of Nannerl’s appeared first in her diary, and then from time to time in correspondence. Franz Armand d’Ippold (or Diepold) was a former military captain who was now director of the Collegium Virgilianum in Salzburg. He was twenty-two years older than Nannerl, and therefore much closer in years to Leopold than to his daughter. He evidently became very involved with Nannerl during the dreadful summer of 1781, and Wolfgang, not wishing to lose his sister as well as his father, begged her to confide in him: ‘I should very much like to know how things are progressing between you and a certain good friend, you know whom I mean. Do write to me about this! Or have I lost your confidence in this matter?’195 And when in September of that year he heard that Nannerl had been ill yet again, he was extremely forthright as to a remedy for her: ‘The best cure for you would be a husband.’196 He went on to name d’Ippold, pointing out that they had no prospects in Salzburg, and therefore encouraging them to come to Vienna, where she too could ‘earn a great deal of money . . . by playing at private concerts and by giving lessons’. (He still had complete confidence in her as a musician.) He continued, ‘before I knew that your affair with d’Ippold was serious, I had something like this in mind for you. Our dear father was the only difficulty.’ But he now suggested that they all came to Vienna, and ‘we could all live happily together again’. He really did seem to want this, for all their sakes.
But it did not happen. For whatever reason, the Captain withdrew from Nannerl’s sights (though not completely from the family, for he was involved in the practicalities of Leopold’s estate after his death). For the moment, Nannerl seemed ever more tethered to her father’s side in Salzburg. Like many as yet unmarried women of her time, she conformed to contemporary ideals of womanhood, sacrificing herself to the needs of others, living a life of piety and modest restraint. Just as Wolfgang had felt trapped in Salzburg after his glittering years of childhood, so too must Nannerl have developed a complex view of her own predicament. Her considerable talent, which had once likewise been paraded across the Courts of Europe, was now all but ignored. Her teaching, her domestic music-making and her occasional forays into slightly wider circles of Salzburg music were all still controlled and ordained by her father, executed at his behest, and ultimately for his delectation and gratification. Other women of musical ability in Salzburg had been encouraged to travel, to develop their gifts in Italy or Vienna; but not she. This highly-strung young woman ‘cried over the merest trifle’, shouted at servants, succumbed to illness when crises occurred, chronicled daily events in a style of deadpan reportage, and kept almost obsessional lists. She had inherited much from Leopold. If from her mother she had also inherited a certain stoic competence when facing hardship, she seems to have lacked Maria Anna’s warmth and compassion. But with her mother dead, and her brother far away, Nannerl probably imagined that she was destined to be at Leopold’s irascible side for the rest of his life. The prospect cannot have been altogether appealing.
And, perhaps most distressing of all, Nannerl realized that she was losing her own best friend, the companion of her childhood, her co-Regent of their ‘Kingdom of Back’, her partner in piano duets which he created for their own delight, her utterly captivating, hilariously mischievous, supremely talented younger brother. For in truth, in Vienna Wolfgang had found his other family.
Mozart’s Other Family
MOZART CAN hardly have believed his luck when, late in 1777, he first met the Weber family in Mannheim. In many respects the four daughters must have resembled the Wider sisters (his ‘pearls’) who had so delighted him in Venice. They were young: Josefa was eighteen, Aloysia seventeen, Constanze fifteen and Sophie fourteen; they were lively, good-looking and warm-hearted. They were also extremely talented.
The girls came from a colourful family. Their parents had been in Mannheim since 1765: Fridolin Weber was employed there as a bass singer at Court, a prompter at the Opera, and as a copyist. His wife Cäcilia (née Stamm), some six years older than Fridolin, had been born in Mannheim, which probably therefore seemed a logical place for them to live, after they had had to leave Fridolin’s home town of Zell rather abruptly. (Fridolin had been charged with embezzlement, as had his own father before him, curiously. Both men were apparently innocent, but such accusations must have made a new start in a different environment rather desirable.) Fridolin’s brother, Franz Anton Weber, meanwhile, having been dismissed from his post as financial councillor and district judge to the Elector of Cologne, set himself up as an impresario of itinerant opera companies. His wife had had a considerable fortune, which he had squandered; and when she died he married a sixteen-year-old singer, Genoveva Brunner. The first child of this union was none other than Carl Maria von Weber, who was to become one of the most progressive composers of the early nineteenth century, and a great virtuoso pianist. And Genoveva herself, younger in years than her nieces by marriage, would in due course become somewhat elliptically entwined with the Mozart family.
Fridolin and Cäcilia Weber in fact had six children, of whom their two sons, born respectively in 1759 and 1769, both died in infancy. But their daughters were all extremely healthy, and would enjoy long and fulfilling lives. They probably received their education at the Congregation of Notre Dame, a Catholic school in Mannheim, where they learned to read and write and to speak French, and received religious instruction. They must also have been taught music and singing by their father, and at least three of them became high-coloratura sopranos with quite exceptional techniques. Like Leopold Mozart, Fridolin Weber was clearly a remarkable teacher, and Wolfgang did not fail to make the comparison. (‘Her father resembles my father, and the whole family resemble the Mozarts,’1 he wrote to Leopold on 4 February 1778). Another similarity was that one of the Weber children was destined at a relatively young age to become the main breadwinner for the family. The most talented, both as a keyboard player and especially as a singer, was Aloysia. From the age of nineteen, any career move of hers dictated the uprooting of the entire family. She and Wolfgang had a lot in common.
Wolfgang fell for Aloysia instantly. Early in 1778, as he prepared for his visit to Princess Caroline of Orange in Kirchheim-Bolanden, in which he would be accompanied by Aloysia and her father, he was captivated by Aloysia’s singing, her musicianship and her prospects of an exciting future:
She sings most excellently my aria written for De Amicis with those horribly difficult passages, and she is to sing it at Kirchheim-Bolanden. She is quite well able to teach herself. She accompanies herself very well and she also plays galanterie quite respectably. What is most fortunate for her at Mannheim is that she has won the praise of all honest people of good will. Even the Elector and the Electress are only too glad to receive her.2
The ‘aria written for De Amicis’ was the extremely tricky ‘Ah, se il crudel’ from his opera Lucio Silla of 1772; and just as Wolfgang had been excited then about the range and virtuosity of Anna De Amicis’s singing, and indeed drawn to the warmth of her friendship through his admiration of her expertise, so did Aloysia entrance him. That her talents extended to superb pianism was a true bonus; and, after extolling Aloysia so fully in his letter, Wolfgang then asked his father to send him ‘as soon as possible . . . the two sonatas for four hands’. Clearly he had found someone other than his sister with whom he could share those intimate musical experiences.
By the time Wolfgang, Aloysia and Fridolin returned from their extremely convivial week in Kirchheim-Bolanden, Wolfgang’s plans had made their dramatic volte-face. Even as he recklessly tried to persuade his father of his scheme to abandon France and travel instead to Italy with the Webers, he was continuing to shower Aloysia with music. On 4 February he wrote, ‘She sings superbly the arias which I wrote for De Amicis, both the bravura aria and “Parto, m’affretto” and “Dalla sponda tenebrosa”.
’3 Three days later, there was more: ‘I have given her . . . the scene I wrote for Madame Duschek . . . and four arias from Il re pastore. I have also promised her to have some arias sent from home.’4 And then, at last, he wrote something especially for her. In his letter to Leopold of 28 February (which included his remarkable credo, ‘I like an aria to fit a singer like a well-made suit of clothes’), he described his new composition.
I have also set to music the aria Non sò d’onde viene etc [K294], . . . for Mlle Weber . . . When it was finished, I said to Mlle Weber, ‘Learn the aria yourself. Sing it as you think it ought to go; then let me hear it and afterwards I will tell you candidly what pleases and what displeases me.’ After a couple of days I went to the Webers and she sang it for me, accompanying herself. I was obliged to confess that she had sung it exactly as I wished and as I should have taught it to her myself. This is now the best aria she has; and it will ensure her success wherever she goes.5
The text for this aria (from Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade) and the manner in which Wolfgang set it to music are the most eloquent expression of his feelings for Aloysia. Wolfgang was already familiar with Johann Christian Bach’s setting, which he admired greatly, but this did not stop him from doing his own: ‘Just because I know Bach’s setting so well and like it so much, and because it is always ringing in my ears, I wished to see whether in spite of all this I could not write an aria totally unlike his. And indeed mine does not resemble his in the very least.’6 The choice of text cannot be insignificant (‘Non sò d’onde viene / Quel tenero affetto’ – I have never before felt such tender affection). And there is something incredibly intimate about Wolfgang’s tender and sensuous setting of these beguiling words. The layout of the text suggests a two-part aria, with a slow section (in which Wolfgang would certainly show off Aloysia’s cantabile singing, about which he had written so enthusiastically to his father) followed by a fast one. At that point it is almost as if a private interchange has become more public, as the singer and the accompaniment jump into more decorous display. But Wolfgang brought back the opening couplet and its slow music, in ever more tender and yet intense representations. And it was here, not in the central fast section, that Aloysia could and did show off her spectacular range, her virtuosity and her control. The aria ends with a quiet orchestral postlude of tranquil joy. ‘Non sò d’onde viene’ can indeed be seen as a veritable turning point in Wolfgang’s composition for the voice. It was not just that he was writing for a classy singer of whom he was fond, for he had done that before. This time he was including his own personality and that too of the aria’s interpreter. And from this point on, all his vocal writing, especially for singers whom he knew, liked and even loved, was of extreme distinction.
The tidal wave of derision, recrimination and command from Leopold in Salzburg had its desired effect. Wolfgang capitulated, abandoned his plan to take Aloysia to Italy, and agreed after all to proceed to Paris. Two days before he and his mother left, the Cannabichs put on a concert in their house of some of Wolfgang’s compositions. The multitalented Aloysia was the star of the show. Not only did she sing again her special aria, now in its newly orchestrated version, but she played one of the solo piano parts in a performance of Wolfgang’s concerto for three pianos, K242. The other two pianists were also teenage girls who had been Wolfgang’s pupils in Mannheim: Rosa Cannabich, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the house, and Therese Pierron, aged fifteen. (Therese was the stepdaughter of Herr Serrarius, the Court attorney in whose house Wolfgang and his mother had been staying rent-free in exchange for Therese’s lessons. Wolfgang referred to her as ‘our house nymph.’7)
Wolfgang was absolutely delighted with this concert, which had been meticulously prepared by the Cannabichs and the by now wholly supportive musicians from the Court orchestra. But he was desolate at having to leave Aloysia and her family. Fridolin, who had done all the copying of music for the concert at no charge, presented Wolfgang with a large supply of music paper and a volume of Molière’s comedies – a touchingly thoughtful present for someone about to go to Paris. He also took Maria Anna aside and told her that her son had been their ‘benefactor’, and that they could never repay his generosity. Aloysia herself, ‘out of the goodness of her heart’, knitted two pairs of mittens ‘as a remembrance and small token of her gratitude’. And on the night before they left, Wolfgang spent two hours at the Webers’ house. ‘They thanked me repeatedly, saying that they only wished they were in a position to show their gratitude; and when I left, they all wept. Forgive me, but my eyes fill with tears when I recall the scene.’8 The bond between Wolfgang and the Webers was thoroughly sealed.
THROUGHOUT WOLFGANG’S CALAMITOUS six-month stay in Paris in 1778, Aloysia was constantly on his mind. Even the relentless chain of failure, tragedy and bereavement could not divert him completely from his longing for her. In maintaining regular correspondence (little of which has actually survived) with her father Fridolin, he was in fact keeping in contact with Aloysia. He even claimed to have written on 3 July, the very day of his mother’s death. Perhaps this was a third letter written immediately after the awful event, along with those to Leopold and to Bullinger, and in it he was confiding his terrible news to the people he loved most. Owing to the customary eccentricities of postal delivery, the Webers did not in fact hear of Maria Anna’s death directly from Wolfgang, but indirectly through the Mannheim social network, some weeks later. By then the rumour was that Maria Anna had died ‘of some contagious disease’, and that perhaps Wolfgang too had perished. As Wolfgang warmly reported to his father, the Webers ‘had all been praying for my soul, and the poor girl [Aloysia] had gone every day to the Capuchin Church to do so. Perhaps you will laugh? But I don’t. I am touched and I cannot help it.’9
Wolfgang wrote to Aloysia herself as well as to her father. He sent yet more music to her, and even instructed her in how she should go about learning it. His advice affords a rare but glorious glimpse into his own commitment to text and its emotional content – in fact to his total theatricality and dramatic integrity. He asked her to work on his ‘Ah, lo previdi’, K272, which he had written the previous year for Josephine Duschek: ‘I advise you to watch the expression marks – to think carefully of the meaning and force of the words – to put yourself in all seriousness into Andromeda’s situation and position – and to imagine that you really are that very person.’10 He begged her to write to him too (‘You have no idea how much pleasure your letters afford me . . . Please do not keep me waiting and do not make me suffer too long’) and ended his letter with unbridled passion: ‘I kiss your hands, I embrace you with all my heart, and am, and ever shall be, your true and sincere friend, WA MOZART.’
Inevitably, the astute Leopold was immediately alert to his son’s infatuation. His exasperation was eventually calmed when he managed to secure Wolfgang the post of Konzertmeister and Court Organist in Salzburg. With that confirmation (as he believed) of Wolfgang’s return, he began to cool his fiery antipathy to Aloysia. ‘As for Mlle Weber,’ he purred on 3 September, ‘you should not think that I would be opposed to this acquaintance . . . You can continue your exchange of letters as hitherto,’11 and he even astonishingly added that he would not try to read these letters. But such magnanimity was short-lived. A week later, on 11 September, Wolfgang wrote his father a long, troubled and indecisive letter, complaining about Baron von Grimm with whom he had now quarrelled, pathetically needing instructions for his journey home (‘I don’t yet know how you want me to travel’), and then asking for his father’s permission to take a detour: ‘I have another request which I trust you will not refuse. If it should happen, though I hope and believe it is not so, that the Webers have not gone to Munich, but are still at Mannheim, I should like to have the pleasure of going there to visit them. I know that this would take me a little out of my way, but it would not be much.’12 Leopold’s reply was predictable: ‘Your idea of going to Mannheim is absolutely impracticable.’13 But when he subsequently heard of the Web
ers’ change of fortune – they had after all transferred to Munich with a considerable salary increase: Aloysia was receiving 1,000 gulden, and Fridolin 600 – he was once more mollified, claiming again to be ‘not at all opposed’ to Wolfgang’s love for Aloysia. But he remained deeply suspicious of the entire Weber family. ‘My dear Wolfgang, I am inclined to think that Herr Weber is a man like most of his type, who make capital out of their poverty and, when they become prosperous, lose their heads completely. He flattered you when he needed you – perhaps he would not even admit now that you had shown her or taught her anything. Those who have been poor generally become very haughty when their circumstances improve.’14 (Leopold could more accurately have been speaking of himself.) Such deep-rooted antagonism towards the Webers was to reappear, dangerously intensified, in future years.
Wolfgang did make his (in fact extremely lengthy) detour to Mannheim, only to discover that it had all been fruitless, for the Webers were no longer there. He did at least spend some time being comforted and cherished by the ever-warm Cannabichs before he headed back towards Munich. And there at last, in the final week of his annus horribilis, he caught up with Aloysia. He arrived in Munich on Christmas Day 1778, and went to stay with the Webers. But, for whatever reason, Aloysia had completely changed her mind about him. The rest of the family witnessed the uncomfortable reunion; and, years later, one of them, Aloysia’s younger sister Constanze, told the story to her second husband, Georg Nissen. In his biography of Mozart, Nissen described the scene:
[The Webers] had to move to Munich due to the change of administration, and there Mozart appeared on his return trip from Paris wearing a red skirt with black buttons, a French custom to mourn the death of his mother. But he discovered that Aloysia had changed her feelings for him. She who had once cried about him pretended not to recognize him when he walked in. Mozart sat down at the keyboard and sang loudly: ‘I’m glad to leave the girl who doesn’t want me.’15