Mozart's Women

by Glover, Jane

  It is not even known how Nannerl was informed of Wolfgang’s death, let alone the extent of her desolate resignation as she accepted the loss of the last member of her immediate family. But when she was approached on behalf of Schlichtegroll, and asked to contribute to an obituary of her brother, she responded with wholehearted generosity and diligence. It was not Schlichtegroll himself who contacted her. He had initially written to Albert von Mölk, a canon and consistorial councillor at the Cathedral in Salzburg, and asked him a series of questions about Wolfgang’s early life. Mölk had known the Mozart family since childhood, and so forwarded his questionnaire to Nannerl in St Gilgen. When she had completed her responses, in a long draft of a letter to which she would subsequently refer as her ‘article’,10 she sent it back to Mölk, assuming he would make a copy of it for Schlichtegroll and return the original to her. But Mölk took it as it was, added a few sentences of his own, and forwarded it directly to Schlichtegroll.

  Overjoyed (or, as he put it rather more blandly, ‘pleasantly surprised’) by the wealth of material from such an important source so close to Mozart, Schlichtegroll immediately wrote back, again through Mölk, with a list of supplementary questions for Nannerl. And, when she received these, Nannerl realized to her horror that her ‘article’ had already been absorbed into the system. (‘I should fairly scold you,’ she wrote to Mölk, ‘that, without writing to me beforehand, you [sent Schlichtegroll] my written article.’) She was now being asked for more specific and personal details of her brother’s childhood: Wolfgang’s favourite playtime activities, the subjects he most liked to learn, and, most startlingly, his ‘faults’. She instinctively shied away from these, claiming loyally that she could ‘only charge him with a single one . . . that he had too soft a heart, and did not know how to handle money’. She then enlisted the assistance of Andreas Schachtner, he whose trumpet had so traumatized Wolfgang as a child (and who indeed made this revelation in his own responses to Schlichtegroll’s questions), and withdrew from the arena. In her communications to Mölk, and therefore to Schlichtegroll and posterity, her comments were thoughtful, generous, honest, fair and extremely touching. And perhaps the compilation of these affectionate memories was for Nannerl at last some kind of cathartic process, whereby she released any family tension from the last few years. The prevailing tone of them is one of loving pride, just as it had been of her childhood years.

  It was the few sentences that Mölk himself added to Nannerl’s first ‘article’ that caused the problems. First, he clarified the identity of his star witness, Nannerl, and praised her own musical abilities, especially as a teacher (‘even to the present, one can single out the students of Nannette Mozart from all the others by the care, precision and correct fingering in their playing’). Next, he described all the Mozart family as good-looking: Leopold and Maria Anna were ‘the handsomest couple in Salzburg’, and Nannerl herself ‘a regular beauty’, though young Wolfgang had been ‘small, frail, pale in complexion, and completely lacking in all pretensions of face and form’. And then came the damage.

  Apart from his music he was and remained almost always a child; and this is a major trait on the dark side of his character; he would always have need of a father, a mother, or some other supervisor; he was unable to handle money, married a girl not suited for him against the will of his father, and that’s why there was such domestic disorder when he died and afterwards.

  Mercifully, Schlichtegroll, in his largely free interpretation of Mölk’s opinions, did not include the lines about Constanze and her unsuitability as a wife. (She was after all still very much alive, and Schlichtegroll did respect her sensibilities.) But he did paraphrase the rest of Mölk’s statement, with the result that the following paragraph appeared in his Nekrolog article:

  Just as this rare individual early became a man in his art, so on the other hand he remained in virtually all other respects – this must in all impartiality be said of him – eternally a child. He never learned to discipline himself, and he had no feeling for domestic order, for the proper use of money, for moderation and the judicious choice of pleasures. He was constantly in need of a father figure, a guardian, who would look after the mundane matters attendant to his well-being, for his own spirit was constantly preoccupied with a host of completely different ideas and thus lost all sensibility for other serious considerations. His father was very much aware of this weakness, this lack of self-discipline, in him and, for this reason, provided the son with his mother as travelling companion to Paris when his own duties chained him to Salzburg.11

  Mölk, and therefore Schlichtegroll, were almost certainly reflecting general Salzburg prejudice (the Gospel according to Leopold?). So, in 1792, there was still residual animosity toward the troublesome black sheep of Colloredo’s court, who had abandoned his father and sister and chosen to live his life altogether elsewhere. When Schlichtegroll’s obituary was published in 1793, Constanze would have read these hurtful and derogatory words, appearing as they did in tandem with material that can only have come from Nannerl, and she would have drawn her own defensive conclusions. In the following year, 1794, Schlichtegroll’s Nekrolog was reprinted in Graz, and Constanze exercised a monumental gesture of disdain, of which Wolfgang himself would surely have been proud. She bought up all 600 copies of the work, and destroyed them.

  ON 22 AUGUST 1793, Cäcilia Weber died at the age of sixty-six. Like Maria Anna Mozart, her life been fraught with difficulty, but greatly enriched by the talents of her children. She had endured the early loss of her two sons, and then a long widowhood, during which she had presumably been supported by the activities of her lively and gifted daughters. But she had certainly earned her keep: throughout the 1780s, when Aloysia and Constanze were continually producing children, she was always on hand as a practical, nursing grandmother (a pleasure, sadly, that Maria Anna Mozart never enjoyed); and she was involved in every illness or crisis (Constanze’s bereavement especially) of all her family. She must however have gained enormous pleasure from their successes, above all those of the dazzling Aloysia, whose profile in Vienna and beyond in the 1780s and 1790s was as high as any; and she was close to all three of her gifted sons-in-law.

  For Cäcilia Weber’s daughters, her passing was truly the end of an era, and most especially for Sophie, who had taken care of their mother after all her sisters had married and left home. And in the following years there were more life-changing events for the Weber sisters. Aloysia separated from Joseph Lange in 1795; Josefa’s husband, Franz Hofer, died in June 1796. For a period, all four sisters were effectively single again. Josefa remained a member of Schikaneder’s company until well into the new century, and in addition to her numerous performances as the Queen of the Night, she trespassed into Aloysia’s territory, singing the roles of Donna Anna (or Donna Laura, as she appeared in Don Juan, the German-language version of Don Giovanni), Fiordiligi (or Leonora, in So machen sie’s alle), Constanze in Die Entführung, and Madame Herz in Der Schauspieldirektor. She was often partnered by a young singer-actor, Friedrich Sebastian Mayer. He sang Sarastro to her Queen of the Night, and was also the Pasha Selim to her Constanze in Die Entführung; and at the end of 1797 she married him. (He was fourteen years younger than she.) Their careers continued in parallel for the rest of their singing lives, though inevitably his lasted longer – and was somewhat enriched in 1805 when he created the role of Pizarro in Beethoven’s Fidelio.

  Constanze meanwhile continued her relationship with the city of Prague, with its supportive musicians, and of course with the Duscheks and Niemetschek, who between them were taking care of Carl and his education. In February 1794 she and Carl both attended a memorial concert for Wolfgang in Prague. Josefa Duschek sang at the concert, and also spoke warmly and passionately about all the Mozarts. The Prague Neue Zeitung, as ever sympathetic to Constanze and her situation, reported that ‘Mozart’s widow and son both wept tears of grief at their loss, and of gratitude towards a noble nation.’12 There had been some putative scheme fo
r the ten-year-old Carl to appear in the Salieri–Da Ponte opera Axur, as a young boy offered up for sacrifice. But Constanze vetoed this, anxious to keep her son out of a limelight intensified by his famous name. This change of plan, too, was reported with understanding by the Prague Neue Zeitung, which reiterated its support for Constanze (‘who is full of respect and gratitude towards the Prague public’), claiming to have leapt to her defence lest she be accused of ‘a capriciousness of which she is entirely innocent.’13

  But however anxious Constanze was at this stage to keep her children out of the performing arena, she herself began to contemplate her own return to it. And it is likely that her sisters encouraged her. As Aloysia became increasingly estranged from Joseph Lange in the mid-1790s, she devoted more time to Constanze and her cause. In December 1794 Constanze organized a special concert performance of La clemenza di Tito in Vienna, and Aloysia sang the role of Sesto. All the musicians and singers performed without fee, and the takings went to Constanze and her children. The success of this event encouraged Constanze to mount a repeat performance in the following March, with a somewhat expanded programme, for Wolfgang’s dramatic D minor piano concerto (K466) was played, with one Ludwig van Beethoven as the soloist. Fortified by the warmth and the rewards of all these ventures, in both Prague and Vienna, Constanze planned a concert tour of Germany in the autumn of 1795, for herself and Aloysia, and a pianist, Anton Eberl. The package was extremely attractive to audiences. Nostalgic enthusiasm for Mozart’s music was growing fast in Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg, Linz and Graz. (Salzburg was never on the itinerary.) That it was to be performed by his widow and her sister, who happened to be one of the greatest singers of her day, was irresistible. The concerts were well received, and brought in good sums of money.

  In her time on the road, Constanze’s organizational and entrepreneurial skills developed considerably. She parted company for a while from Aloysia, and peeled off to visit King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. He was anxious to help Mozart’s widow as much as possible: he had already bought a number of scores, and was now to take possession of a special copy of the Requiem. Constanze delivered it herself, and also managed to get permission from His Majesty to mount a performance of La clemenza di Tito in Berlin. It is tempting to imagine that, had he lived, even that entrepreneur par excellence, Leopold Mozart, might have applauded her industry.

  On their return from the concert tour, both sisters experienced some domestic upheaval. Constanze finally moved out of the apartment in Rauhensteingasse, where Wolfgang had died, and settled briefly in Krugerstrasse. In fact in the next four years, quite apart from her new travelling activities, she moved house twice more, in a state of domestic restlessness reminiscent of the early days of her marriage. Aloysia had an even greater uprooting. Perhaps anxious not to be in the same environment as her now estranged husband, she accepted a contract at the Schröder’schen Theater in Hamburg, where she had performed with Constanze on their tour. Two years later, in 1798, she moved on to Amsterdam, and joined the German Opera company there; and in the early years of the nineteenth century she had contracts also in Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich, where she was to settle for six years. So for a time she and Constanze went their separate ways. But Aloysia had unquestionably played her part at a crucial time for Constanze. In donating her time and her gifts to her sister, she had helped first to stabilize and then to boost Constanze’s finances, and therefore her morale. By the time Aloysia went to Hamburg, Constanze had the confidence to continue on her own. She returned periodically to Prague, and during her visit in 1797 she was actually in such a strong financial position that she could lend Josefa Duschek 3,500 florins, an enormous sum of money, for the mortgage on the Duscheks’ country villa. She was also becoming increasingly aware of the precocious talents of her younger son Franz Xavier, now six years old and being schooled in Prague along with his older brother. Contrary to her former determination to keep her children away from the public gaze, she let him take part in one of her concerts, singing Papageno’s ingenuous ‘Der Vogelfänger bin ich, ja’ from Die Zauberflöte, to piano accompaniment.

  But it was not just the concert tours that were beginning to bring in money for Constanze and her sons. In the mid-1790s she had also begun to realize the assets of the truly priceless legacy that her poor, intestate husband had left her, his music. In 1795, for instance, the piano score of Idomeneo was published, and several newspapers carried announcements inviting customers to subscribe to it, either through Constanze herself in Vienna, or, in another indication of supportive solidarity, through Josefa Duschek in Prague. With an enticing little marketing flourish, the advertisements made a special offer of eleven scores for the price of ten: Constanze was clearly beginning to feel confident in her commercial manoeuvres.14 While in Leipzig with Aloysia, she had entered into dealings with the large publishing firm of Breitkopf and Härtel, possibly to publish the complete Mozart oeuvre. In the next few years, negotiations with them would become lengthy and tortuous, and she was going to need a cool head. But here again, Constanze had found extremely good support. Two men in particular helped to guide her hand, one an old friend, the other a new one.

  The Abbé Maximilian Stadler (no relation of the Mozarts’ clarinettist friend Anton) was a Benedictine priest and keen music-lover, who had known Wolfgang and Constanze from the early days of their courtship in Vienna, and had been at the periphery of their chamber music circle in the mid-1780s. In 1784 he had moved out of the capital, holding posts successively in the brand-new, spectacular monastery at Melk, and then in Lilienfield, Kremsmunster and Linz. In 1796, at the age of forty-eight, he returned to live in Vienna, and renewed his friendship with Constanze. She asked him to help her organize Wolfgang’s autograph fragments and sketches, and as the Abbé immersed himself in these precious manuscripts, he attempted to put everything in order and prepare a catalogue. In due course Stadler was joined by a Danish diplomat, who lodged in the building in Judengasse where Constanze now lived. This was Georg Nikolaus Nissen.

  Nissen was a year older than Constanze: she was by now thirty-five, he thirty-six. Born in Haderslev in South Jutland in 1761, he had worked as postmaster in Copenhagen before joining the Danish envoy to Regensburg. From there he was posted to Vienna as First Secretary at the Danish delegation, where his diplomatic skills as a calm, stable negotiator were invaluable in turbulent Napoleonic times. (Unlike Austria, Denmark sided with France.) If it was pure chance that brought Nissen to reside in the same building as Constanze, it cannot have been a continuing accident that they shared both of their next two addresses too. Like Wolfgang, Georg Nissen began as Constanze’s lodger, became a good and close friend, and ended up as her husband. But, unlike Wolfgang, Nissen’s progress to the altar was altogether very cautious.

  It really was now a matter of some urgency for Constanze to get a complete edition of Wolfgang’s music published. Interest in him was again on the rise, as the long-awaited biography by Franz Xavier Niemetschek at last appeared in 1798. In the six years since Wolfgang’s death, Neimetschek had collected opinions, anecdotes and indeed documents from many sources, including Constanze. He had also read Schlichtegroll’s article in the 1791 Nekrolog, and plundered its information on Wolfgang’s early life in Salzburg. His Leben des k.k. Kappelmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart was a generous portrait of his subject. It glossed vaguely over Wolfgang’s faults (his poor handling of money and his tendency to trust people too easily), suggesting rather that his more difficult circumstances were simply due to bad luck. Constanze was paraded as a model wife, supportive and loving, who made her husband very happy, and who paid off his small debts after his death by mounting concerts in his memory. It was in this biography that many personal details first appeared before the wider public, including most dramatically the story of the commissioning of the Requiem, complete with its becloaked messenger.

  Constanze was delighted with Niemetschek’s book, not only for its glowing portrait of her marriage, but for the fascination with Wo
lfgang’s music that such a sympathetic biography now generated. And, sure enough, some of this music was beginning to appear in print. In the pre-copyright era, any person who obtained any score, by any composer, from any source, could publish it; and pirated copies of music by Mozart were now appearing, as Constanze herself complained to Niemetschek. Even more damaging were the cases of other people’s works being published under Mozart’s name (for this would surely guarantee decent sales), and Constanze found herself accused of having appropriated these other pieces in order to make financial gains from them. Even her former colleague Anton Eberl (the pianist who had accompanied her and Aloysia on their tour in 1795) claimed in newspapers in Hamburg and Leipzig that three of his compositions had appeared as works by Mozart; and the editor of the Leipzig paper then begged the question by commenting that ‘Mozart’s widow has so little respect for the ashes of her husband that she willingly participates in illegal activities.’15 All this was of course preposterous: Constanze would never even have contemplated gathering up material by inferior musicians when she had so much superlative music in her possession. It was certainly time to deal with the pirates.