Mozart: The Man Revealed

by John Suchet

  There is no doubt it was antipathy towards Constanze, and resentment of her brother’s breaking away from their father over the question of marriage, that caused the break between brother and sister.

  Nannerl retained that antipathy to the end. In her will she left six items of jewellery that had come down in the family for generations, and should rightly have gone to Constanze, to her son. In an echo of her father’s refusal to give Constanze a parting gift at the end of the visit to Salzburg, she could not bring herself to leave them to Constanze in her will, let alone give them to her as a gift.†

  The two Mozart children, one an incomparable musical genius, the other an extremely talented musician, who had toured Europe together as children, confiding in each other, sharing, laughing, crying together, never healed their rift.

  As we have seen, 1787 was a triumphant year for Mozart musically, but in his personal life it seemed to have been one problem after another. His own health was causing him difficulties again. He complained of rheumatic pains, headaches and toothache. Then the move to the suburbs, and the death of his father. In swift succession he also lost two friends.

  “It is the mark of true genius that when external circumstances are bleak, creativity may not only continue, but soar.”

  For Constanze, too, life was not easy. In the autumn of the previous year she gave birth again, but the baby boy had lived for only one month. She became pregnant again quickly, giving birth at the very end of the year. Thus while Mozart was worried about his own health, organising a move to the suburbs, then dealing with his father’s death – not to mention composing – Constanze’s pregnancy was progressing.

  It would be the couple’s fourth baby. Only one child had lived beyond two months. Karl Thomas was now three years of age, a toddler of boundless energy whose father worked day and often night, and whose mother was increasingly weighed down by yet another pregnancy. The fate of this new child must have been constantly on their mind. Would they lose this one?

  A daughter was born to the Mozarts on 27 December 1787. After three sons there must have been joy and renewed hope that a daughter had been born. Why else would they have adorned her with no fewer than six names – Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friedericke Maria Anna, the last two after Mozart’s mother?

  Mozart decided the family should move yet again – their third move in little over a year – this time further out of the city, to a lodging that had a garden. Theresia Constanzia would have the best start in life that her parents could give her.

  Less than two weeks after the move, Theresia died of an intestinal disorder, bringing more sadness to the family. She had lived just six months.

  I believe it is the mark of true genius that when external circumstances are bleak, creativity may not only continue, but soar. In a new lodging, mourning the death of a daughter, even describing himself as being frequently beset by black thoughts, Mozart experienced an extraordinary burst of creativity.

  In a few short summer months he composed several chamber pieces, as well as his greatest symphonies. These were Nos. 39–41 (K. 543, 550 and 551). These symphonies were not commissioned, which meant that no one would pay him for them, and there was therefore no financial incentive.

  Yet they are monumental works, four movements each, complex and intense. The last of them, No. 41, was given the name ‘Jupiter’, not by the composer, but probably by an impresario. It is not known why for certain, but it is likely the impresario recognised it as something not of this world.

  The final movement of the ‘Jupiter’ builds to a five-part fugue, which is the most complex passage of symphonic writing Mozart ever created. But to describe it like that, reducing it to musical form, is to lose the sheer intensity of it. I always sense an air of despair in it, as if Mozart was somehow in a hurry, sensing this might be his last word on the symphonic form. As indeed it would prove to be, though of course he could not have known that.

  There was a practical reason for Mozart turning to the symphonic form at this particular moment in his life. The novelty, for Viennese audiences, of coming to see Mozart perform his own piano concertos had worn thin, and so the subscription concerts, which had proved so successful and lucrative for him, had dwindled and then all but ceased.

  His Piano Concerto No. 25 in C (K. 503), which was composed in 1786, was the last concerto he had written to perform at a subscription concert. It was therefore natural that he would turn to another form, namely the symphony.

  It was a risk, not least because Austria was now at war with Turkey. It was common practice for the aristocracy to help finance their country’s wars. Attending concerts was now considerably lower down on their list of priorities than it would normally be.

  There was also the fact that an orchestral concert was expensive to stage, and it lacked the allure of virtuosity at the keyboard. In fact these three symphonies did not reverse Mozart’s fortunes. Far from it. It is believed he never heard the ‘Jupiter’ – indisputably his greatest symphony – performed in his lifetime.

  We are left, then, to marvel at the genius that could compose three such great and enduring works, with unhappiness around him and his own mood decidedly dark, for little reason other than the creative impulse that demanded they be written.

  We know for certain that Mozart was not earning good money, because round about this time he began writing what would become a series of letters to a friend. They are the most extraordinary letters, which have coloured our understanding of the final few years of his life, and at the same time – regrettable though it might seem – have gone some considerable way to diminishing our respect for him as an individual.

  Here was a man, respected and admired throughout Europe as the outstanding musician and creative genius of his generation, with friends in high places, who, as a result of certain extravagances, was finding it hard to make ends meet.

  Given the esteem in which he was held, there were ways of dealing with this. Discreetly. Maybe some private meetings, a few words spoken, an understanding come to, the promise of a dedication on the title page of a new composition.

  Yet, as far as we know, this did not happen. Mozart selected a friend and instead of discretion, wrote him what can be described only as a series of begging letters. Intense begging letters, pleading extreme poverty. Fortunately for posterity, for our understanding of Mozart, the friend kept the letters. Perhaps unfortunately for Mozart.

  This is where Mozart reaped the benefit of being a Freemason. The friend he approached, a textile merchant by the name of Michael Puchberg, was a fellow Freemason. Over the course of the next three-and-a-half years Mozart wrote twenty-one letters (at least) to Puchberg, each time asking for a loan or giving reasons why, for the moment, he was unable to pay money back.

  To begin with, he stresses their friendship and ‘brotherly love’, a clear reference to their membership of the Masons. He asks for just a small amount, which he will soon be able to repay.

  But as the months pass, the tone of the letters changes. Puchberg has lent him money, and been patient about repayment, but not in the sort of sums Mozart is asking for. His tone becomes anxious:

  I have to admit that it is not possible for me right now to pay back the money you lent me. Instead, I must beg you to be patient a little longer! – I am indeed very troubled about the fact that you are not in a position to help me out in the manner I had wished! – My circumstances are such that I will have to borrow money no matter what. But, good Lord, whom can I trust? – No one but you, my dearest friend.

  It is not long before anxiety turns to desperation:

  Oh, God! The situation I am in, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy; and if you, my best friend and brother, forsake me, I, hapless and blameless as I am, will be lost.

  A measure of Mozart’s desperation is the fact that Puchberg was not the only person Mozart appealed to for loans. He borrowed from several others, including an official in the Ministry of Justice whose wife was one of his pupils. This couple, Franz and
Magdalena Hofdemel, will make a dramatic re-entry into our story at its very end.

  But Puchberg was by a long way Mozart’s greatest creditor. Mozart asked him for a total of 4,000 florins over the three-and-a-half year period. In all, he received loans of 1,415 florins, paid in fifteen instalments of small amounts.*

  As well as essential expenditure such as rent, and general living expenses such as food and clothes, Mozart’s expenditure rose again when he enrolled his son Karl Thomas in a prestigious boarding school. On top of this there were the costs of moving home several times, more furniture and decorating, continual music copying – and, apparently, he was still keeping a horse and his own coach.

  “Given the fall in his income and the scale of his outgoings, it is clear Mozart was living beyond his means.”

  Given the fall in his income and the scale of his outgoings, it is clear Mozart was living beyond his means. Maynard Solomon has estimated that in the final five years of his life, Mozart earned somewhere between 14,315 and 20,140 florins.* This was not even close to being enough to cover his costs.

  What was he to do? He took a bold decision, which must have surprised those close to him, just as it does us today. He decided to undertake a major tour, alone, to Berlin, Prague, Dresden and Leipzig, in the hope of finding paid employment and earning money.

  He told Constanze he expected to be received by the King of Prussia in Berlin, and the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. Neither was a realistic prospect. If she expressed surprise at his decision, he used as a clinching argument the fact that one of the most senior aristocrats in the city, Count Lichnowsky,† was leaving for Berlin and had offered him a seat in his carriage.

  She will surely have drawn attention to the fact that her health was not good. She had just become pregnant again, for the fifth time in a little over six years, and the consecutive pregnancies had taken their toll.

  But he left early in the morning of 8 April 1789. He probably felt some guilt about leaving his wife, because within hours of his departure, in fact while Lichnowsky was sorting out a change of horses, he was writing to her in the most loving terms:

  Dearest little wife of my heart, a few quick words – How are you? – Are you thinking of me as often as I am thinking of you? I look at your portrait every few minutes – and cry – half out of joy, half out of sorrow! – Please look after your health, which is so dear to me, and stay well, my darling! – I am writing this with tears in my eyes.

  But things did not continue quite like that. For the first couple of weeks he writes almost every other day. But then for a whole month there is nothing. Constanze is obviously concerned. Her letters to him are lost, but after a month’s silence he writes to her, clearly responding to her concerns by suggesting that no fewer than four letters he has written must have gone astray: ‘I wrote to you from Leipzig on April 22nd, from Potsdam on the 28th, again from Potsdam on May 5th, from Leipzig on the 9th.’ He turns the tables on Constanze by pointing out that he spent seventeen days in Potsdam ‘without any letters’: ‘The strangest thing of all is that we both found ourselves at the same time in the same sad situation.’

  In the same letter he casually mentions a soprano he has known for years, Josepha Duschek. In Dresden he accompanied her on the piano while she sang arias from Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. She was alone; her husband had not travelled from Prague to be with her.

  Josepha followed him to Leipzig, which he describes to Constanze as a stroke of luck. It is clear from his response to her that she has accused him of forgetting her, and possibly of more. He reacts with righteous indignation, spiced with dirty talk typical of years gone by; but this time, it feels forced, as if he were trying to capture the past:

  Oh, how glad I shall be to be with you again, my darling! The first thing I shall do is to take you by your front curls. For how on earth could you think, or even imagine, that I had forgotten you? How could I possibly do so? For even supposing such a thing, you will get on the very first night a thorough spanking on your dear little kissable arse, and this you may count upon.

  And four days later, he gives an extraordinarily graphic account of the sexual frustration he feels at being away from her:

  Spruce up your sweet little nest, because my little rascal here really deserves it. He has been very well behaved but now he’s itching to possess your sweet —— Just imagine that little rascal, while I am writing he has secretly crept up on the table and now looks at me questioningly. But I, without much ado, give him a little slap – but now he is even more ——* He is almost out of control – the scoundrel.

  It is not difficult to imagine Constanze, sceptical about the lost letters in the first place, pregnant and unwell, reacting with frustration, even anger, when she read his words. Particularly since, in the same letter, he prepares her for bad news as far as the financial success of the trip goes:

  My dearest little wife, when I return, you’ll have to be content with seeing me rather than money … my concert in Leipzig did not bring much, just as I had predicted, therefore I made a 32-mile round-trip almost for nothing.

  But was it almost for nothing, and had his ‘little rascal’ really been well behaved? To put the question bluntly: did he have a sexual relationship with Josepha Duschek, while both of them were away from their spouses?

  As with his cousin, the Bäsle, we can only examine the evidence and reach our own conclusion. Certainly his behaviour on the trip points to it. Four letters went astray? Is that really credible? According to his account to his wife, it was almost as though he met up with Josepha by accident, or good fortune. Could it instead have been elaborately planned? He knew her well from years gone by. Could he have contacted her, even, to set up the trip and the meeting? It is easy to believe he was somewhat fed up with things in Vienna. There was not much work for him, he had financial problems, his wife was pregnant yet again and, predictably, unwell. Oh, to get away from it all!

  Was he capable of such behaviour, at least of being unfaithful even if not of plotting an entire trip? There were some who clearly thought so. After his death, it seems there were no holds barred.

  A newspaper, Der heimliche Botschafter (‘The Secret Messenger’), admittedly something of a scandal sheet, wrote that ‘Mozart unfortunately had that indifference to his family circumstances which so often attaches to great minds.’48 An obituarist wrote, ‘In Vienna [Mozart] married Constanze We-ber and found in her a good mother and a worthy wife, who tried to deter him from many follies and debaucheries.’49

  Those closer to him seemed to concur. A biographer who knew him well in his final years, wrote, ‘Mozart was a man, therefore as liable to human failings as anyone else. The very characteristics and strength which were needed for his great talent were also the origin and cause of many a blunder.’ He added, ‘He loved [Constanze] dearly, confided everything to her, even his petty sins – and she forgave him with loving kindness and tenderness.’50

  More ominously, Constanze’s second husband Georg Nissen took these words verbatim and included them in his biography of Mozart, adding a direct quote from Constanze: ‘One must forgive him, one must make things good for him, because he was so good.’ And in Nissen’s own words: ‘As a man he may have had many weaknesses … He was high-spirited and pleasure-seeking, even in his youth.’51 These words must have had Constanze’s approval.

  Constanze’s younger sister, Sophie, recalled that ‘to keep him from relationships of a hazardous kind, his wife patiently took part in everything with him’. Mozart’s pupil Hummel denied the stories, at the same time as confirming them: ‘I declare it to be untrue that Mozart abandoned himself to excess, except on those rare occasions on which he was enticed.’52 And Mozart’s later biographer, Otto Jahn, heard from one of Constanze’s sisters that ‘Constanze was not always patient, and there were occasional violent outbreaks.’53

  “Mozart was a man, therefore as liable to human failings as anyone else.”

  None of this, of course, proves the case one w
ay or another. If I were forced to make a judgement, I would say that the circumstantial evidence, indeed the circumstances, were so propitious that it would have taken a stronger man than Mozart to resist.

  What we do know is that Mozart returned to Vienna on 4 June, having earned very little from the trip, certainly having had no meetings with rulers or any job offers, to find his heavily pregnant wife in such poor health that she needed urgent medical attention.

  Immediately he resumes writing begging letters to Puchberg, and the tone is desperate:

  Oh God! instead of thanking you, I come to you with new requests! – instead of paying off my debts, I come asking for more. If you can see into my heart, you know how anguished I am about this. I probably won’t need to tell you once again that [Constanze’s] unfortunate illness is slowing me down with my earnings … fate is against me … it’s now up to you, my one and only friend, whether you will or can lend me another 500 gulden?* I would suggest that until my affairs are settled I’ll pay you back 10 gulden a month, then (as matters will turn around in a couple of months) return the whole sum to you with whatever interest you may wish to charge and, at the same time, acknowledge myself as your debtor for life.

  Constanze was dangerously unwell. In one of his letters to Puchberg, Mozart describes her as resigned to her fate, whether that be recovery or death. He may have been exaggerating a little, since we know Constanze went on to live for another fifty years.

  But she had suffered a ruptured varicose vein, which gave her intense pain in the foot. According to Mozart the bone itself was in danger, though it is not clear exactly what he means by that.

  The family physician, Dr Thomas Franz Closset, recommended that Constanze should take the sulphur baths in the spa town of Baden, south of Vienna. More expense for her husband.

  Constanze returned to Vienna to give birth, and there must have been unalloyed joy when a daughter was once again born to the couple. She was named Anna Maria, again after her paternal grandmother.