by John Suchet
A decision was then taken that might seem extraordinary to us today. Mozart needed to travel to Prague to oversee rehearsals for La clemenza di Tito, and it was decided that Constanze would accompany him. It meant putting Karl into a kindergarten, away from his parents at the age of six. It also meant they would have to leave their newborn son, just a month old, in the care of Constanze’s mother and her sister Sophie.
Who exactly made the decision, whether Mozart or Constanze, or both, and whether they were agreed on this course of action, we do not know. Did Constanze willingly leave her baby behind, or was the decision forced on her? Maynard Solomon suggests that Mozart’s infidelities while Constanze was in Baden might have persuaded her she needed to be with him to prevent any more misbehaviour. It seems a drastic decision, in any case.
La clemenza di Tito premiered on 6 September at the National Theatre in Prague, with Mozart directing from the keyboard. The newly crowned emperor and empress – the coronation had taken place on the same day – were guests of honour.
As soon as the opera was launched, Mozart needed to get back to Vienna to supervise the opening of Die Zauberflöte, which was scheduled for 30 September. But his health was suffering.
‘While he was in Prague Mozart became ill and was continually receiving medical attention,’ wrote Niemetschek, his source, as always, the person who was closest to Mozart: his wife Constanze. ‘He was pale and his expression was sad, although his good humour was often shown in merry jest with his friends.’56 That irrepressible Mozart humour always just below the surface.
There was no time to be ill. As soon as they could, Mozart and Constanze rushed back to Vienna. It is probable, therefore, that Mozart was not aware that La clemenza had been very poorly received, though word must have reached him in Vienna. The empress, no less, in remarkably candid language, dismissed it as ‘German piggery’ (porcheria tedesca). ‘The gala opera was not much and the music very bad so that almost all of us fell asleep,’ she wrote.57
A second performance played to a half-empty theatre, and the theatre manager who had commissioned it later petitioned the authorities to be reimbursed for his losses. Niemetschek himself put the opera’s relative failure down to the surfeit of entertainment on offer to celebrate the coronation – dances, balls and amusements.
The same was most certainly not true of Die Zauberflöte. Mozart directed the opening night from the keyboard, and it was a roaring success. The cavernous Freihaus-Theater was full to capacity. The locals flocked to see it, night after night.
If Mozart was close to exhaustion, his wife was suffering too. The whirlwind trip to Prague had taken its toll. At the end of the first week of October, Constanze went down to Baden again, this time taking baby Franz Xaver with her, as well as her sister Sophie to help look after him.
She was gone for only a week, but Mozart kept her up to date with a letter every other day. Die Zauberflöte continued its triumphant progress:
I’ve just come back from the opera – it was full as ever – The Duetto ‘Mann und Weib’ and the Glockenspiel in the first act had to be repeated as usual – the same was true of the boys’ trio in the 2nd act, but what really makes me happy is the Silent applause! – one can feel how the opera is rising and rising.
And that mischievous sense of humour bursts through, despite the fact that he must have been exhausted and drained. There is always time for a practical joke, based around the fact that Papageno on stage mimes playing the glockenspiel:
When Papageno’s aria with the Glockenspiel came on, I went backstage because I had an urge to play the Glockenspiel myself – So I played this joke just when Schikaneder came to a pause. I played an arpeggio – he was startled – looked into the scenery and saw me – stopped as well and did not go on singing – I guessed what he was thinking and played another chord – at that he gave his Glockenspiel a slap and shouted ‘shut up!’ – everybody laughed – I think through this prank many in the audience realised for the first time that Papageno doesn’t play the Glockenspiel himself.
It is a beguiling image, the composer of one of the most popular operas ever written, not taking himself, or his opera, too seriously.
So here we have Mozart, a newly composed opera running (if sporadically) in Prague, a newly composed opera running night after night in Vienna, turning again to the Requiem Mass he has been commissioned to compose. How then does he also find time to compose one of the best loved of all his compositions, the bright and cheerful Clarinet Concerto in A (k. 622), for the clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler? We can only marvel.
After the week’s rest in Baden, which she so badly needed, Constanze can hardly have been surprised on returning to Vienna to find her husband utterly exhausted. He had not stopped working, every day, from dawn until late at night.
Added to that it appeared that his morale had plummeted. He had become despondent and pessimistic. The letters, telling of boisterous practical jokes, had not told the whole truth.
Constanze later told Niemetschek that to try to cheer her husband up, she had taken him for a carriage ride in the Prater. They were sitting alone, when Mozart began to speak of death, and declared that the Requiem he was writing was for himself.
‘Tears came to the eyes of this sensitive man,’ she told Niemetschek. She then quoted her husband as saying, ‘I feel definitely that I will not last much longer. I am sure I have been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea.’58
Niemetschek duly published her words, and a conspiracy theory was born that lives to this day.
* Approximately £50,000.
* He would later go on to own and manage the Theater an der Wien, where Beethoven would premiere many of his works, including his opera Fidelio.
* Perhaps most famously in the 1984 film Amadeus, based on Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, which portrayed the mysterious messenger as the ghost of his father, still giving him orders from beyond the grave.
* Something Count Waldstein had done in Bonn with a teenage Beethoven.
† This commission might have come before the commission for the Requiem. The chronology is not entirely clear.
Constanze tried to take control. She urged her husband to put the Requiem aside, to stop work on it. It was making him unnecessarily depressed. For a time he obeyed, working on a small cantata for his Masonic Lodge. It was the last work he completed.
But he was anxious to return to the Requiem. He was aware he needed to complete it in order to receive full payment. There was also the musical imperative. He had begun it; he simply had to bring it to fruition.
In mid November 1791 his health unexpectedly deteriorated. His limbs became swollen, he was subjected to sudden uncontrollable vomiting. Soon he became immobile. He was confined to bed. His wife and sister-in-law Sophie made him a night-jacket that he could put on from the front, his body being so swollen that he could not turn in bed. They also made him a quilted dressing-gown that he could wear when he got out of bed. He was really looking forward to wearing it, Sophie said. In fact he was never able to get out of bed again.
He continued to work on the Requiem, but soon he was unable to hold a pen. In the room, along with his wife and Sophie, were three friends, singers who had performed in Die Zauberflöte. They sang through the parts of the Requiem he had composed. When they reached the first bars of the Lacrimosa, Mozart began to weep violently and they had to stop.
There also was Franz Xaver Süssmayr, a composer who had studied with Mozart. He had become close to the Mozarts, accompanying Constanze on her visit to Baden ahead of giving birth to Franz Xaver. Mozart trusted him to copy out parts, and he accompanied both Mozart and his wife to Prague for the premiere of La clemenza di Tito, helping Mozart to complete it in time, to the extent of working on it with him even in the carriage en route to Prague.
Now, in the final days of Mozart’s life, Süssmayr wrote on manuscript paper the notes Mozart spoke and the sounds that came from his mouth. Mozart composed, with Süssmayr’s assistance, as far as the Lacr
imosa at the end of the Sequentia. Parts of the Offertorium are in Mozart’s hand, and Mozart was able to give instructions for later passages. After Mozart’s death, Süssmayr would complete the Requiem, having been entrusted to do so by Constanze.
Sophie has left a vivid account of Mozart’s final hours. His condition was so bad on the night of 4 December that Constanze believed he would not live through the night. She implored her sister to stay with him the next day.
Sophie recounts how she entered his room, and he immediately said:
Ah, dear Sophie, how glad I am that you have come. You must stay here tonight and see me die.
She protested, reassuring him. But, she said, he could not be persuaded:
Why, I already have the taste of death on my tongue. And, if you do not stay, who will support my dearest Constanze when I am gone? 59
What followed, according to Sophie, was a catalogue of errors. First, in response to Constanze’s pleas, she rushed out to St Peter’s to find a priest, ‘but for a long time they refused to come and I had a great deal of trouble to persuade one of those clerical brutes to go to him’.60
Nissen, Constanze’s later husband, suggests Mozart’s antipathy towards the clergy was well known by them, and the reason no priest came was because ‘the sick person himself did not send for them’.61 Revenge, in other words. Mozart thus did not receive the last rites, which probably would not have troubled him.
Of rather more practical use to Mozart was a doctor, but Sophie had no more luck there. She tried to find Dr Closset. After a long search she found him at the theatre, but he refused to come until the play had finished.
Sophie rushed back to the Rauhensteingasse, to find her sister inconsolable. Süssmayr was at Mozart’s bedside. The score of the Requiem was on the bed cover. Mozart was struggling to explain to Süssmayr how he wanted him to complete it, mouthing the sound of the timpani.
Dr Closset finally came to the apartment and prescribed cold (Sophie’s italics) compresses on Mozart’s burning head. These gave him such a shock that he lost consciousness.
The two sisters give different accounts of Mozart’s last moments. According to Constanze, after the doctor had left, Mozart asked what he had said. She answered with a soothing lie, but he said, ‘It isn’t true. I shall die now, just when I am able to take care of you and the children. Ah, now I will leave you unprovided for.’
And as he spoke those words, according to Constanze, ‘Suddenly he vomited – it gushed out of him in an arc – it was brown, and he was dead.’62 Constanze told Niemetschek she crawled into the bed beside his body, as if to try to catch his illness and die with him.
Sophie’s account is more gentle. Even though the cold compresses had caused Mozart to lose consciousness, the doctor said he should continue to be given them. Sophie accordingly applied a damp towel to his forehead. Mozart immediately gave a slight shudder and a very short time afterwards died in her arms.
Mozart’s death was recorded as having taken place at fifty-five minutes past midnight on Monday, 5 December 1791. He was thirty-five years and ten months old.*
Word of Mozart’s death quickly spread through the city. The following morning a crowd gathered in the Rauhensteingasse outside the Mozarts’ apartment, waving handkerchiefs up at the windows. Close friends were allowed in to pay their respects at Mozart’s bedside. His body lay on view for the whole of that day and the morning of the next.
One of Mozart’s most supportive patrons, Baron van Swieten,* took over arrangements for the funeral. He decided, in consultation with Constanze, that Mozart would have a third-class funeral, the cheapest form of funeral available. Legend has it that Mozart was given a pauper’s funeral and his body thrown in a paupers’ grave. It is not true.
Three forms of paid-for funeral were available: first, second and third class, as well as an unpaid-for pauper’s funeral. Most Viennese chose third class, since it cost a mere 8 florins 56 kreuzer, against 110 and 40 for first and second class.† It was the custom in any case, after Joseph II had simplified the whole burial system in the interests of economy and hygiene, to the extent of banning headstones and recommending sacks instead of coffins. Both Constanze and van Swieten can have had no doubt Mozart himself would not have objected to this.
At three o’clock on the afternoon of 7 December Mozart’s body received a ritual blessing in a small side chapel of St Stephen’s Cathedral. It was then taken by hearse via the Grosse Schullerstrasse to the cemetery in the village of St Marx, outside the city. Neither Constanze, nor anyone else, accompanied it. This, again, was normal.‡
There, Mozart’s body, which had been sewn into a linen sack, was removed from the coffin and placed in a ‘normal simple grave’,§ alongside five or six other bodies. No one attended the interment. Mozart therefore has no grave, no headstone or memorial plaque, and the precise location of his body is not known.¶
It was not long before recriminations began among Mozart’s somewhat belated admirers, and their principal target was Constanze. Why had she not arranged a more elaborate funeral? Why had she not accompanied her husband to his final resting place? Why had she not ensured that there was a grave where admirers of her husband could pay their respects?
Later, through her second husband, the Danish diplomat Georg Nissen, she defended herself. None of Mozart’s friends or musical colleagues accompanied the body because that was the custom, that the hearse would make its way unaccompanied to the cemetery for burial.
As for her own absence, she was prevented from following ‘the mortal remains of her inexpressibly beloved husband’63 because she was unwell and because of the ‘severe’ winter weather. There is no indication in any eyewitness accounts of Mozart’s death that Constanze was unwell – distraught, yes, but not unwell – and the weather on that day is reported to have been fine, albeit with a December chill.
It also seems to be the case that Constanze did not visit the cemetery until seventeen years after his death. According to the late Emperor Joseph’s new regulations, after ten years graves were raked over and the plots reused. There would have been nothing for her to see. The cemetery itself was closed nearly seventy years later.
Constanze’s reputation continues to suffer because of the way she handled her husband’s funeral. The full facts – like Mozart’s final resting place – will never be known. We can surely assume with a fair degree of certainty that Mozart would have raised no objections to any aspect of the way in which his funeral and burial were handled.
We can be equally sure he would have vented his anger, no doubt with choice scatological language, on members of the medical profession and the Church.
When Mozart died, Constanze was left a widow at the age of twenty-nine, with a seven-year-old son and a four-month-old baby. Mozart had left no will, and because he had been in employment at St Stephen’s Cathedral for less than ten years, she was not entitled to a pension.
In the face of real financial hardship, Constanze went into action. In the first place she petitioned the emperor for a pension, even though she knew she was not entitled to it. She pointed out her late husband’s loyalty to the court, and how cruel it was for him to have been taken from the world ‘at that very moment when his prospects for the future were beginning to grow brighter on all sides’.64
The court not only awarded her one-third of Mozart’s salary as Imperial Royal and Chamber Composer, but backdated it to the beginning of the year. This meant she would receive just over 265 florins a year,* the court being careful to point out that this was granted as a special favour and was not to be seen as a precedent.
She also organised memorial concerts of her husband’s music, which raised money, and she embarked on a campaign to publish as many of his works as she could. Whatever criticisms might attach to Constanze surrounding the immediate aftermath of Mozart’s death, there is no question that she worked tirelessly to promote his name and music.
She continued to do so, indeed all the more so, after she married Nissen in
1809 and moved to Copenhagen. It was his intention to write a full-length biography of his wife’s first husband, collecting and collating all available material, and Constanze furnished him with letters, documents and, of course, priceless stories and anecdotes, which only she could have known.
To undertake the enormous task ahead of him, Nissen, with his wife Constanze, returned to Salzburg. There was clearly no more appropriate place to write the biography than in the city of Mozart’s birth, the home of his family. That must have brought mixed emotions to Constanze. She was returning to the city in which her first husband’s father and sister had been so unwelcoming when she arrived there as a new bride all those years ago.
But more sadness loomed. Nissen died suddenly in 1826. Constanze was a widow again. His vast biography, with unrivalled access to the true character of Mozart provided both by the composer’s wife and sister, was completed after his death and published posthumously.
Wife and sister – for Constanze was not the only Mozart living in Salzburg. Nannerl, having left the city after her marriage more than forty years earlier, was once again living there. It had not been a happy marriage. Her husband, already twice a widower with five children and fifteen years older than her, was domineering and uncaring, her stepchildren unruly and unaccepting of her.
She bore her husband three children of her own. In effect there were two families living in the same household. It was not a happy existence. As well as the tensions, Nannerl had grown unhappy living in a village on the banks of a lake. Beautiful it might have been, but it was lonely and isolated.
Nannerl’s husband at least did her the favour of dying at the age of sixty-five in 1801. After his death, Nannerl lost no time in packing up her things and moving back into the city of her birth, Salzburg.
It was there, twenty years later, that she received a visit. Her brother’s son, her own nephew, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, now thirty years of age, knocked on her door. Wolfgang, as he preferred to be known, had inherited his father’s musical talent – to a degree – and was on a concert tour of Europe, in which he performed his father’s music on the piano.