Mozart's Last Aria

by Matt Rees

  ‘Why did your husband… what reason had he to hurt you?’

  ‘Must a man have a reason to hurt his wife?’ Bitterness took over Magdalena’s eyes.

  ‘What spurred him?’

  She closed her fan with a snap. The marks about her eyes and brow were little more than scratches compared to the parallel gashes I saw now across her neck. They were so deep they had been sewn. She ran her finger above the stiff black stitches.

  I flinched.

  ‘He didn’t try to hurt me. He aimed to kill me.’ Her tears made the scars on her face damp and bright, as though they bled once more. ‘Franz believed he had slit my throat and that I would die. Only then did he do the same for himself. I watched him pull open his collar to ready himself. Hate in his eyes, where I had been used to such love. As though he detested me above all creatures in the world. Then he pulled his razor across his throat and I saw that it was himself that he hated most, and only then me.’

  Despite myself, I returned to the notion of Franz Hofdemel as a betrayed husband. What other reason could he have had for such butchery?

  ‘I pleaded with Franz, begged for the sake of his soul,’ she said. ‘I told him that he’d go to Hell. Not, you understand, because I wished to chastise him. It was only that I feared for the immortal spirit of the man I loved.’

  ‘Even as he tried to murder you?’

  ‘Even then.’

  ‘Didn’t he fear Hell?’

  ‘He said Hell was full of the foolishness he had committed before he gained wisdom, and neither I nor Satan could force him to live that way again.’ Magdalena slouched forward.

  I touched her wrist. It was hard, like bone, as though she had willed her skin to such a thickness that it might never again be cut.

  ‘I feel so guilty, Madame de Mozart. So very guilty.’ She sniffled into her handkerchief. ‘Don’t think badly of my Franz. Though I never would’ve intended it, I’m sure I drove him to this.’

  ‘Did you? Did you really?’

  She swallowed hard and tried to make her expression bright. ‘Wolfgang often spoke of your skill at the piano. He used to tell me that if I worked very hard I might be almost as good as you. Would you play for me? Something by your brother.’

  ‘He spoke of me?’

  ‘Do play. It soothes me to listen to a fine pianist.’

  Until I played the opening triad, I hadn’t known that I would give her Wolfgang’s Adagio in B minor. The piece ran through my fingers without any thought. Instantly I parted from the company of the woman with the scarred face. Instead, I was with Wolfgang. I became calm, savoring the symmetry of the music, even as I sensed the tension my brother had injected with its unexpected key transitions.

  More tears lay on Magdalena’s face. But they seemed now to be drawn from some happy recollection. She smiled at me.

  As I reached the coda and the piece turned to B major, the door opened. A woman several years younger than me stood there in a thick fur, her hand supported by a squat, swarthy maid. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, the pupils swinging up into her skull, so that only the whites were visible.

  I hesitated, and the blind woman sensed it. She rotated her hand, gesturing for me to continue. When she removed her fur hat and thrust it at the maid, I recognized her as Maria Theresia von Paradies, a virtuoso of the piano who had visited our family in Salzburg while on her way to perform in London and Paris.

  Paradies listened to the silence after the final notes. Her nose lifted as though savoring the scent of the music. She shrugged her coat off her shoulders for Magdalena’s housegirl to catch. She turned her body toward the sofa and the dark maid pulled her to Magdalena.

  ‘My dear.’ Paradies leaned close to Magdalena and glided her fingers over the scars on the woman’s neck. ‘Better?’

  ‘Much better.’

  The maid stomped to the other side of the room and leaned against the window frame, staring into the evening darkness.

  Magdalena took Paradies’s arm and guided her onto the sofa beside her. ‘How did you know it was I who sat here on the sofa?’ she said.

  ‘Little one, there were two people breathing in this room when I entered. The one playing the piano was – I’m sorry to tell you – evidently not you.’ Paradies rubbed Magdalena’s forearm. ‘Who’s our performer?’

  ‘It’s Wolfgang’s sister.’

  Paradies held out her hand until I grasped it. ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said.

  ‘Eight years,’ I replied.

  ‘I’ve played hundreds of concerts since then and written a few operas. What’ve you been doing?’

  I would have withdrawn my hand, but I knew better than to struggle against the powerful fingers of another pianist. ‘I married a district prefect. I live some way from Salzburg.’

  ‘It’s clear that you continue to practice hard. You haven’t lost your talent.’

  ‘You’re too kind.’

  ‘But a concerto is no easy thing.’

  Her tone was sharp. I saw that Paradies was offended Stadler hadn’t chosen her as the soloist for the benefit concert at the Academy. So here, I thought, was one person who’d be willing me to fail when I played Wolfgang’s concerto.

  ‘Quite. No easy thing,’ I said.

  ‘Still, it’s easier than sitting down to write a simple letter to one’s younger brother, apparently. One’s only living relative.’

  Magdalena pulled at Paradies’s skirt. ‘Theresia,’ she whispered.

  Wolfgang, it seemed, had known these women with enough intimacy to have complained to them about me. After our father’s death, there had been financial disputes. But more than that had come between us. Perhaps both of us had been cut adrift when Papa went, the commanding polestar of our lives was eclipsed. Certainly my emotions had spun in all directions. For some time I had thought only of my own loss. I had been unaware of the feelings of others.

  ‘You’re quite correct, Fräulein von Paradies,’ I said. ‘A concerto is difficult, but not impossible.’

  She let go of my hand. I sat in an upright chair beside the sofa.

  ‘I’ve learned sixty concertos by heart,’ Paradies said, ‘but I’d forget them all before I would neglect one of Wolfgang’s.’

  I was silent.

  ‘What do you say to that?’ She raised her voice.

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘I’d consider it a dreadful burden to have neglected anything of Wolfgang’s.’

  Paradies’s eyeballs twitched. ‘I shall be content to play one of his sonatas tomorrow night at the Academy.’ She lifted her hand to her powdered hair. It stood high, combed loosely back to her neck. ‘I remember telling your father he ought to send you to Vienna.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘You played during my visit to Salzburg. I was struck by your technique.’

  I recalled that time well. My thirty-second birthday. Wolfgang had bought me ices in the afternoon after target-shooting near the Mirabell gate and served me punch in the evening. But he had been visiting with his new bride, while I was losing hope that I’d ever be wed. I had resented his cheeriness and pretended to choke on the ices. I didn’t remember that I had played so well for Paradies, but I bowed in acknowledgement. ‘Thank you for this compliment.’

  ‘Your father didn’t thank me. He said his daughter had no interest in travel or performance.’

  I pressed my thumbs against each other. My father had decided everything for me, just as he had attempted to do for Wolfgang. But he was long gone.

  ‘Well, now you’re here in Vienna, after all,’ Paradies said. ‘And with a major performance tomorrow.’

  I spoke softly. ‘Here I am.’

  7

  On Jews’ Square, lawyers and petitioners headed for the massive Court Chancellery, where Magdalena Hofdemel’s husband had worked. Its pink stone glistened in the morning rain like that poor woman’s wounded skin. I crossed the square toward the private houses on its southern side.

  A clarinet played somewhere before m
e. An aria of Wolfgang’s composition. My brother had written the piece to showcase the virtuosity of his friend Stadler on the bass clarinet. As I listened, the melody dropped below the E at the bottom of the range of most clarinets, down to a low C.

  The tone of the instrument was like the song of an enormous, magical bird. I followed the clarinet to a narrow house and up the stairs.

  Stadler answered my knock himself. He wore a brown waistcoat and a rough blanket across his shoulders. He held his bass clarinet in one hand. His finger was still depressed on the key of the last note he had played.

  He edged backwards, hesitating to invite me inside but unable to turn me away.

  ‘Guten Morgen, Herr Stadler.’ I passed him, unlacing the neck of my cloak.

  ‘You’d better keep it on,’ he mumbled.

  I tipped my head. ‘Do you mean for me to leave, sir?’

  ‘You’re welcome, of course. I didn’t intend to sound ungracious,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit cold in here, I mean. The maid was too sick to come the last few days. I’ve had no fire and—’

  ‘Never mind. We have work to do.’

  He shut the door, leaning against it and pushing home the bolt, as though he were afraid someone might burst into his rooms behind me.

  ‘Did you forget our rehearsal? For my performance for tonight,’ I said. ‘The concerto?’

  ‘No, of course not. The C major.’

  I smiled. ‘Where shall we—?’

  ‘I keep a clavichord in the studio. Please.’

  He led me to a high-ceilinged room overlooking the Court Chancellery. The walls were painted to resemble white marble.

  I played a few simple triads on the clavichord. Its metal tangents struck the iron strings with a sound that was sharper, spikier than the hammers of the pianoforte I had grown accustomed to playing. The white sharps and flats stood out like strips of ice against the black keys. Still, it was well-tuned.

  I warmed my fingers with a brief scale, and played a minuet by Emanuel Bach.

  As I played, Stadler moved closer to the clavichord. He sat on the edge of an embroidered stool, fingering the keys of his clarinet, eager to join in the music.

  When I had finished, he laid his hand on the body of the clavichord with reverence. ‘If you dressed in the red suit Wolfgang wore for all his concerts, we’d be able to have him back. You look just like him. You play just as he did, too.’

  In Stadler’s deep brown eyes I glimpsed his enjoyment of my performance. The pain returned to them quickly, as though he had remembered that the red suit wasn’t mine to wear, after all.

  ‘Let’s get to the concerto.’ He worked his lips on the reed of his instrument. ‘I’ll play the orchestral line, so that you may refresh your memory of the piece.’

  We played through the opening movement. At first I watched Stadler for signs of his approval. But soon I was absorbed with the music, its joyful piano part, and the melancholy of the woodwinds as Stadler figured them on his clarinet.

  We finished that movement. Stadler wiped his lips with his forefinger. ‘Good. Just the right tempo. Many people play it too fast. Now for the andante.’

  ‘You know, when my father first sent me the score of this movement, I thought it had been copied wrongly.’

  ‘The unusual counterpoint?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘When I think how Wolfgang could manipulate an orchestra, tease us and make us examine new horizons without our quite knowing it – well, that’s when I see the difference between my kind of talent and his genius.’

  ‘This movement makes me think of a dream.’ I played the melody of the piece as I spoke. ‘It’s andante, walking speed. As though you were sleep-walking through the dream. There’s a little dissonance. But it always returns to a tone of serenity.’

  Stadler brandished his clarinet with enthusiasm. ‘That’s it. If you were dreaming in your bed you’d be safe. Sleep-walking, though, you’re never sure where you are.’

  ‘Wolfgang gives us these dissonant moments, as though the security of a warm bed were slipping away from us.’

  ‘But he brings us back to the resolving key.’

  ‘To sleep. Calm and restful.’

  Stadler’s smile was wide. ‘You have it, you really do.’

  He lifted his instrument to his lips and went into the orchestral theme that introduced the movement. I closed my eyes for the piano solo. I imagined it wasn’t I who played. I was listening to Wolfgang.

  When we finished, Stadler rocked on his stool. ‘I remember when he debuted this piece. That must be six years ago now.’

  Six years in which I hadn’t seen my brother, years when he had surpassed all other composers. The last three of them, years in which we hadn’t communicated. Stadler averted his eyes. The warmth of our musical collaboration was gone.

  ‘I didn’t forget him, Herr Stadler.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘I had his music, even if I didn’t have him.’

  He tapped at the keys of his clarinet.

  We played through the concerto again in full. He was distracted this time. When the music was over, he stared at my hands on the keyboard with such agitation that I hid them behind my back.

  To escape Stadler’s glare, I turned to the window. The hood of a woman crossing the square lifted in the wind. I was reminded of the gust that had caught my own cloak outside the Collalto Palace.

  ‘Who was the gentleman I saw you with yesterday?’ I asked.

  Stadler laid his clarinet across his knees. ‘What?’

  ‘A tall gentleman. A nobleman, in fact, by the crest on his coach,’ I said. ‘You spoke with him as he departed. I think he went toward the Hofburg.’

  Stadler coughed. His reluctance was evident. He whispered, ‘The Baron van Swieten.’

  Swieten had been my brother’s greatest patron at the palace since Wolfgang’s arrival in Vienna a decade before. He had often written to me of him. ‘Tell me about the Baron?’

  ‘What’s there to tell? He was born in Holland. He came here as a boy, when his father was ordered into the service of the late Empress as her physician. He’s close to the Emperor.’

  ‘Shall I meet him tonight? At the concert?’

  Stadler rapped his knuckles on the clavichord. I sensed he wished he had chosen a different soloist after all. ‘It’ll be hard to miss him. He commands—’

  ‘Attention?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Love?’ I asked.

  Stadler looked at me curiously. ‘Respect. He commands respect.’

  I remembered the way the Baron’s gaze had fallen upon me in the square, the moment when I had thought he would speak to me.

  ‘Did he recognize me?’ My voice had an unseemly eagerness. Stadler rubbed his nose. Perhaps he had heard it.

  ‘The Baron asked me if the person he saw could be Wolfgang’s sister. I told him it was.’

  He stood. ‘Perhaps you’d like something to drink, madame? The air is cold, but your exertion at the keyboard shall have put you in need of sustenance.’ He tried for joviality and kindness. But the discomfort in his voice was like an ill-tuned string, the sound that would be heard above all others.

  ‘Very kind, thank you.’

  He excused himself with relief and went through the apartment to the pantry.

  I wandered across the room to Stadler’s desk. Sheets of music in my brother’s hand spread over its slanting surface. A concerto for clarinet and orchestra in A major. Wolfgang had signed and dated the manuscript only a few months ago. It would have been one of the last pieces he wrote.

  I took up the sheets, reading across the orchestral and solo parts of the first movement. Wolfgang must have written it for Stadler, because it required the low tones of his friend’s bass clarinet.

  Stadler called from the kitchen. ‘I can find only brandy, madame.’

  So absorbed was I by Wolfgang’s beautiful composition that the loud voice startled me. I went to the door. ‘Very good, Herr Stadler. Bra
ndy will do just fine.’

  As I returned to the desk, I noticed that the score had lain on top of a souvenir book, Stadler’s record of friends and visitors to his home. It was open to a page marked with a few lines of script and a signature. The same signature as the one on the music I held.

  The text was in English. I recalled what Schikaneder had said about the Masons, writing to each other in the language of England in token of their Brotherhood’s origins. ‘To my dear Stadler, whose clarinet is a magic flute to free mankind and promote higher feelings. Never forget the Brother (you know what I mean) who loves you from his heart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.’

  The signature was followed by two triangles drawn one beside the other.

  The Brother. Indeed I did know what that meant. Stadler had admitted that he was Wolfgang’s Masonic Brother. Schikaneder had told me about the triangles Masons drew as signs between each other.

  I traced my fingers across my brother’s handwriting. You know what I mean. His suggestive, winking voice. I flipped the pages, looking for another message from Wolfgang.

  Two more triangles caught my eye. They concluded a note by a different writer, though in the same language. It was on the most recent page of the book to have been used, dated only a day before.

  ‘Be industrious. Flee idleness. Your sincere friend and Brother, the Baron Konstant von Jacobi.’

  On the facing page, another note in English. Signed by the Prince Karl Lichnowsky, followed by two triangles. Constanze had named Lichnowsky among Wolfgang’s Masonic brethren. Here was the proof in the prince’s own hand.

  I would have examined the book further, but I heard Stadler returning. I laid the concerto over it and pretended to read through the score.

  ‘Some brandy to revive us both, madame.’ Stadler came in with two tumblers.

  I realized that I hadn’t turned the pages of the souvenir book back to the one signed by Wolfgang. I hoped Stadler wouldn’t notice.

  My pulse picked up. The strange signs in the souvenir book. The fear that my intrusion would be discovered. I took the cup of brandy and drank.