COLLOREDO, HIERONYMUS JOSEPH FRANZ DE PAULA VON (1732–1812) Prince-archbishop of Salzburg from 1772 to 1803. Educated in Vienna and Rome, Colloredo became a canon of Salzburg cathedral in 1747. His election as prince-archbishop on 14 March 1772 was bitterly controversial. Although a reformer who created at Salzburg an intellectual environment attractive to artists and thinkers alike, both Mozarts were unhappy in his service, complaining that travel leave was difficult to obtain, that extra presents of money for compositions were stingy and that Italian musicians were promoted over Germans. Colloredo is generally condemned for his insensitive and mean-spirited attitude towards the Mozarts, but there is blame to be apportionedon both sides. His father, Rudolf Wenzel Joseph, Count Colloredo-Mels und Wallsee (1706– 88) was imperial vice-chancellor in Vienna and met the Mozarts there in 1762; his sister, Maria Franziska, Countess Wallis (1746– 95), was the most influential woman at the Salzburg court.
DA PONTE, LORENZO (1749–1838) Italian librettist and Mozart’s collaborator on Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790). Exiled from Venice (where he had been a friend of Casanova), Da Ponte worked briefly in Dresden before moving to Vienna in late 1781, where he attracted the favour of Emperor Joseph II. When in 1783 the emperor abandoned his pursuit of German opera and revived the Italian company at the Burgtheater, Da Ponte was appointed chief poet; his subsequent involvement in the remarkable flowering of opera buffa in Vienna between 1783 and 1790 made him the most significant librettist of his generation. Mozart was suspicious of his arrogance and penchant for intrigue, while Da Ponte was ambivalent about Mozart in his memoirs, recognizing his genius but doubting his stage skills.
DUSCHEK FAMILY Czech musician Franz Xaver Duschek (1731– 99) settled in Prague about 1770 and was influential there as a music teacher and pianist; he was also a successful composer of instrumental music. His wife Josepha (née Hambacher, 1754–1824), a singer, had been his pupil before they married in 1776. Josepha’s maternal grandfather was the merchant Ignaz Anton Weiser, mayor of Salzburg from 1772 to 1775 and author of the text of the oratorio Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots. The Duscheks first met the Mozarts in Salzburg in August 1777, when Mozart wrote the scena Ah, lo previdi – Ah, t’invola agl’occhi miei K272 for Josepha. He stayed at their summer home, the Villa Betramka, when he was in Prague for the premiere of Don Giovanni in 1787, on this occasion composing the scena Bella mia fiamma – Resta, o cara K528 for her. In March 1786 Mozart accompanied Josepha at the Viennese court and in 1789 she sang at concerts he gave in Dresden and Leipzig.
FIRMIAN FAMILY One of Salzburg’s leading noble families; Leopold Anton Eleutherius (1679–1744), prince-archbishop of Salzburg from 1727, was Leopold Mozart’s first court employer. His brother, Franz Alphons Georg (1686–1756), had four sons, three of whom are mentioned in the letters. Leopold Ernst (1708–83) was bishop of Passau and later a cardinal; Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart celebrated this promotion in Milan in 1772. Franz Lactanz (1712– 86) was chief steward at the Salzburg court from 1736; he represented the archbishop in secular matters and had jurisdiction over the court music. Karl Joseph (1718–82) was governor general of Lombardy and a prominent patron of the arts. He did much to promote Mozart’s career during his first visit to Italy in 1769–71.
GILOWSKY VON URAZOWA FAMILY The families of the two barber surgeons Franz Anton (1708–70) and Johann Wenzel Andreas (1716–99) Gilowsky were well known to the Mozarts in Salzburg. Franz Anton’s son Johann Joseph Anton Ernst (1739–89) was a court councillor and represented Mozart in the settlement of Leopold Mozart’s estate; it seems that his daughter Maria Anna Katharina (1753–1809) was a ‘Figaro’ chambermaid; Franz Lactanz, Count Firmian is said to have arranged her marriage to his servant Simon Ankner in order to have her sexual services close at hand. Johann Wenzel Andreas’s daughter, also Maria Anna Katharina (1750–1802), was a friend of Nannerl Mozart’s; she is referred to in the letters as ‘Katherl’. Her brother Franz Xaver Wenzel (1757– 1816), a doctor, was best man at Mozart’s wedding.
GRIMM, FRIEDRICH MELCHIOR, BARON VON (1723 –1807) Author and diplomat, Grimm was born in Regensburg, Bavaria, and educated in Leipzig. He settled in Paris in 1749, where he became part of the circle around the Encyclopédistes and was for a time secretary to the Duc d’Orléans. In 1757 he began to write a weekly newsletter on cultural affairs that circulated throughout Europe in handwritten copies; they were later published as Correspondance littéraire (1812). Grimm was the Mozarts’ chief patron during their first visit to Paris in 1763–4, arranging for Wolfgang and Nannerl to appear at Versailles, as well as two public concerts in March and April 1764. On 1 December 1763 he wrote: ‘I cannot be sure that this child will not turn my head if I go on hearing him often; he makes me realize that it is difficult to guard against madness on seeing prodigies.’ Grimm again helped Mozart and his mother in Paris in 1778, but after Maria Anna Mozart’s death, relations between Grimm and Mozart became strained.
HAFFNER FAMILY Prominent Salzburg family of factors, whose business encompassed banking, haulage and the import and export of goods for merchants; the firm reached its zenith under Siegmund Haffner the elder (1699–1772), mayor of Salzburg from 1768 to 1772, who left a great fortune. Mozart wrote the ‘Haffner’ serenade K250 (plus the march K249), in celebration of the marriage of one of his daughters, Maria Elisabeth (1753–81), to Franz Xaver Anton Späth on 22 July 1776. It was performed on the eve of the wedding at the Haffners’ summer residence. He wrote what became the ‘Haffner’ symphony K385 to mark the ennoblement of Siegmund the younger (1756—87) on 29 July 1782.
HAGENAUER FAMILY (Johann) Lorenz Hagenauer (1712—92) was Leopold Mozart’s closest friend in Salzburg. He inherited the family business, which dealt in medicaments, in Salzburg’s Getreidegasse, and married Maria Theresia Schuster (died 1800). The Mozarts rented an apartment from the Hagenauers in the Getreidegasse house from 1747—73, and the eleven Hagenauer children grew up with Mozart and Nannerl. Lorenz another members of the extended Hagenauer family, as well as his business associates, provided loans, put their mercantile credit network at Leopold’s disposal during the family’s European travels, and performed numerous extra favours. Their fifth child, Cajetan Rupert (1746— 1811), became a Benedictine monk at St Peter’s abbey, Salzburg, taking the name Dominicus; Mozart wrote the ‘Dominicus’ mass K66 to mark the celebration of his first mass on 15 October 1769.
HAYDN, (FRANZ) JOSEPH (1732—1809) Arguably the most famous composer of his day, Haydn was in the employ of the Esterházy family, at their residences at Eisenstadt, Eszterháza and Vienna, from 1761 until his death. It is unlikely that Haydn and Mozart met before Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781; a plausible first meeting has been suggested for 22 and 23 December 1783, when works by them both were played at two charity concerts in the Burgtheater. Certainly they were acquainted by 1784, at which time Mozart was composing the final three of his six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K387, 421, 428, 458, 464, 465). Their last meeting was in 1791, shortly before Haydn’s departure for England. It is likely that they saw each other often in the intervening years, and their relationship was characterized by mutual affection and admiration.
HAYDN, (JOHANN) MICHAEL (1737—1806) Younger brother of Joseph Haydn and a prolific and successful composer of sacred and secular music (some of his compositions were mistakenly attributed to Mozart). He joined the Salzburg court music establishment as concert master in 1763 and was appointed court and cathedral organist in 1782, in succession to Mozart. Mozart copied out several of Haydn’s church works, presumably for study purposes. In 1783 he asked his father to send some of Haydn’s music to him in Vienna, for performance at Gottfriedvan Swieten’s. But despite their admiration of his music, the Mozarts were frequently critical of Haydn’s personal behaviour and in particular his excessive drinking. In 1778, Haydn married the soprano Maria Magdalena Lipp (1745–1827), daughter of the third court organist Franz Ignaz Lipp (1718–98); she sang the roles of Gottliche Barmh
erzigkeit in Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots andRosina in La finta semplice.
JACQUIN FAMILY (Emilian) Gottfriedvon Jacquin (1767–92), who worked at the court chancellery, was one of Mozart’s closest friends during his years in Vienna after 1781. Not only did they socialize frequently, but Jacquin was a keen amateur composer and singer, and Mozart composed some works jointly with him, including the five notturni K346 and K436–439; in 1791 Gottfried published under his name six songs, two of which were composedly Mozart. Jacquin’s sister Franziska (1769–1850) was a keyboard student of Mozart’s; it was for her that he wrote the so-called’Kegelstatt’ trio for clarinet, viola and piano K498, and the piano duet sonata K521.
JOSEPH II, EMPEROR (1741–90) The eldest son of Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa, he succeeded his father as Holy Roman Emperor in 1765 and was co-regent of Austria until his mother’s death in 1780. He was married twice: first, happily, to Isabella of Parma (1760–3), and then, miserably, to Josepha of Bavaria (1765–7). An ‘enlightened despot’, his policies included religious toleration, the suppression of the monasteries and repossession of church property, and the liberalization of censorship. His musical knowledge and attainment were considerable and his preferences for German opera, opera buffa, wind music and short and simple church music, together with his dislike of court entertainments, opera seria and ballets, set the pattern of Viennese music of the 1780s. He advanced Mozart’s career in Vienna by encouraging him to compose Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte uncreated post for him in 1787 with limited duties and at a salary that many musicians would have considered generous. Nonetheless, history has condemned him for failing to do enough to support Mozart’s genius.
KARL THEODOR, ELECTOR PALATINE AND ELECTOR OF BAVARIA (1724–99) On becoming Elector Palatine in 1742, Karl Theodor, a flautist and cellist, transformed his court at Mannheim into one of the outstanding musical centres of eighteenth-century Europe. When, at the endow December 1777, he succeeded his distant cousin Maximilian III Joseph as Elector and Duke of Bavaria, he moved his court to Munich. The Mozart children first played for Karl Theodor at his country home, Schwetzingen, in July 1763, and Mozart visited Mannheim twice in 1777 and 1778. Although he hoped to gain an appointment at court, he was not successful; he was also unsuccessful in Munich in December 1778.
LANGE, (MARIA) ALOYSIA (née Weber, c. 1761 – 1839) Mozart first met and fell in love with Aloysia, the daughter of Fridolin Weber (see below), during his stay in Mannheim in 1777. He gave her musical instruction and composed the concert arias K294, K316 and probably an early version of K538 for her; their relationship was the cause of considerable anxiety to Leopold. When she moved to Munich in 1778, Mozart followed her there, and may have proposed marriage and been rejected. Shortly after making her Mannheim debut in Schweitzer’s Alceste, she was engaged at the National theater in Vienna and married the actor Joseph Lange. From 1782 she was a leading singer of the Italian troupe but seems to have fallen out of favour and in 1785 was transferred to the less prestigious Karntnertortheater, where among other roles she sang Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Mozart married her sister Constanze in 1782.
LODRON FAMILY One of Salzburg’s leading noble families. Count Ernst Maria Joseph Nepomuk von Lodron (1716–79) married Antonia Maria (1738–80), the fourth child of Count Georg Anton Felix von Arco, on 4 April 1758. During the reign of Archbishop Colloredo, Antonia Maria enjoyed great influence at court. It became customary to serenade her on her name day (Anthony of Padua, 13 June) with specially composed music: in 1776 Mozart wrote the divertimento K247 (with its march K248) for this occasion, and in 1777 the divertimento K287. He also composed the concerto for three keyboards K242 for the countess anther daughters Aloisia and Giuseppina in 1776. Antonia Maria played a key part in easing Mozart’s return to Salzburg as organist in 1778.
MARIA THERESA, EMPRESS (1717—80) The eldest daughter of Emperor Charles VI (1685—1740), her father appointed her heir to his hereditary Habsburg domains by the Pragmatic Sanction — a claim that led to the War of the Austrian Succession (1740—48). She married Francis, Duke of Lorraine (1708—65) in 1736; he became Holy Roman Emperor in 1745; they had ten surviving children. She first encountered Mozart when the six-year-old prodigy performed for her at Schonbrunn in Vienna on 13 October 1762, and saw him again in 1768, but for reasons that remain unknown, she came to disapprove of the family.
MOZART, (MARIA) CONSTANZE née Weber, 1762—1842) Mozart first met Constanze during his visit to Mannheim in 1777—8, at which time he was infatuated with her older sister, Aloysia (see under LANGE). Their relationship blossomed only in 1781, by which time both Mozart and the Webers (see below) were living in Vienna. Wolfgang andConstanze married on 4 August 1782. It is clear that, on the whole, their marriage was a happy one, although Constanze was in frequent ill health as a result of her repeated pregnancies; his letters to her are affectionate and intimate. Only two of their six children survived: Carl Thomas (1784—1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791—1844). Following Mozart’s death, Constanze was granted an annual pension of 266 gulden by Emperor Francis II. In 1809 she married a Danish diplomat, Georg Nikolaus Nissen, and lived in Copenhagen from 1810—21; after his retirement they settled in Salzburg, where Nissen began collecting materials for a biography of Mozart. Constanze completed the work after his death in 1826, and it was published in 1828.
MOZART, (JOHANN GEORG) LEOPOLD (1719—87) The Son of an Augsburg bookbinder, as a schoolboy Leopold Mozart was a frequent performer in local theatrical productions, and was also an accomplished organist and violinist. In 1737, after his father’s death, Leopold left Augsburg to study philosophy and jurisprudence at the Salzburg Benedictine University but was expelled in September 1739 for poor attendance and a failure to show proper deference to his professors and the university establishment. He served as valet and musician to Johann Baptist, Count of Thurn-Valsassina and Taxis, a canon of Salzburg cathedral and president of the consistory, before being appointed fourth violinist in the court orchestra of Archbishop Leopold Anton Eleutherius von Firmian in 1743; in addition to his court duties he taught violin, and later keyboard, to the choirboys of the cathedral oratory. By 1758 he had advanced to the post of second violinist and in 1763 to deputy Kapellmeister. Throughout these years he was a prolific composer of masses, litanies, smaller church works, cantatas, oratorios, symphonies, concertos, dances, divertimentos and other chamber music, and solo keyboard works; references in the family letters show that Leopold Mozart considered himself a ‘modern’ composer. It is almost certain that he composed new works for the court and for private performance up until c 1770, but his output decreased dramatically as he became increasingly occupied with Nannerl’s, and especially Wolfgang’s, musical and general education and the family’s tours: he acted as teacher and private secretary to his son, and when necessary as valet, impresario, publicist and travel organizer. His relationship with Wolfgang appears to have become estranged after the death of Maria Anna Mozart in 1778, but the rift between them has probably been exaggerated. His letters, which form a great part of this volume, show him to have been a loving father, albeit querulous and over-anxious when his advice is ignored, andan interested observer of life.
MOZART, MARIA ANNA (née Pertl, 1720–78) The daughter of Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl, administrator of St Gilgen, a small town near Salzburg, she married Leopold Mozart on 21 November 1747. They had seven children, five of whom died in infancy. Leopold’s and Wolfgang’s letters to her when they were travelling on their own, and her letters to Leopold from September 1777 to June 1778 (when she and Wolfgang were travelling to Paris on Mozart’s quest for an appointment) are full of news, jokes and gossip about Salzburg friends and neighbours, and especially about the target-shooting competitions, for money, that were a regular feature of their social life.
MOZART, MARIA ANNA (NANNERL) (1751–1829) Mozart’s elder sister was a promising keyboard player, but even on the early concert tours of 1762–9 she was
overshadowed by Wolfgang, who also played the violin and organ, and developed his compositional skills intensively. Surviving exercises and references in the letters show that Nannerl could compose a bass to a melody, accompany at sight and improvise; she also learned to sing and teach, but she never earned a living from music. Mozart and Nannerl remained close until he moved to Vienna: they frequently played duets, performed at private concerts and Wolfgang usually arranged to serenade Nannerl on her name day (it is likely that the so-called ‘Nannerl Septet’ K251 was written for her in 1776). However, her hopes that Wolfgang would make it possible for her to leave Salzburg dwindled after his marriage in 1782; from this date she appears to have shared with Leopold a degree of disenchantment with Mozart. On 23 August 1784 she married Johann Baptist Franz Berchtoldzu Sonnenburg (1736–1801), a magistrate of St Gilgen. He was twice widowed and already had five children; Nannerl bore him three more.
MOZART, MARIA ANNA THEKLA (1758–1841) Usually called Basle (‘little cousin’) by Mozart, she was the daughter of Leopold Mozart’s brother, Franz Alois. Mozart became good friends with her during his stay in Augsburg in 1777. Nine of his letters to her survive, unfortunately without her answers. The Basle letters are irreverent and scatological (in contrast to those he wrote at about the same time to Aloysia Weber, which are formal, even pompous) and some commentators see in them proof that she and Mozart had sexual relations; others, however, that they merely show him as earthy and playful. After Aloysia rejected him in 1778 on his return from Paris, Maria Anna Thekla softened his homecoming to Salzburg by visiting him there.
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