Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Death Of Leopold Mozart; Don Giovanni; Symphonies in E Flat G Minor And C Major; Cosi Fan Tutte; Later Works

Death of Leopold Mozart In February 1787, Mozart was back in Vienna in a joyous frame of mind.

One may question that this jubilant mood was of long duration.

That the new opera was to be ready as early as the following October was hardly the greatest of his worries, for Mozart, like Haydn, Bach, and other masters of that century, was accustomed to a speed of creative production that puts our machine age to shame.

The welcome the Viennese accorded the returning traveler, flushed by the recollection of his recent triumphs, was frosty.

Also, there came the news that his father’s health was failing.

“Naturally,” reflected Leopold, “old people do not grow younger!

” Wolfgang wrote his parent in words that nobly convey the essence of his own mature philosophy: “_I need not tell you with what anxiety I await better news from you ...

although I am wont in all things to anticipate the worst.

Since death is the true goal of our lives, I have made myself so well acquainted during the past two years with this true and best friend of mankind that the idea of it no longer holds any terror for me, but rather much that is tranquil and comforting.

And I thank God that He has granted me the good fortune to obtain this opportunity of regarding death as the key to our true happiness.

I never lie down in bed without considering that, young as I am, perhaps I may on the morrow be no more.

Yet not one of those who know me say that I am morose or melancholy, and for this I thank my Creator and wish heartily that the same happiness may be given to my fellow men.

_” One is moved to think of Shubert’s words to his father a few years later when, looking upon the lakes and peaks of the Austrian Alps, he wrote: “_As if death were the worst thing that could befall one ...

could one but look on these divine lakes and mountains ...

he would deem it a great happiness to be restored for a new life to the inscrutable forces of the earth!

_” All the same, Mozart was profoundly shaken when, on May 28, his father passed away without the opportunity to see his son once more.

“You can realize my feelings,” he wrote his friend Gottfried von Jacquin.

We shall not go far wrong when we surmise that these deep and solemn emotions colored to a considerable degree some of the more tragic pages of the nascent _Don Giovanni_, the book of which Da Ponte was now writing for him while working at the same time on librettos for Salieri and Martin!

In the spring of 1787 the composer had a brief but memorable encounter;

for at this time there came briefly to Vienna from Bonn a sixteen-year-old youth—Ludwig van Beethoven, a protégé of the Count Waldstein—presumably to study with Mozart.

The latter heard his visitor improvise and was at first unimpressed because he believed the extemporization had been “memorized,” but was converted as soon as he gave the young Rhinelander a complicated theme to treat on the spot.

The originality and seriousness of what he heard stirred the older musician to the prophecy: “This young man is going to make the world talk about him!

” But Mozart had, at the moment, no leisure for this prospective pupil, who returned shortly to Bonn and on his later trip after Mozart’s death placed himself under the direction of Haydn.

Don Giovanni In mid-September Mozart and Constanze went to Prague, bringing the partly finished _Don Giovanni_ score.

Bondini had found the composer lodgings at the house on the Kohlmarkt called the “Three Lion Cubs.

” Across the way, at the inn _Zum Platteis_, rooms were engaged for Da Ponte and, as the windows faced each other, composer and librettist had long discussions across the narrow street about details of the book, in the preparation of which Mozart, with his keen dramatic instincts, played a dominating role.

He and Constanze appeared, however, to have spent quite as much time with the Duscheks at the _Bertramka_ as at the “Three Lion Cubs.

” Rehearsals consumed a great amount of energy, there were numerous modifications to be made in the music (the young baritone, Luigi Bassi, who had the title role, demanded _five_ recastings of the duet _La ci darem_ before he was satisfied with the music), and Mozart had all manner of trouble with Catarina Micelli, the Elvira.

In addition, the singer of Zerlina, Caterina Bondini, could not utter the peasant girl’s shriek in the first finale to the composer’s satisfaction until he terrified her by grasping her roughly and thus causing her to scream exactly as he wanted.

After one of the last rehearsals the conductor, Kucharz, being asked by the master for his candid opinion of the opera, replied encouragingly: “Whatever comes from Mozart will always delight in Bohemia.

” “I assure you, dear friend, I have spared myself no pains to produce something worthy for the people of Prague!

” declared the composer, who had already boasted that “my Praguers understand me.

” Here is the place, no doubt, to tell once more the oft-repeated tale of the overture, put on paper, according to a hoary legend, the night before the première while Constanze kept the master awake by plying him with punch and telling him stories.

As a matter of fact, the overture was written the night before the dress rehearsal—and it was nothing unusual for Mozart to write down at the last moment a work mentally finished in every detail.

A few days after the first performance the Prague _Oberpostamtszeitung_ published a review that probably excels anything ever written about the opera.

It read simply: “Connoisseurs and musicians say that nothing like it has ever been produced in Prague.

” The opinion is probably as true today as in 1787. For there is literally nothing like _Don Giovanni_, either among its composer’s creations or elsewhere.

One can only share the emotion of Rossini when, being shown the manuscript score, he said to its owner, the singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia: “I want to bow the knee before this sacred relic!

” And echo the words of Richard Wagner: “What is more perfect than _every_ number in ‘_Don Giovanni_’?

Where else has music won so infinitely rich an individuality, been able to characterize so surely, so definitely and in such exuberant plentitude as here?

” _Figaro_ is, if you will, the more perfect artistic entity of the two;

_Don Giovanni_ is looser, less consistent, on the surface even grossly illogical.

But so, too, is human nature.

And if all the world’s a stage, what more than a _dramma giocoso_ is the experience of life?

Whatever the narrow intent of Lorenzo da Ponte, when he carpentered the book out of well-worn odds and ends, it was with a profound knowledge of the sorrows and absurdities of humankind that Mozart breathed into it an abiding soul.

“Long live da Ponte, long live Mozart!

” had written the stage director, Domenico Guardasoni.

“All impresarios, all artists must exalt them to the skies; for as long as such men live there can be no more question of theatre miseries!

” The Duscheks outdid themselves to make life pleasant for their guests.

Mozart found time to compose several songs and even a superb concert air, _Bella mia fiamma, addio_, for Josefa after that lady had locked him up in the garden house till he had finished the promised music.

On November 15, 1787, which virtually coincided with the composer’s return to Vienna, Gluck died.

Less than a month later Joseph II appointed Mozart to the older master’s post of Kammerkompositeur, with an annual salary of 800 Gulden.

Gluck had received 2000; and before long Mozart was complaining that his pay was “too much for what he did, too little for what he could do.

” What he did was principally to supply minuets, contradances, and _Teutsche_ for court balls and similar occasions.

The year 1788 dawned in gloomy fashion for Mozart.

To be sure, _Don Giovanni_ had its first Viennese hearing on May 7, with a cast including his sister-in-law, Aloysia Lange, as Donna Anna, Catarina Cavalieri (the original Constanze in _Die Entführung_) as Elvira, and Francesco Benucci, the first Figaro, as Leporello.

Mozart had cut out some numbers, replacing them with new ones, eliminated the platitudinous epilogue, and ended the work with the prodigious hell music of Don Giovanni’s disappearance.

The Emperor remarked: “The opera is divine, perhaps even finer than ‘_Figaro_.

’ But it is a rather tough morsel for the teeth of my Viennese”—to which Mozart replied, “Let us give them time to chew it!

” Symphonies in E flat, G minor, and C major Yet from now on he was to pay for his Prague triumphs.

With a kind of fateful persistence things seemed to go wrong.

That an infant daughter died was a rather familiar affliction (of the children of the Mozart couple only the sons, Karl and Raymund Leopold, survived infancy).

Money troubles plagued him unremittingly.

Again and again he had to appeal for loans to Michael Puchberg, a merchant and brother Mason, and later to Franz Hofdemel, a jurist of his acquaintance whose wife was one of his pupils.

But, by and large, these pupils were becoming scarcer and there seemed steadily less patronage for the academies he planned.

To make matters worse Constanze’s management of the household appeared to go from bad to worse.

The arrangements of works like Handel’s _Acis and Galathea_ and _Messiah_, which he was making about this time for the parsimonious Baron van Swieten, brought in as good as nothing.

Mozart’s affairs were falling into a sordid, not to say a tragic, state.

Small wonder, therefore, that he grasped at the opportunity to settle outside of Vienna proper in a house in the Waehring district, where the air was purer than in the heart of the city and where he had the added advantages of quiet and a garden.

A change of residence had never been a particular hardship for the Mozarts.

In the space of nine years they moved eleven times in Vienna alone.

_“Their life,” says Alfred Einstein, “was like a perpetual tour, changing from one hotel room to another....

In one of the handsomer dwellings, Schulergasse 8, the ceiling of Mozart’s workroom had fine plaster ornamentation with sprites and cherubs.

I am convinced that Mozart never wasted a glance on it.

He was ready at any instant to exchange Vienna for another city or Austria for another country....

He was thinking of a trip to Russia, as a result of conversations with the Russian ambassador in Dresden in 1789. But he had to be satisfied with smaller journeys, and with ‘journeys’ within Vienna.

”_ In his Waehring surroundings, however, he boasted of being able to accomplish more work in a few days than elsewhere in a month.

The finest fruit of this suburban sojourn is the glorious symphonic trilogy, the masterpieces in E flat, G minor, and C major, composed in June, July, and August, respectively—the third, the sublime “Jupiter,” the last of Mozart’s forty-one symphonies and given its deathless name no one knows exactly by whom or why.

The three, which have a profound psychological connection, were written, in all probability, for a series of academies that never took place.

However this may be, they are the crown of Mozart’s symphonic compositions and rank indisputably as the greatest symphonies before Beethoven.

_Così fan tutte_ In April 1789, a ray of hope suddenly appeared to illuminate his depressing horizon.

A friend and pupil, the young prince Carl Lichnowsky, who had estates in Silesia and an important rank in the Prussian army, invited Mozart to accompany him on a trip to Berlin.

Lichnowsky enjoyed influence at the court of the music-loving Prussian king, Frederick William II, and seemed ready to recommend his teacher to the good graces of the monarch.

At last Mozart had reason to anticipate a well-paying post!

The pleasure-loving Constanze resigned herself with the best grace possible to remain behind.

The travelers stopped off in Prague, in Dresden, in Leipzig (where Mozart played the organ in St. Thomas Church in so masterly a fashion that Bach’s erstwhile pupil, the aged cantor, Johann Friedrich Doles, believed for a moment that his old master had come back to life and hastened to show his delighted guest one of the Bach motets the church possessed).

On April 25 Mozart arrived at the court in Potsdam, where the King gave him 100 Friedrichsdor, ordered six string quartets and some easy clavier sonatas for his daughter, but did nothing about a Kapellmeister position or a commission for an opera!

Mozart did go to the theater in Berlin where he heard his own _Entführung_, was applauded by the audience, and audibly scolded a blundering violinist in the orchestra!

But his fortunes had not materially changed and in May he was writing to Constanze: “My dear little wife, you will have to get more satisfaction from my return than from any money I am bringing.

” When he reached home and found her suffering from a foot trouble he sent her, regardless of his depleted purse, to near-by Baden for a cure—at the same time admonishing her to beware of flirtations!

Then he set to work on the quartets for the Prussian king, of which he finished three (the last he was to write), and a single “easy” sonata, instead of the promised six, for the Princess Friederike.

In September 1789, he was to compose for his friend, the clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler, the celestial Clarinet Quintet (K. 581), which for sheer euphony is almost without parallel in its composer’s writings.

The success of a revival of _Figaro_ in August 1789 appears to have moved the Emperor to approach Mozart with a commission for a new opera.

The outcome was _Così fan tutte_, the incentive to the plot being an incident said to have taken place in Viennese society.

Once again Lorenzo da Ponte was called upon to put the piece into shape.

The fundamentals of the story are to be found in Boccaccio and it may well have been in the _Decameron_ that Da Ponte discovered the real basis of his dexterous and amusing, though highly artificial, comedy.

We know little about the circumstances surrounding the composition of the piece.

On January 21, 1790, _Così fan tutte_ was performed at the Burgtheater.

The reviews, if middling, were not outright unfavorable.

“The music of Mozart is charming, the plot amusing enough,” wrote Count Zinzendorf in his diary; and the _Journal des Luxus und der Moden_ remarked: “It is sufficient to say of the music that it was composed by Mozart!

” Until the following autumn the work achieved only ten performances.

It is not unreasonable to explain this by the fact that in 1790 Joseph II, who for some time had been ailing, died and was succeeded by a ruler of very different tendencies—his brother, Leopold II.

Later Works With the accession of the new emperor, Mozart briefly imagined the “gates of his good luck were about to open.

” He was quickly disillusioned.

Leopold II was hard, cold, unmusical.

He instantly dismissed some of his predecessor’s most faithful artistic servitors.

Da Ponte, for one, was dropped.

Mozart’s opponent, Salieri, cautiously withdrew into obscurity and waited behind the scenes for a new opportunity.

Van Swieten tried to obtain for Mozart a position as teacher of the Archduke Franz, but nothing came of the well-meant effort, and presently the composer found his pupils reduced to two.

His health began to trouble him alarmingly, with headaches and tooth troubles.

He had the mortification of being ignored when the King of Naples visited Vienna, while Salieri and Haydn enjoyed special honors.

He was not even asked to participate in the musical festivities in connection with the Emperor’s coronation in October 1790, or to travel to Frankfurt, where the ceremony was to take place.

So he decided to make the journey at his own expense, hoping against hope for some distinction or reward.

Though he did not obtain either, he at least had the satisfaction of knowing that his _Don Giovanni_, _Figaro_, _Entführung_, and even the early _Finta giardiniera_, were relished in neighboring Mainz.

The opera chosen for the actual coronation was Wranitzky’s _Oberon_.

However, the Frankfurt town council “graciously” allowed Mozart to give a concert “on his own responsibility” at a local theater, October 13 at 11 in the morning!

“Plenty of honor, but little money,” he wrote.

He played two concertos (probably the F major, K. 459, and the D major, K. 537) and a rondo.

As ever, his improvisation impressed deeply—only a royal luncheon party and a maneuver of Hessian troops were counter attractions that cut down the attendance.

On the way home he stopped off in Mannheim and Munich, saw his old friends Cannabich and Ramm, played at an academy the Elector Carl Theodor gave for the returning King of Naples, and went home to Vienna, where Constanze had moved their effects into a new apartment in the Rauhensteingasse—destined to be his last home on earth!

In his new dwelling the composer completed by December two superb works—the String Quintet in D (K. 593) and the stunning Adagio and Allegro in F minor (K. 594) “for an organ cylinder in a clock.

” About that same time the director of the Italian Opera in London, one O’Reilly, suggested that he come for half a year to England, to write two operas for that theater and give concerts, and promised him 300 pounds sterling.

Nothing stood in the way of O’Reilly’s suggestion, except operas that the master was soon to provide for Vienna and Prague.

Soon afterwards, Haydn on his way to London took leave of his younger friend who bade him farewell with the heart-shaking words: “I fear, Papa, this is the last time we shall see each other!

” Salomon, Haydn’s manager, had planned to bring Mozart to England on the older composer’s return to the Continent.

To be sure, there was other work to be done, if in large part trifling.

But early in January 1791, Mozart completed his last clavier concerto, the singularly affecting one in B flat (K. 595), which harks back to earlier models and lacks some of the more original and dramatic elements of the incomparable ones in D minor, E flat, A major, C major, and C minor.

And in June 1791, on a visit to Constanze in Baden (where she had gone for another cure!

), he wrote for a local choirmaster, Anton Stoll, that short _Ave Verum_ motet, than which nothing of Mozart’s is more unutterably seraphic.