Mozart mania – An Irishwoman’s Diary on music and Salzburg

You can’t miss Mozart in Salzburg. He is everywhere. The place is saturated with him. Signs point to the house where he was born, where he walked, composed, practised, played and even where he prayed. The shop windows are crammed with all sorts of Mozart goodies – chocolates, perfume, T-shirts, serviettes, plates, music boxes, candles, ashtrays, golf balls, shampoo, perfume and balloons.

Salzburg

The thing that really upset me was the lady’s – well, undergarment – that played

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

when unfastened. Despite our long musical love affair, I had just about enough of Mozart as he is commercially portrayed in his hometown of Salzburg.

Yet all the time I felt drawn towards those hallowed places where he might have lived his life. A sort of life, anyhow. I think of his poor mother. She, who up until he was born had given birth to six children of which only one, Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl, survived past the first year of life. I think of his father Leopold making a living as violinist and valet to the cathedral canon in Salzburg.

Then along came their genius, 260 years ago on January 27th, 1756 – and they had him christened with the names Johannes Chrisostomus Wolfgangus Theophilius.

Can you imagine it? They had this tiny little boy with four big names who sang before he could walk and played music before he could talk.

He must have astonished and maybe even frightened them. Can you picture his father coming home from work one day to find that his four-year-old son had written a piano concerto?

And what about his poor mother? No cute and cuddly baby for her – just a frantic, frenetic young thing who would not be silenced.

Prodigy

So father takes the boy prodigy’s musical education into his own hands and, when the youngster is six years old, the emperor and empress receive the Mozarts at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna – father, daughter and son. There, delighted with all the attention, little Mozart jumps onto Empress Maria Theresa’s lap and gives her a hearty kiss. She rewards the boy and his talented sister with a set of clothing suitable for their upcoming tour of Europe.

Then it is Paris for Christmas, staying at Versailles, and on to London to be housed at Buckingham Palace for the new year. When the boy is only eight years old he responds to a request made by Queen Sophie Charlotte of England by composing six sonatas for piano, flute or violin. And by the time he is 10 years old he is composing and playing for all the royal houses of Europe. There are prolonged stays in the Hague, Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva and Zurich.

Tour

After 3½ years of constant touring, the little ensemble returns home. But the political situation in Salzburg is unstable and Mozart’s father decides to avoid it by organising a tour in Italy. Their first concert is in Verona where the young genius celebrates his 14th birthday. He is much taken with the romantic-sounding language of Italy and decides to call himself Amadeo from then on (the spelling Amadeus would follow a lot later).

At 24 he is rejected by the love of his life, Aloisia Weber. Two years later he marries her sister, Constanze. But tragedy seems to stalk him. His mother dies, his first child dies, his debts mount and he has to change residences several times to escape his debtors.

Despite all that, he is composing, composing, composing, but without lucrative employment he is unable to support his family properly. His six-month-old daughter dies, as does another the following year just a few hours after her birth. Yet his music resounds around Europe – Don Giovanni, the Marriage of Figaro, and in Vienna the Magic Flute is presented for the first time on September 30th, 1791. Amadeo is overworked, bankrupt and stressed to his absolute limit.

Burial

On November 20th, he falls ill and he dies on December 5th, a month before his 36th birthday. There is no money to give him a decent burial. His body is taken away and buried in a pauper’s grave at St Mark’s Cemetery. His wife is so ill that she cannot attend the funeral. Nobody knows exactly where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is buried.

In Salzburg in January, they will celebrate the 260th year of his birth with as much of his music that they can sell tickets for and fill the shop windows with all sorts of gaudy souvenirs with his face printed on them just for the tourists.