Mozart: Requiem of Genius (The True Story of Wolfgang Mozart)

90 Pages·2016·0.44 MB·English

by  Alexander Kennedy

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Table of Contents

Prologue
Overview
Introduction
Chapter 1: Background and Early Childhood
Chapter 2: European Concert Tours
Chapter 3: Trials and Triumph in Vienna and Italy
Chapter 4: Travels to Germany and Paris with his Mother
Chapter 5: Concertmaster
Chapter 6: Mozart in Vienna
Chapter 7: Mozart in Prague
Chapter 8: Mozart’s Last Years
Chapter 9: Mozart’s Legacy
Epilogue
Sources
Prologue

When Mozart and his librettist—the lyricist for an opera—began work on The
Marriage of Figaro in 1786, they knew it was potentially explosive, even
revolutionary, material.

The French playwright and polymath Pierre Beaumarchais, who had written
their source material, had become one of Europe’s best known authors, but this
had as much to do with controversy and scandal as his undeniable talent.
Beaumarchais’ father had been a watchmaker of France’s struggling Protestant
minority, but his son had managed to rise into the lower nobility with the success
of his play The Barber of Seville (adapted after Mozart’s lifetime into Giaochino
Rossini’s famous opera). But it was The Marriage of Figaro that made
Beaumarchais’ name on the world stage—and caused a good deal of political
trouble.

The play thoroughly satirized the nobility, finishing with a thorough defense of
liberty and denunciation of inherited rank by its lower-class hero, Figaro. Marie
Antoinette is said to have enjoyed it, but King Louis XVI stormed out from a
private reading of the script, ironically declaring that “the Bastille would have to
be destroyed if the performance of the play is not to have dangerous
consequences.” When aristocratic and wifely pressure finally persuaded the king
to allow the play to be staged, it was a smash hit. Figaro’s fifth act rant in
particular always received an ovation, and so many people packed the theater
that there were occasional fatalities from people being crushed to death.

In the long run, Louis was exactly right, of course. Georges Danton, a famous
revolutionary, declared that The Marriage of Figaro had “killed the nobility” in
France, and Napoleon Bonaparte later voiced a similar sentiment. The French
Revolution was still a few years in the future when Mozart was writing—in fact,
Marie Antoinette outlived the composer by several years. But Mozart was reliant
on Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, for
patronage, and Joseph was determined not to repeat his sister’s mistakes.

Knowledge of Mozart’s political views is sketchy and speculative, but it is at
least clear that he was no Beethoven, passionately dedicating his third
symphony, Sinfonia Eroica, to the self-made Napoleon, and then just as
passionately tearing up that dedication when he felt Napoleon had betrayed
democratic ideals. Mozart appears to have been interested in Figaro simply
because it was funny and successful, and he thought an operatic adaptation of it
could make him a good deal of money. Opera composers were paid with flat
fees, and published scores were almost nonexistent, but a major public success
would at least win him future contracts and patronage.

To make it more acceptable to his patrons, Mozart’s librettist, Da Ponte,
scrubbed the text of its political implications wherever he could. Da Ponte was a
somewhat revolutionary character himself, a man who later generations
recognized as a Bohemian artist. He was born a Jew, converted to Catholicism,
and even joined the priesthood for the free education it provided. But he was not
a religious man at heart, and indeed was a companion to the famous lover
Casanova on many of the latter’s escapades. Banished from Venice for fifteen
years for his omnivorous sexual tastes, Da Ponte began writing librettos in
Vienna for such popular composers as Antonio Salieri—then considered the
superior talent to Mozart.

At its heart, The Marriage of Figaro remained the story of an intelligent man of
the lower classes winning a victory over a foolish noble—there was nothing Da
Ponte could or would do about that. However, he took out the sharpest of
Beaumarchais’ critiques. Figaro’s famous rant against inherited privilege
became, instead, a long aria railing against the faithlessness of women. The
censors approved the revised version without much objection; Joseph II is said to
have approved it personally.

Mozart’s opera was therefore not revolutionary for its politics. Instead, it was
revolutionary for its music.

Biographer Paul Johnson observes that Mozart appears to have worked harder on
Figaro than on any other piece in his life, but given Mozart’s ability to compose
at terrific speed, this simply means that the composer worked on the opera for
six weeks instead of two or three. The result was magical. At last, Mozart had a
project on which he could bring all of his musical gifts to bear: his genius for
melody, his startling ability to convert emotion into sound, and his rich
knowledge of the strengths and limitations of each of the orchestra’s instruments
(Mozart could play them all, it was said, save for the harp). Yet perhaps because
of Mozart’s ability to compose so quickly, the effect is one of unity, despite the
multiplicity of voices and styles that make up the whole.

Figaro remains one of the most beloved operas ever written and a modern staple,
known by performers as the opera that “can’t go wrong.” A century after its
premiere, Johannes Brahms said “every number in Mozart’s Figaro is a miracle
to me; I find it absolutely incomprehensible how someone can create something
so absolutely perfect; nothing like it has ever been done again.”

On May 1, 1786, Figaro premiered at the Burgtheater, built forty years before by
Joseph and Marie Antoinette’s mother, Empress Maria Teresa, as Austria’s
National Theater. Mozart conducted the orchestra while playing the keyboard.
At first, it seemed that he had a hit on his hands. The audience demanded so
many encores that Emperor Joseph II issued rules banning “excessive applause”
at the theater so that he could return to the palace in time for bed. This was
surely an improvement over his famous complaint about Mozart’s previous
opera: “Too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and monstrous many notes.”
Mozart conducted the second performance and then handed over the conductor’s
duties to another in order to return to composing.

But despite this flash of success, Figaro fizzled in the coming weeks. The calls
for encores diminished. A rival composer’s faction paid hooligans to hiss and
boo the best numbers from the galleries. A competing opera (also scripted by Da
Ponte) with stereotypical characters and straightforward music opened and
promptly stole Mozart’s crowds. Figaro finally had to close after just nine
performances. Perhaps Mozart had included “too many notes” again after all. He
was 450 florins richer, his initial flat fee, but he still hadn’t attained the fame he
sought. We can only imagine how he must have felt to have the best work of his
life—and surely a man with his ear knew it was his best work, arguably the best
he ever wrote—disappear so quickly.

But then came Prague. Figaro was staged there by some of Mozart’s friends at
the end of the year, and the reaction was all the composer could have wished. He
rushed there himself to find a city in the grip of Figaro fever. Men and women
were whistling and dancing to its songs in the streets. Mozart wrote that “they
talk about nothing but Figaro. Nothing is played, sung, or whistled but Figaro.
No opera is drawing like Figaro—nothing, nothing but Figaro!” He came home
from his short visit with a thousand florins in his pocket from new commissions.
He also had a contract from a Prague impresario for him and Da Ponte to write
another opera in the same style for the following season: Don Giovanni.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had finally arrived, and the world’s music would
never be the same.
Overview

Chapter 1: Background and Early Childhood This chapter introduces
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and describes his musically-gifted family, as well
as his early training to become a child prodigy.

Chapter 2: European Concert Tours This chapter follows young Mozart on
his “child prodigy tours,” performing in the great European capitals—London,
Paris, Vienna—and meeting royalty, including Louis XV of France and Maria
Theresa of Austria.

Chapter 3: Trials and Triumph in Vienna and Italy In this chapter, Mozart
makes his first serious efforts at composition with pasticcio concertos,
symphonies, and a failed comic opera. The young genius continues to travel
widely, is formally certified as a master composer, and becomes the
concertmaster of Salzburg.

Chapter 4: Travels to Germany and Paris with his Mother This chapter
looks at several of Mozart’s early love affairs, as well as his decision to try to
make his fortune in Paris. But Mozart no sooner arrives than he is thrust into a
controversy tearing the opera world asunder.

Chapter 5: Concertmaster

In this chapter, Mozart resumes his former post as concertmaster of Salzburg,
but his growing ego leads him into a clash with the archbishop that nearly
destroys his career.

Chapter 6: Mozart in Vienna

Mozart moves to Vienna, where he marries and continues to win respect for his
growing skill, though he remains shut out of the official musicians’ society. The
chapter also examines his relationship with his contemporary and friend Joseph
Haydn.

Chapter 7: Mozart in Prague

In this chapter, Mozart finally finds his audience with the Prague premiere of his
masterpiece, La nozze di Figaro. At the height of his popularity and skill, he
follows it with the equally great success of Don Giovanni.

Chapter 8: Mozart’s Last Years

In the final years of his short life, Mozart continues to clash with his Habsburg
patrons, but produces further operatic masterpieces, such as Cosi fan tutte and
The Magic Flute. The chapter closes with Mozart’s premature death, and his
frantic drive to complete his famous Requiem before passing away.

Chapter 9: Mozart’s Legacy

This chapter examines Mozart’s ongoing contribution to world culture, and how
the great man’s music continues to influence genres ranging from opera to jazz
to heavy metal.
Introduction

Genius comes in a wide variety, but can be broken down into two types:
practical and creative. While practical geniuses have contributed to society in
ways that are completely unfathomable—picture, for a moment, what life would
be like without Philo Farnsworth’s invention of the television, for instance—it is
the creative geniuses that have always been the ones to capture the collective
imagination of society. Perhaps it is because many of their skills seem like things
average people can actually learn—after all, there is no formal education
necessary to write the next Great Novel; just ask Harper Lee, H.G. Wells, or
Charles Dickens—but learning about their lives and finding out what motivated
them has always fascinated people. Maybe they hoped to find the key to these
people’s success, to discover what made their minds come up with things that
were extraordinary, even revolutionary.

Sadly, at least as far as some geniuses are concerned, there is simply no
substitute for natural talent.

Mozart’s personal repertoire simply could not have been written by someone
who was merely studious and hardworking; it required a level of intelligence and
intuition that cannot be taught. The way he worked, the way he thought, was so
unique and groundbreaking that it changed music forever. He and his
contemporary, Joseph Haydn, were directly responsible for literally creating an
entirely new genre of music: Classical.

But his achievements and genius are both well-documented elsewhere. What is
truly astonishing about Mozart is the level of dedication he demonstrated from
the tender age of three and continued throughout his tragically short life. By the
time he died at thirty-five, Mozart had composed greater than six hundred
individual pieces, from operas to quartets—though his most famous remains
Twelve Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman,” the melody that became
“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

While many geniuses may have found their work turned into a mere children’s
song, Mozart likely would have been perfectly happy that so many people fondly
sing it to this day. He was equally studious and precocious, playful and
hardworking, and took great pleasure in seeing his work recognized for its value.
Though many modern depictions portray Mozart as slightly mad, there is little, if