Marrying Mozart

by Stephanie Cowell

  “What, Mother, how can you call it that,” he cried, coming close to her with his face full of affection. “I’ve arranged it all. The tour with the Webers will bring a great deal of money, enough for all of us.”

  “You still intend to do that? Your own father will be beside himself when he receives my letter. Do you think just to post word that this unknown chit of a girl and her farmwife sister will be singing will be enough to fill hundreds of seats? You’re the only one whose name is known at all, and you yourself struggle for enough concerts and patronage. Your father goes about in such shabby garments he can barely show his face to the Archbishop (I couldn’t believe the state of his shirts, truly past mending) and now you propose to divide what you earn between us and them.” She turned to finish making the bed, threw up her hands, and covered her face.

  Between her fingers, she said, “You haven’t the power to uplift them, and it will drag us further down.”

  He pulled her hands away from her face. “Mother, I know voices,” he said. “Aloysia has the makings of a great singer. She could be one of the finest prima donnas in Europe.”

  “What do I care about her abilities? She only wants what she can get from you, and I wouldn’t trust her, nor any of them. I knew it from the first moment I mounted those many flights of steps. ”

  “You say that about someone I esteem so highly? You say that? Well, I’m going, I don’t know if I will be back. You’ve slandered her and wounded me.”

  He ran out and walked the cold, windy streets for a long time, until he had lessons to give. By the time they were done, and his pupils had noticed his distraction, darkness had come. Going home was an impossibility. If only Leutgeb were here. All his friends had left the city for one reason or another; even Cannabich was traveling. It was likely the court would be moving to Munich.

  A wet snow had begun, and he found refuge in a familiar eating place. He bought paper and borrowed pen and ink, then began to work on a piano/violin sonata.

  “Master, we must close,” said the host, and Mozart looked around, startled to see everyone had gone but him, and the exhausted boy who was mopping the floor, leaning half asleep on the mop. He rushed out into the wet snow with his cloak open, and the host ran after him, crying, “Master, master,” and gave him the flopping, forgotten pages. Two slipped from the man’s hand and went blowing down the street. Mozart retrieved them where they had caught about a horse post, a little wet and blotted, and stood gazing at the melody under the gaslight. He wished that the eating house had not evicted him, or that he could have gone to some other quiet place where he could write more and forget his mother’s blanched face, the mournful eyes that accused him and spoke against his proud and imaginative plans.

  He leaned against the door of a house.

  So much had happened since his promise in the Confectionery. He had written two more songs for Aloysia, recalling the rare range and timbre of her voice, which extended from a few notes below middle C to the very highest range far above the treble staff, the E, the F, and the untouchable flicker of the G, which only the rarest of voices could reach. He was a musician, and he knew the quality of her voice: even in his love he knew the voices of both the older Weber sisters were rich and enviable.

  And how the whole casual, warm family had welcomed him, but more than that, much more, had been Aloysias arms flung about him on those steps smelling of other people’s cooking, and her soft lips against his, and her little breasts pressed against his chest, and her tears of relief and joy at their sudden strange blurting of love for each other. I didn’t see at first, Mozart, I didn’t know.... My God, she loved him. The most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and she loved him. It was as if she had been waiting for him all his life. Then she had drawn him upstairs to her family, into the room with the clavier, the burning fire, and a bottle of wine and a polished glass. He felt suddenly the contrast between the heaviness and bleakness of his dutiful life and the bright gaiety of the girls and their family, the clothes and music all thrown about, and good, kind Fridolin Weber’s welcome. He had been accepted as her suitor then; he had been accepted as her betrothed.

  He drew his cloak closer; a watchman passing by inspected him for drunkenness but, seeing him sober, said, “Go home, young man.” And Mozart straightened and began to walk very slowly toward the house where he and his mother were guests.

  Would his plans to tour with the sisters lift the family from their obscurity and difficulties? Could he do it? Did he not owe his own family everything? Had they not given all for him? Perhaps his mother was right. He ought to make better fortune himself, and then raise her up. Within a few months of being in Paris, he should be wanted everywhere, and then could simply send for her and help make her career. Yes, then he could help lift her sweet and agile voice to fame.

  By now he had reached the house; admitted by a weary maid servant, he mounted the stairs to their rooms. His mother was already in bed in her nightcap, but he could tell she was not asleep. “We are going to Paris,” he said. “I have decided.”

  Without turning, she spoke, the voice a murmur against the blue bed hangings. “Then say you’ll also forget her.”

  He stood quietly with his wet sonata under his coat. “I can never forget her; she’s my muse. I’ll go with you and make our fortune and then come back for her. She’ll be more than muse then; she’ll be my wife.”

  There was nothing Sophie loved to do more than sleep, carefully plumping the pillow just so, slipping one arm under it, drawing her knees up under her wool nightgown, so nested in the old quilting that the world disappeared. In her dreams she heard voices, raised her head, and looked about. The early morning air was still dark, and an icy rain beat at the windows. The light snow of last night had turned to rain in the unpredictable weather of the world.

  Surely it was not time to rise yet, and where were her sisters? Their bedclothes were thrown back, and only the impressions of their bodies remained on the lumpy mattresses. Outside there was only rain, not even the bells of the ancient bread cart horse. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and trundled to the door. Last night had been her twelfth birthday, and she had been given new wool slippers, but she now had no idea where they were. Perhaps, she thought sleepily, some sister had already borrowed them.

  Where were Constanze and Josefa? She wound her bed quilt about her and shuffled down the hall barefoot, following the voices that came from the parlor. Who was there at this hour? It could surely not be time for pupils. Creaking open the door, she looked about bewildered, wondering at first if she had mistook morning for evening. All the family members sat or stood about the room in their night clothes, their expressions grave. Constanze was wrapped in her quilt, huddled on the sofa, with her feet drawn under her for warmth, Aloysia leaning against her; Josefa and her father stared out the window while her mother sat close mouthed in the best chair, a cap pulled over her curling rags. The fireplace was cold and dark, and the clavier still huddled under its wool shawl. Standing in the middle of them all was Wolfgang Mozart in his cloak and hat, unshaven and wet, his shoes leaving moist spots on the floor.

  There was no sign of her new wool slippers.

  “Why, what’s happened?” she murmured, feeling for her handkerchief; her nose was already beginning to run.

  Her mother turned to her, face long with sadness. “Mozart’s come early with bad news. He must go away for a time to Paris. The tour with your two sisters must be temporarily postponed.”

  “To Paris, away from here? But if you must, you must. It’s not your fault,” Sophie said at once, going to him and taking his hand.

  Mozart said, “We leave in an hour by coach, or I wouldn’t have come so early. I had to come myself, and not merely send word. I’ll send my address as soon as I arrive, the very day, and write to all of you.” Words failed him then. He kissed all their cheeks, even Maria Caecilia’s, who turned away a little; he embraced Fridolin Weber with both arms. Then he took Aloysia’s hand and left the family’s rooms with he
r, closing the door behind him. The others heard their voices for some time, though the words were indistinguishable, and then his footsteps going rapidly down the stairs.

  When she came back, her face was wet with tears. “He promised me,” she said, her mouth very tight. “He promised me and now he asks me to wait. It will be at least a year before we can be married. Now it’s all settled, but the question is when? He’s going to Paris without me. Oh, will I always have to wait, all my life? Will I be twenty before anything happens to me?” and she walked down the hall into the communal bedchamber, closing the door. Soon they heard her soft weeping, and Constanze, with a look of misery, ran off to comfort her. Maria Caecilia said nothing more but turned heavily to her bedchamber, followed sadly by her husband. That door, too, was closed.

  Now alone in the parlor, Josefa and Sophie snuggled under one quilt, the eldest girl rubbing the feet of her little sister. Josefa did not speak at first. After a time she said, looking straight ahead, “He’ll come back. He’s honorable, he’ll come back and try to keep his promises to us if he can, but I feel sorry for him because he loves her and she has no heart. God forgive me for saying it, for I’d do anything I could for her, but it’s true. It’s true, Sophie, don’t protest, you kind child—but she’s also weary of Mother’s fantasies and her own. He at least is real. Now I’m going to make a fire and coffee. Surprisingly, Father’s brother did send over some money yesterday, though it probably shortened his life to do so. Thorwart’s also promised some. We’ll manage for a time.”

  Sophie nodded. “It will all come out for the best,” she said.

  “Perhaps, but which way is that, darling? How do we know what’s best? How do any of us know?”

  Below, through the rain, Sophie heard the sound of the bread wagon’s bells, and there, under the music table, as if they had been contently waiting for her, were her new wool slippers. Gratefully wriggling her feet into them, and borrowing a dressing gown that someone had left draped over the clavier, she hurried down the stairs. In the gray rain the wretched dripping horse stood waiting, water glistening on its brass bells, which were tied with bright, soaking ribbons. The street was slowly coming to life. As the girl took the two warm loaves and ran upstairs, to be greeted by the smell of newly ground coffee beans, she wished that the events of this early morning had been nothing but a dream, and that she were still asleep, warm and dry in her lumpy bed.

  Sophie Weber, March 1842

  YESTERDAY MONSIEUR NOVELLO CLIMBED THE STAIRS of my Salzburg rooms once more to gather stories for his biography of Mozart. I had only just enough time before he knocked to reach for the cluster of curls that I pin on my hair. I don’t put my hair in rags anymore; I haven’t in years. Then I sat back, cane near my hand, looking at this genial, balding musicologist who had come so far to meet me and who always brought me chocolates. I suppose the happy eating of them over many years has brought me to my considerable weight, but as a girl I was thin as a twig.

  “So you and your wife live in London, monsieur?”

  “We do, and gather many musicians for concerts there.”

  “I hear the city is damp.”

  “It is indeed.”

  He looked about at the clutter of books, garments, letters, a violin without strings, piles of papers—some tied, some loose. Sometimes I feel all the lives of my sisters and I, which went such different ways, have come home together here. There are my grandmother’s oval cameo, Mother’s black silk bonnet, the handwritten manuscript of Mozart’s first song for Aloysia, and, of course, in the bottom of the wardrobe, the hatbox with its letters tied by a lavender ribbon.

  Monsieur Novello took out a bound notebook, and his small, portable writing desk, which he balanced on his narrow knees. “Last time,” he said, “you had stopped when Mozart had pledged himself to your sister Aloysia and was rushing off to triumph in Paris.”

  I turned my face. “I was indiscreet; I said too much.”

  “My dear madame, how could you say too much?”

  But my conscience had nagged me on and off since his last visit. “Mama urged us not to speak too much of ourselves to others,” I said sternly, looking at him over my spectacles and smoothing my capacious skirt. “She would not have liked me to reveal certain things. Alas, Monsieur Novello! Perhaps we ought to put aside the personal stories, and I’ll tell you of his music instead, about how he composed. He created it all in his head, then wrote it near perfectly on paper. It’s true; I saw it.”

  Monsieur Novello tried to conceal his distress. “Yes, madame,” he said carefully, “but that is known; others have told me a great deal about that. What you can tell me I can find nowhere else in the world, nowhere. It’s truly extraordinary the depth and subtlety he has put into the female characters in his operas; no one could do it half as well as he. From where did he draw them? They’re so human, so fallible, and yet so playful and sensual. I believe understanding how his life entwined with yours and your sisters’ while he was in his early twenties, when he was so impressionable, can shed some light on this.”

  “Mama would be unhappy that I’ve spoken.”

  “But I beg you, I beg you! You must tell me what you know. You must tell me about his life with all of you in the years leading to his marriage.”

  He even put his hand respectfully on my knee.

  “On the other hand,” I said, “Papa always told us to be open-hearted, and that there was nothing we should ever want to hide.” I smiled in my old way. Strange, after all these years, and even in my old age, I can still smile in a way that can mean so many different things, something I learned quite young. I suppose I never seriously intended to stop my stories; I am ashamed to believe that I wanted to know once more how much he longed to hear them.

  I said, “What lovely chocolates you brought today! Did I tell you how much my sisters and I loved chocolates? We would have given our souls for a box.”

  “Then you will continue?”

  “As memory allows me.”

  “I thank you from the bottom of my heart!” he cried.

  I ate two pieces and wiped my fingers on the monogrammed linen handkerchief he offered, though if I had been alone, I would have licked them clean. It irked me a little to see the morsels folded in the linen and tucked away.

  “Your mother,” he urged gently.

  “Ah, yes. Nothing would have turned out as it did if it weren’t for our mama. She pushed us firmly one way, and we went firmly in the other. No, if it weren’t for her, everything would have been different.”

  I raised my cane and pointed to the wall. “Look: there’s her silhouette to the right of the fireplace. A family friend made it one night when he finally got her from her baking and planning. She was a big woman, but her arms were delicate and her skin very fresh, very sweet-smelling.”

  “She had a complicated nature.”

  “From what you have heard of her elsewhere or from my stories?”

  “Both indeed, madame.”

  He studied the picture for some time, then returned to his writing, his pen scratching the page. After a few moments, he looked up at me. “So, all that occurred was much from her influence?”

  I opened my eyes wide and brought up my hands. “In one way or another. Everything was of the greatest seriousness to her. She believed in signs, as do I, and she knew in her heart at least one of her daughters was destined for greatness. That is how we lived our ordinary days, expecting something far more wonderful would fling open the door....”

  PART TWO

  Munich and Aloysia, 1778

  Late spring came, and the sisters hurried about Mannheim, saying good-bye to old friends, exchanging locks of hair and trinkets, and promising to write. The Webers were moving to Munich. The Elector there had died, and Mannheim’s Elector Carl Theodor and his court had already moved to the palatial Residenz there. Alfonso and Heinemann had gone with them. They expected there would be even more opportunities for music in Munich.

  At the last hour Sophie walke
d through the empty rooms looking for things they might have left behind. How odd! What life was left here when every chair and wardrobe was gone, when the hooks were empty of clothing, when not one pot in the kitchen remained? There was the dark stain on the kitchen wall where Josefa, at the age of twelve, had bled copiously after slicing her thumb while cutting apples. The floorboards of the bedroom bore the gouged marks of the iron bed feet.

  She noticed a pen and some ink left on a windowsill and, finding a paper scrap, leaned over to write a note. “Dear friends, we have gone to Munich by God’s grace for a more prosperous life. Come see us there. We are as always altogether, and altogether we wait for you.” This she stuck on a nail on their door, hoping the new residents would not take it down right away. She was about to run down the stairs to where her family was waiting when she remembered the book of suitors, but her mother had taken it from its latest hiding place. Would that she had left it there, Sophie thought with a grimace, for she had secretly looked into it some days before and had not been pleased with what she had seen. What could she do about it now, though? Later, surely, she could do something.