Mozart's Last Aria

by Matt Rees

‘The scope of Pergen’s secret operation is enormous. But I must confess I’ve spent most of the night on a single case.’ He flipped the ledger shut to show me the label pasted to the center of the cover: ‘Mozart, Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus.’

  I ran my finger beneath my brother’s name and thought of the paper fluttering in the wind on his grave. I longed to tell Swieten what I knew of Lichnowsky’s treachery, but I needed him to volunteer the truth. ‘Show me.’

  ‘Come.’ He took me to a divan of scarlet velvet. He riffled the pages of the ledger, stiff as winter leaves with the ink that covered them. ‘In here, the truth about Wolfgang’s death.’

  ‘Was it… ?’

  ‘Poison, as we thought.’

  ‘How was it done?’

  ‘At a meeting of the Masonic lodge. Hofdemel administered acqua toffana to Wolfgang in a cup of punch.’

  ‘He murdered Wolfgang because he thought he had been cuckolded? But at the palace Pergen confessed. Did he mislead Hofdemel into killing my brother?’ I knew this was only half the story. Was I trying to trap the Baron into covering up for Lichnowsky? A lie that would send me back to my village?

  Swieten tapped his fingernail against his teeth.

  Gottfried, don’t hide from me, I thought. ‘Is that how it was?’ I said.

  He laid his palm flat on the ledger. ‘That’s how it was.’

  If I had thought my heart had broken when I entered the office – when I had seen that it was my own lover who had allowed Lichnowsky to go free – now it was shattered for certain. It ruptured with the force of my guilt, my betrayal of my good husband and my children and my God. I put my hand to my mouth and sobbed.

  He made to comfort me, but I shook my head and he knew that I didn’t weep for my brother’s death.

  I pointed toward the door. His eyes narrowed in pain, as though he saw across the hall to the traitor on the steps. ‘Lichnowsky,’ he whispered.

  He reached for me, but I moved away along the divan.

  The Baron pressed his hands against his eyes. ‘I wish to explain to you,’ he said.

  Those words. The aria I had sung to him in the Imperial Library just before I had seen that he loved me. I wish to explain to you, Oh God, what my grief is. I heard the song in my head, but even Wolfgang’s music seemed discordant now. The aria faltered, and fell silent.

  ‘This is my chance to bring Wolfgang’s ideas to the attention of the entire Empire.’ He turned his dark eyes to me. They were tearful. ‘If I could give up this life here in the palace and travel Europe with my violin, playing his music in every village square, you know I’d do it. But I’m a mediocre musician. I can’t transmit his message that way. I’m a politician. Wolfgang’s values – freedom, equality, brotherhood – it’s within my power now to make them law.’

  His fingers knitted together, strong as they had been when he held my body.

  ‘But you loved Wolfgang,’ I said. ‘How can you forget your devotion to him?’

  ‘Wolfgang and I talked so often of these enlightened ideas, of how they’d transform the Empire. I do this for him.’

  I clicked my tongue. He flinched, as though I had spat on him.

  ‘Don’t you think I wish Lichnowsky all the torments of the innermost circle of Hell?’ He slapped his hands together. ‘But if I try to punish him, the Emperor will get rid of me. Treachery by a prince? No, that’d make the Emperor himself look threatened. If he couldn’t count on the loyalty of a prince, then he must really be in a vulnerable position. Don’t you see?’

  The agitation in my breast subsided. It was replaced by something as heavy and still as lead.

  ‘My choice is clear,’ he said. ‘An ineffective action leading to my dismissal. Or the possibility of reforms which would be a true memorial to Wolfgang’s wonderful soul.’

  A horse stamped on the cobbles of the courtyard below. My carriage. I couldn’t quite believe that I’d have to ride that coach all the way back to my village – that I’d be without my Baron.

  ‘I understand why you chose as you did.’ My voice was broken and shaky. ‘What’ll happen to Prince Lichnowsky?’

  Swieten hesitated. ‘Well, he’s my agent now.’

  He bowed his head in shame.

  ‘I see.’ I knew what I must do. As for Wolfgang’s case, only the details remained.

  ‘How much money?’ I said. ‘How much did Lichnowsky receive? What was the price of my brother’s life?’

  ‘Hofdemel got ten thousand gulden a year to work as an agent for Pergen. Lichnowsky received much, much more, and from the Prussians too. He was able to recover his family estates, even though they’d been under Prussian control since King Friedrich captured Silesia forty years ago. The return of his lands – that’s how the Prussians first persuaded Lichnowsky to work for them.’

  I thought again of the richness of Magdalena’s apartment. The piano Wolfgang had played there, bought with the money that would purchase his murder.

  ‘Wolfgang had to be silenced – to keep the money coming,’ Swieten whispered.

  ‘Because of The Magic Flute?’

  He shook his head. ‘The Prussians ordered Lichnowsky to set up a new lodge. He was supposed to recruit powerful Austrians who’d think they were working to promote their Masonic beliefs. In fact they’d be enlisted as Prussian spies.’

  ‘And Wolfgang knew about this.’

  ‘He was with Lichnowsky in Berlin when the orders were issued. So, yes, Wolfgang knew.’ Swieten glanced at the ledger with all its details of my brother’s case. ‘He threatened to make the pro-Prussian lodge public, unless Lichnowsky helped him launch his Grotto.’

  ‘But Lichnowsky…’ I sensed the odor of the Prince’s Spanish cigars on the air in the office, lingering from his meeting with Swieten.

  ‘Lichnowsky couldn’t allow the Grotto to go ahead. He was recruiting men for his Prussian lodge and passing the names to Pergen. Helping Wolfgang’s new lodge would have made Pergen think he was engaging other Prussian spies without the Police Minister’s knowledge.’

  ‘Yet Pergen confessed. He said he ordered Wolfgang’s death.’

  ‘Lichnowsky told Pergen about The Grotto. So that Pergen wouldn’t suspect him. He identified Wolfgang as a Prussian agent and the secret founder of an illegal Masonic lodge. For that, Pergen decreed Wolfgang’s murder. But Lichnowsky engineered it, to protect himself.’

  Swieten reached along the divan and squeezed my fingers. His face was hopeful and tentative.

  I withdrew my hand and went to the window. I laid my palm on the pane. The skin seemed to stick to the freezing glass. ‘The intrigue of the capital wasn’t for my poor, naïve brother,’ I said. ‘It’s not for me, either.’

  Swieten stood behind me. I sensed his hesitation before he spoke. ‘Is there nothing in the Imperial city for you?’

  Had the fog cleared from the courtyard of the Estates House, I’d still have seen nothing through the tears that obscured my sight. ‘Gottfried, I must return to my children.’

  His hand was on the bare skin of my shoulder, edging into the hair at the nape of my neck. I froze. I awaited his command, as I had waited all my life for instruction. He held his fingers there a long time.

  ‘I understand,’ he said.

  Precisely because he accepted my decision, it was hard to maintain my determination. ‘Even when you and I are apart, we’ll both play his music,’ I said.

  ‘For me, the music is at an end.’ His sad eyes rested on my neck, the cross of ambers he had given me. ‘Anyway, I always believed he composed only for you.’

  I thought of what Magdalena had said at the graveyard, her solution to Wolfgang’s riddle. I understood that Swieten was right. There was passion for me in Vienna with the Baron. But the world would lay its corrupting touch upon us and make our affair seem tawdry. The love that was left to me was in Wolfgang’s music.

  I hurried down the stone stairs and into the courtyard. The fog froze my tears.

  Lenerl averted her eyes
as I climbed into the carriage. If she told tales on me when we returned to the village, my sobs would be the least of the strange things she might relate. I let them come.

  The driver circled back to the entrance. The horses’ hooves clattered toward the vaulted gateway.

  Swieten came down the steps three at a time. He caught the coach at the gate as the traffic on Herren Lane forced it to pause.

  He laid his hands on the side of the carriage. I heard again the music of the aria I had sung for him in his library. This time the strings and the soprano were in harmony. I saw that he heard them too. He smiled at me, though his jaw trembled.

  The carriage pulled into the street. With a snap of the whip, the horses took me away from the Baron. I leaned out of the window. The mist and the traffic closed about him. He became as invisible as if he had been consigned to the cells with Pergen’s victims.

  Within a half hour, my carriage was in the countryside, adrift on a fog that smothered Vienna in its enclosing silence forever.

  EPILOGUE

  Iread throughout the night. By the morning I was feverish with excitement. I rushed down the mountainside to Aunt Nannerl’s home. I carried the journal she had given me, recording the events of that week in 1791. Its secrets, revealed for the first time after almost forty years, were so strange that I needed to feel their weight in my hand. Otherwise I might have believed that I had dreamed them.

  I headed through the narrow streets at the foot of the mountain. I crossed the cathedral square and hurried up the steps to Aunt Nannerl’s apartment.

  Her maid opened the door. She held a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘Master Wolfgang, I’m so glad you’re here. Dear God has sent you.’ Franziska wiped at her tears and only then noticed my own agitation. She hesitated.

  ‘What is it, girl?’

  ‘She’s had a terrible night, sir. She’s very weak.’ She sobbed. ‘I don’t think she has long. She won’t let me call for a doctor. But she’s been asking for you.’

  I went through to the bedroom. Aunt Nannerl lay as I had left her. Under her bonnet, her face was so pale it seemed to have been dusted in flour. A thin hand lay across her shawl.

  I sat beside her, and touched her shoulder gently.

  She snapped her head toward me. ‘Wolfgang,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m here, Auntie.’

  Her blind eyes were milkier than ever. ‘You read it? You know now?’

  ‘I can’t believe it, Auntie.’

  She snorted. ‘Do you think such things could be made up?’

  ‘Why did you never tell?’

  She pursed her lips – the pause of one who must concentrate hard to accomplish the mere act of breathing. Her maid might be right, I thought: Aunt Nannerl seemed close to the end.

  I touched her wrist. The flesh was cold. ‘Did you want to protect my mother? Was that why you told no one?’ I said. ‘You didn’t want Mama to suffer, to know the truth of how her husband was taken from her?’

  Her pale eyebrows descended, a grimace.

  ‘Don’t tax your strength, Auntie. I understand. Mama will never know.’

  She nodded toward the piano.

  ‘You wish for me to play for you?’ I raised my voice as though I spoke to a child or a foreigner.

  She beckoned with a slight motion of her hand. I leaned close. Her breath was bitter and metallic, like a coffee pot that has lain unwashed for a day.

  ‘I wish to explain to you,’ she murmured.

  ‘That’s why you gave me the diary?’

  Her head shook. ‘Sing it for me.’

  The aria was for a soprano, but it was hardly the time to quibble with my aunt about musical technicalities.

  I laid the journal on the edge of her bed and sat at the old Stein. In my head, I formulated the letter I must send that day to Innsbruck, to her sole surviving child Leopold, urging him to come bid her farewell. Under my breath I found the right pitch for my voice. I played through the introduction, transposing the orchestral part directly for the piano, and sang:

  I wish to explain to you, O God,

  what my grief is.

  But fate condemns me

  To weep and remain silent.

  My aunt’s head lay to the side. She stared toward the window. I wondered if, in her blindness, she detected traces of the strong morning sun off the cathedral towers, perhaps as an undefined glow before her eyes. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t tell if she were singing with me or struggling for breath.

  My heart may not crave

  for the one I wish to love.

  At the dramatic conclusion of the aria I confess the music took hold of me. I no longer was aware of Aunt Nannerl, small in her bed. I brought out the highest C-sharp I could manage and, as often happened when I played my father’s music, I felt his hand guiding mine across the keyboard.

  Part from me, run from me.

  Of love, do not speak.

  With the aria at an end, I closed my eyes and listened to the final chord resonate in the body of the piano. Something brushed the back of my wrist and I started in fright.

  I turned to ask Aunt Nannerl if she had enjoyed the aria. She lay so still I decided, instead, to tuck her hand beneath the blanket for warmth and tiptoe to the sitting room.

  I lifted her arm. It was heavy, like a sleeping child. I bent close to her and whispered her name. Her head remained on its side, facing the window, eyes closed. I raised my hand before her lips and nose, but felt no breath. Her chest was still.

  While I had been singing, she had gone.

  I took her hand between both of mine, as though my warmth might revive her. She held something there. I turned her wrist to see what it was.

  A thin gold chain looped around her middle finger. In the center of her palm, at the end of the necklace, lay a cross embedded with ambers.

  Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart

  Salzburg, October 10, 1829

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This novel is based on real historical events. Mozart’s anticipation of his own death, his risky plan for a new Masonic lodge of some kind, and his mission to Berlin are matters of historical research. Pergen’s secret police persecution of the Masons, Hofdemel’s suicide and his mutilation of Magdalena are also well documented, as are many of the other details of the characters, their relationships, and their membership of secret Masonic Brotherhoods. That women would’ve been members of Wolfgang’s new lodge is drawn from the text of The Magic Flute, which I interpret as a forceful argument for women’s inclusion in the Masons.

  I altered the histories of several characters, allowing myself fictional license of varying degrees. In fact, Nannerl never visited Vienna after Wolfgang’s death. Gieseke fled the Imperial capital, only to turn up in Greenland and later Dublin, where he died in 1833, a respected professor of mineralogy. Count Pergen really was fired by Leopold II. But he was reinstated soon after the Emperor’s sudden death, which came only three months after Wolfgang’s passing. It was suspected Leopold had been poisoned by Freemasons.

  Before he died, Leopold dismissed Swieten, whose membership of the Masonic Illuminati had become known. The Baron never returned to public life. He died in 1803.

  Magdalena Hofdemel went back to her family’s home in Moravia. The capacity of Wolfgang’s music to soothe various disorders is the subject of many recent scientific studies. A paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2001 found Mozart’s piano sonatas reduced epileptic activity in sufferers like Magdalena.

  As for Wolfgang, no one can be sure exactly how he came to his end. But he might really have died this way.

  THE MUSIC

  Mozart’s work was catalogued for the first time by Ludwig Ritter von Köchel, an Austrian music historian, in 1862. The music is identified these days by his so-called Köchel or ‘K’ numbers. Mozart’s contemporaries, of course, wouldn’t have used K numbers, so I didn’t refer to the music that way in this novel. But if you want to look up and listen to the music featured in this book
, here’s a list of the K numbers:

  Prologue: ‘Vedrai carino’ (‘You will see, my dear’), aria from the opera Don Giovanni, K 527

  Sonata for piano in A, K 331

  Chapter 1: ‘Per pietà, ben mio, perdona’ (‘For pity’s sake, my darling, forgive’), aria from the opera Così fan tutte (Thus Do All Women), K 588

  Piano variations ‘Ah, vous dirai-je’, K 265

  Sonata for piano in A minor, K 310

  Chapter 6: Adagio for piano in B minor, K 540

  Chapter 7: Clarinet concerto in A, K 622

  Chapter 8: ‘Ach, ich liebte’ (‘Ah, I was in love’), aria from the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), K 384

  Symphony 41 ‘Jupiter’ in C, K 551

  ‘Der Hölle Rache’ (‘Hell’s revenge’), aria from the opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), K 620

  Sonata for piano in B flat, K 333

  Piano concerto in C, K 467

  Chapter 13: Piano variations ‘Willem von Nassau’ K 25

  Chapter 16: ‘Laut verkünde unsre Freude,’ (‘Proclaim our joy out loud’), Masonic Cantata K 623

  Chapter 22: ‘Vorrei spiegarvi’ (‘I wish to explain to you’), aria for soprano K 418

  Chapter 29: Requiem in D minor, K 626

  Chapter 31: ‘Un’aura amorosa’ (‘A loving breath’), aria from Così Fan Tutte

  Chapter 32: Sonata for keyboard four hands in D, K 381

  Chapter 34: ‘Se vuol ballare, Signor Contino’ (‘If you want to dance, Little Count’), aria from Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) K 492

  Sonata for piano in F, K 332