Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters
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19. Johann Joseph Anton Ernst Gilowsky von Urazowa, see List.
20. The Neutor (New Gate), a tunnel through the Mönchsberg connecting Salzburg with its northern suburbs, opened on 26 June 1767.
21. Joseph Richard Estlinger (c. 1720–91) was court bassoonist and music copyist.
1. The sonatas K26–31 were dedicated to Princess Caroline of Nassau-Weilburg and published in March.
2. Probably the Gallimathias musicum K32.
3. K24, based on the Dutch song ‘Laat ons Juichen, Batavieren!’ by Christian Ernst Graf (1723–1804); K25, based on the popular Dutch song ‘Willem van Nassau’.
4. Leopold Mozart’s Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756) was the most important violin tutor of the eighteenth century; a Dutch translation was published in 1766.
5. Henrikus Radeker (1708–74).
6. Johann Heinrich, Count Frankenberg und Schellendorf (1726–1804); the Mozarts had previously visited him on 4 November 1763.
7. François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénélon (1651–1715), French writer who was bishop of Cambrai from 1695; Les Aventures de Télémaque was published in 1699.
8. Thomas-Arthur, Comte de Lally, Baron de Tollendal (1702–66) was governor general of Pondicherry (French India) from 1757; after it was taken by the British in 1761, he was imprisoned in the Bastille and eventually beheaded.
9. Possibly David Otto, organist at the Barfüsserkirche in Frankfurt.
10. Mozart’s godfather, Johann Gottlieb Pergmayr (1709–87), a businessman and city councillor in Salzburg.
1. Here Leopold refers to a local dispute between Geneva’s patricians and townspeople that had gone to mediation during the Mozarts’ visit there.
2. The French philosopher Voltaire (pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet, 1694– 1778) had settled at Ferney, near to Geneva, in 1758.
3. Ludwig Eugen (1731–95) was the younger brother of Karl II Eugen, reigning duke of Württemberg (1728–93).
4. Johannes Gessner (1709–90), physicist; Salomon Gessner (1730–88), poet.
5. Prince Joseph Wenzeslaus of Fürstenberg (1728–83).
6. The prince-bishop of Augsburg.
7. This work is apparently lost.
1. Count Leopold Anton Podstatsky (1717–76), formerly president of the consistory in Salzburg; Leopold begins his letter with the first sentence of the Te Deum: ‘We prais thee, O God’.
2.These are lost.
3. Archduchess Josepha (1751–67), fifth daughter of Francis I and Maria Theresa, had died of smallpox on 15 October, shortly before her marriage was due to take place to Ferdinand IV of Naples (1751–1825), which threw the Vienna court into mourning.
4. The distance between these two Salzburg landmarks is about 1 km.
5. Joseph II had succeeded his father in 1765 (see letter 11).
6. Maria Elisabeth (1743–1808), third daughter of Francis I and Maria Theresa.
7. Franz Anton, Count Schrattenbach (1712–83) and Maria Augusta, Countess Herberstein, brother and niece of Archbishop Siegmund von Schrattenbach. Brünn is modern Brno; Olmütz is Olomouc.
8. Black powder is a cathartic; margrave powder is an antiperspirant.
9. The prescriptions for medicines given by Leopold have been omitted.
10. ‘In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion.’ (The last verse of the Te Deum.)
11. Leopold later repeated his unfulfilled intention to write a biography of Wolfgang in the second edition of the Gründlichen Violinschule (1769–70).
12. That is, the annual celebration, on 21 December, of the anniversary of Schrattenbach’s consecration.
13. ‘and born to consume the fruits of the earth’ (Leopold omits the first phrase of this verse: ‘we are mere ciphers’). Rochus Alterdinger (c. 1734–94) was an administrator at the archbishop’s residence in Salzburg.
14. The composer Johann Schobert, his wife and child had died from eating poisonous mushrooms.
15. Franz Xaver Peisser (1724–1807), banker and business associate of the Hagenauers.
16. Wolfgang’s message to Joseph Hagenauer is lost.
17. These works remain unidentified; they may have been six symphonies by Wolfgang, six by Leopold or possibly works by both father and son.
18. Wagenseil’s concerto remains unidentified. The sonatas presumably included some or all of K6–9, K10–15 and K26–31.
1. Lipperl is a stage character in the tradition of Hanswurst, a popular buffoon figure. Bernardon was the stage name of the actor Joseph Felix von Kurz (1717–84).
2. Since the death of her husband, Maria Theresa had more or less retreated from social life.
3. Prince Kaunitz, imperial chancellor; Juan Carlos de Braganza, Duke of Lafoënt (1719–1806); Josepha von Guttenberg, lady-in-waiting at the Viennese court; Johann Karl, Count (later Prince) Dietrichstein (1728–1808).
4. Alexandre-Louis Laugier (c. 1719–74), physician-in-ordinary to Maria Theresa.
5. Gluck was attached to the court at Vienna at this time.
6. Giuseppe Affligio (1719–87), impresario at the Burg-and Kärntnertor theatres from 1767–70.
7. Although definitions falsify the diversity and variability of eighteenth-century operatic genres, opera seria is generally used to signify Italian opera on a tragic or heroic subject; it consists of arias and recitatives, with relatively few ensembles. Opera buffa is the name given to comic opera, which includes a greater variety of musical and theatrical structures, forms and gestures. The terms were relatively new in 1768: ‘opera buffa’ was only beginning to appear as a generic designation in librettos while ‘opera seria’ was more commonly referred to as ‘dramma per musica’.
8. Giacchino Garibaldi (1743–after 1792), tenor; Francesco Caratoli (c. 1705–72), bass singer; Domenico Poggi, actor; Laschi is presumably the father of Luisa Laschi, the first Countess in Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and who also sang Zerlina in the first Viennese production of Don Giovanni (1788); Pulini, tenor, later sang in a private performance of Idomeneo in March 1786; Antonia Bernasconi (1741–1803), soprano and the first Aspasia in Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770); Teresa Eberardi, alto; Clementina Baglioni, singer, daughter of Domenico Poggi, married to the tenor Antonio Baglioni, creator of the roles of Ottavio in Don Giovanni (Prague, 1787) and Titus in La clemenza di Tito (1791).
1. La finta semplice ; the poet was Marco Coltellini (1724–77), active at Vienna from 1758.
2. Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783), composer of Italian opera, Kapellmeister at Dresden 1731–60, now active at Vienna; the poet Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782) was the most important librettist, for opera seria in particular, during the eighteenth century; he served as court poet in Vienna from 1730–69, when he was succeeded by Coltellini.
3. ‘from one extreme to the other’.
4. Giuseppe Bonno (1710–88), court composer at Vienna from 1739 and Kapellmeister from 1774.
5. The Hagenauers’ summer home.
6. In the event, Helfried Franz Philipp Kulmer, Baron Rosenbichl und Hohenstein did not become prince of Berchtesgaden.
7. Ignaz Küffel, violoncellist.
1. Phrase denoting the setting out of a petition.
2. Here Leopold refers to an article by Grimm (published in Correspondance littáraire and dated 15 July 1766; see Deutsch, Documentary Biography, 56–7), which concluded: ‘If these children [Wolfgang and Nannerl] live, they will not remain at Salzburg. Before long, monarchs will vie for their possession.’
3. Frederik Christoph von Degenfeld-Schomburg (1722–81), Dutch minister at Vienna from 1767–81.
4. See List.
5. ‘What? – – how? he’s a prodigy! this opera will storm the gates of heaven! it’s a marvel! – don’t doubt it, he should go on writing!’
6. La Cecchina, ossia La buona figliuola by Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800), then active in Italy, later in Paris.
7. Johann Wenzel, Count Spork (1724–1804), general director of theatres.
8. i.e. La
buona figliuola maritata (1761), also by Piccinni.
1. The Mozarts’ maid. She may be the maid Nandl referred to in later letters, who has been identified as Anna Maria Pietschner (1732–1805), but this is not certain.
2. ‘I should like to know for what reason idleness is so popular with many young people that it is impossible to dissuade them from it either by words or by chastisements.’
1. That is, ‘Mr Bore’.
2. Johann Baptist von Schiedenhofen (1747–1823) was a city official of Salzburg and a family friend; his diary, which he kept from 1774–8, has numerous references to performances of Mozart’s works and to social events in the archdiocese.
3. Maria Klara Helmreichen zu Brunfeld (1729–1802), sister of Ludwig Gottfried Moll (1727–1804), a civil servant in the archdiocese. Ludwig’s wife was related to the Cristani di Rall family who proved helpful to the Mozarts in Italy.
4. Joseph von Arimathaea Hornung, bass and tenor singer at the Salzburg court from 1768.
1. Bolzano.
2. Massimiliano Settimo von Lodron (1727–96), dean of the cathedral at Villa Lagarina near Rovereto, was a distant relation of the Lodron family of Salzburg.
3. Nikolaus Sebastian, Count Lodron (1719–92) was also distantly related to the Salzburg Lodrons.
4. Giovanni Battista Todeschi (1730–99), mayor of Rovereto.
5. Johann Georg Keyssler’s Reisen durch Teutschland, Böhmen, Ungarn, die Schweiz, Italien und Lothringen (‘Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Lorraine’), Hanover, 1751.
6. Michelangelo Locatelli and Francesco Maria Ragazzoni were local businessmen.
7. Pietro Lugiati (1724–88) was a financial administrator in Milan. The portrait, possibly by Saverio dalla Rosa (1745–1821), who was related through his grandmother to Lugiati, contains the only known source for the keyboard piece K72a, which is clearly visible on the music stand of the instrument at which Wolfgang is seated; the portrait is reproduced in Deutsch, Bildern, 11.
8. Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf (1695–1777) or his son Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf (1719–94), publishers in Leipzig; the books are Leopold Mozart’s Gründliche Violinschule. Rudolf Gräffer (1734–1817), publisher in Vienna, published Mozart’s early songs K52 and 53 in 1768.
9. Joseph Wolff was a book dealer in Augsburg; in 1747 he opened a branch of his shop in Innsbruck. Mayr’s was Salzburg’s leading bookshop.
1.Court official in Milan.
2.A cousin of the Salzburg Arcos.
3.Sartoretti’s poem reads, in part: ‘See how his fingers move,/Hear with what art/He makes the keys respond/In ev’ry part;/How he to you imparts/All his accomplished arts./Europe has witnessed him,/Where, as a child,/Her ev’ry region/He newly beguiled./Woe! If to them he’s near,/Let not the Sirens hear.’ It is reproduced in Deutsch, Documentary Biography, 108–9.
4.Gaetano Bettinelli (1729–94), mathematician.
5.The article from the Gazzetta di Mantova for 19 January 1770 reads, in part: ‘Last Tuesday evening… the public Philharmonic Academy… was given before its time, in order opportunely to catch the incomparable boy Sig. Wolfango [ sic ] Amadeo Mozart, who is passing through here, with the express aim of letting this town admire the amazing talent and extraordinary mastery which he already possesses in music at the age of 13. To write at a desk (as the best masters do) in as many parts as you wish, concertato or obbligato, vocal and instrumental, is so easy for him that he can do it just as well at the harpsichord, even extempore. On the evening here mentioned, apart from opening and closing symphonies of his composition, he performed… concertos and sonatas for harpsichord, extemporized with most judicious variations, and with the repetition of a sonata in another key. He sang a whole aria extempore, on new words never before seen by him, adding the proper accompaniments. He improvised two sonatas on two themes successively given him on the violin by the leader of the orchestra, elegantly linking them both together the second time. He accompanied a whole symphony with all the parts from a single violin part submitted to him on the spot. And what is most to be esteemed, he composed and at the same time extemporaneously performed a fugue on a simple theme given him, which he brought to such a masterly harmonic interweaving of all the parts and so bold a resolution as to leave the hearers astounded; and all these performances were on the harpsichord. Finally he also played marvellously well the violin part in a Trio by a famous composer.’ See Deutsch, Documentary Biography, 107.
6.Maria Theresa; Lombardy, which included Milan and Mantua, was ruled by Austria.
7.‘half-board’.
8.Karl Joseph, Count Firmian, governor general of Lombardy and a member of the Firmian family of Salzburg, see List.
9.Either Ercole III Rainaldo d’Este (1727–1803), or his father Francesco III (1698–1780).
10.In the event, they did not visit Turin until January 1771.
1. Probably Joseph von Mölk (1756–1827), son of the court chancellor Franz Felix Anton von Mölk (1715–76), whose daughter Anna Barbara (1752–1823) was a close friend of Nannerl’s. Mozart appears to be teasing his sister about the boy’s adolescent crush on her.
2. Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715–69) was one of Leopold’s favourite poets. Wolfgang’s pun on his name – he writes Gellert as Gelehrt, that is, ‘learned’ – may be good-natured or it may be an adolescent dismissal of parental authority.
3. ‘You are not unhappy: you can explain your sadness; and if you do not awaken love, you at least find pity. I am truly sad that I love in secret toils, I have no hope and I say nothing, and my beloved does not know,’ from act 1, scene 4 of Hasse’s setting of Demetrio, which Mozart heard in Mantua. Mozart’s setting, K73A, is lost.
4. There is a gap in Mozart’s letter here.
5. Comic acrobat.
6. Francesco Diana (1717–?), known as Spagnoletto.
7. By the Neapolitan composer Michelangelo Valentini (c. 1720–after 1768) to a text by Metastasio (see Briefe v. 227–8). Mozart set Metastasio’s text, in a version by Caterino Mazzolà, in 1791 (K621).
8. Giuseppe Cicognani later sang the role of Farnace at the first performance of Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto in Milan in December 1770.
9. ‘I don’t know’.
10. Giuseppe Aprile (1731–1813), castrato; Clementine Piccinelli (active in Paris 1761–6 and in Italy thereafter) had performed at Mozart’s concert in Paris on 9 April 1764; Carlo de Picq (1749–1806) later danced in the ballet performed with Mozart’s Lucio Silla at Milan in December 1772.
11. Two new productions of the opera were mounted in Italy in 1770, by Niccolö Piccinni at Rome on 8 January, and by Giacomo Insanguine (1728–95) at Naples, but it is likely that the Milanese Didone was a revival of an earlier setting, of which there were many.
12. Mozart has made up this title for himself.
1. The concert was held on 12 March 1770 at the Palazzo Melzi and probably included some or all of Misero tu non sei K73A (see letter 22), Misero me! – Misero pargoletto K77 and Fra cento affanni K88.
2. Duke of Modena, see letter 21, n. 9; Maria Beatrice Ricciarda d’Este (1750–1829); Archbishop Pozzonbonelli (1696–1783).
3. Mitridate, re di Ponto, premiered at the Teatro Regio Ducal, Milan, on 26 December 1770.
4. Loreto, near Ancona in the Marche, was a popular place of pilgrimage.
5. One such letter, written on 14 March 1770 to Count Giovanni Luca Pallavicini at Bologna, stated: ‘Your Excellency, seeing that Sig. Leopoldo Mozart, Chapel Master in the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and with him his son, is making his way to your city, I take the liberty of recommending them warmly to Your Excellency, moved by the assurance I have of your well-known generosity and kindness, and by the thought that perhaps you will not be displeased to find in young Mozart one of those musical talents but rarely produced by nature, inasmuch that at his tender age he not only equals the Masters of the art, but even exceeds them, I believe, in readiness of invention. I hope therefore tha
t Your Excellency will be pleased to honour them with your protection during their stay there and to find them means of appearing in public, as I also urgently beg you will help them in the matter of their prudent and most advantageous conduct.’ See Deutsch, Documentary Biography, 110–11.
6. Franz Lactanz, Count Firmian, see List.
1. Giovanni Luca, Count Pallavicini-Centurioni (1697–1773); Mozart performed at the Palazzo Pallavicini on 26 March. The cardinal was Antonio Colonna-Branciforte (1728–86).
2. Giovanni Battista Martini (1706–84), music theorist and historian. Mozart’s puzzle canons K73r and canonic studies K73x are based on models taken from volumes 1 and 2 of Martini’s Storia della musica (Bologna, 1757).