3. Carlo Broschi (1705–82), castrato, who took the name of Farinelli; he was one of the most renowned singers of his day and performed throughout Europe before settling in Bologna in 1759.
4. Clementina Spagnoli (c. 1735–after 1788), soprano; Catarina Gabrielli (1730–96), soprano.
5. Giuseppe Francesco Lolli (1701–78) was deputy Kapellmeister at Salzburg 1752– 63, Kapellmeister 1763–78; Johann Baptist Hagenauer (1732–1810), a member of the extended Hagenauer family, was court statuarius (sculptor) in Salzburg.
6. To the publisher Breitkopf.
7. Probably K122.
8. A macaronic combination of German vocabulary and Latin inflections, meaning, ‘There will be a convenient time for writing. Now my head is always full of many thoughts.’
9. A medicinal syrup made from the coltsfoot plant.
10. For the Salzburg Haffner family and their business contacts, see List.
1. The famous Miserere by the Italian baroque composer Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652) was traditionally sung in the Sistine Chapel on the Wednesday of Holy Week and Good Friday.
2. Clement XIV (1705–74), elected pope in 1769.
3. Lazaro Opizio Pallavicini (1719–85), a distant relative of Giovanni Luca, Count Pallavicini-Centurioni.
4. ‘I too can speak a little German.’
5. ‘So that we shall not incur the Church’s censure, now or later.’
6. He was the postmaster at Rome.
7. Probably K123.
8. Dancing master at the Salzburg court.
1. Lugiati had commissioned Mozart’s portrait in Verona, see letter 20.
2. Unidentified.
3. Also unidentified.
1. Bernardo, Marchese Tanucci (1688–1783), Neapolitan prime minister.
2. Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), diplomat and art collector, was the English ambassador to Naples from 1764–1800; his first wife Catherine (née Barlow) died in 1782, and in 1791 he married Emma Hart, the later mistress of Admiral Horatio Nelson.
3. Burkat Tschudi (1702–73), instrument maker in London. Mozart had played on one of his harpsichords in London in July 1765. He has no apparent connection with the Baron Tschudi mentioned below.
4. Ignaz Joseph, Count Spaur (1729–79), canon of Salzburg cathedral. He became bishop of Brixen in 1778.
5. Jean-Georges Meuricoffre (1750–1806), banker; he had met the Mozarts in Lyons in summer 1766.
6. Maria Anna (née Fesemayr), wife of the Salzburg organist Anton Cajetan Adlgasser.
7. Anna Lucia de Amicis (c. 1733–1816), soprano.
8. This article has not been found.
9. These portraits appear not to have survived.
10. Ernst Christoph, Count Kaunitz-Rietberg (1737–97), eldest son of Prince Kaunitz.
11. Michael Haydn, composer, see List; his twelfth minuet (below) is unidentified.
12. Armida abbandonata.
13. Ferdinand IV (1751–1825), king of Naples, and his wife, Maria Carolina (1752–1814), sixth daughter of Maria Theresa; she had married Ferdinand in 1768 instead of her sister Josepha (see letter 14, n. 3).
14. Pasquale Cafaro (1715/16–87), Antigono ; Francesco de Majo (1732–70), Eumene.
15. The summer residence of the archbishop of Salzburg.
1. About 3 km.
2. Count Pallavicini-Centurioni, his second wife, Maria Caterina Fava, and their son, Giuseppe Maria (1756–73).
3. In a letter of 30 June 1770 Leopold reported to his wife that he had sustained a leg injury while travelling in a coach.
4. 26 July.
1. After returning to England, Linley died prematurely in a boating accident in 1778.
2. Giuseppe Maria Gavard des Pivets, administrator general in Florence; Maddalena Morelli-Fernandez Corilla (1727–1800), poet. Linley and Mozart had performed at their houses in Florence.
1. Giuseppe Prinsechi was a local merchant.
2. The antiphon composed by Mozart on this occasion was K86, Quaerite primum regnum Dei. It is possible that Martini helped Mozart with the test piece: Wolfgang’s autograph is bound with a version by Martini that is nevertheless attributed to Mozart. A second copy, by Leopold and dated 10 October, also transmits Martini’s version.
3. ‘We testify that Master Wolfgang Amadeus etc. was enrolled among the Master Composers of our Academy on the 9th day of the month of October 1770.’
4.Academy of Bologna.
5. For Mitridate, re di Ponto.
6. Maria Martha Hagenauer (1751–70), daughter of Lorenz Hagenauer and his wife.
1. The singer was Antonia Bernasconi. Mozart’s ‘enemy’ may have been the composer Quirino Gasparini (1721–78), Kapellmeister at Turin 1760–70, who had set the same text, based on a translation of a play by the French dramatist Jean Racine (1639–99), in 1767. In the event, the primo uomo, Guglielmo d’Ettore (c. 1740–71), sang Gasparini’s version of the aria ‘Vado incontro al fato estremo’ instead of Mozart’s.
2. Giovanni Battista Lampugnani (1708–88), harpsichordist at the Teatro Regio Ducal from 1758, rehearsed the singers for the performance of Mitridate.
3. Leopold later explained (in a letter of 17 November, not included here) that the second ‘storm’ involved d’Ettore, who demanded at least four rewrites of the aria ‘Se di lauri il crine adorno’, two of ‘Vado incontro al fato estremo’ (neither of which he eventually sang) and two of the recitative ‘Respira alfin’.
4. Georg Anton Kreusser (1746–1810), violinist and brother of Johann Adam Kreusser (1732–91), also a violinist in Amsterdam.
1. Ballroom.
2. Giovanni Andrea Fioroni (1715/16–78), Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1701–75), Gaetano Piazza and Giovanni Colombo, all active at various Milanese churches.
3. The first, Armida abbandonata, premiered on 30 May 1770 at the Teatro San Carlo (see letter 27), the second, Demofoonte, on 4 November 1770.
4. Mozart was to conduct the performances of his opera from the harpsichord.
5. The overture to Demofoonte by Josef Myslivecek (1737–81), Czech opera composer active in Italy.
1. ‘Encore’… ‘Long live the maestro, long live the little maestro’… ‘at the end’.
2. ‘Se viver non degg’io’ for Aspasia and Sifare, in act 2, scene 15.
3. Hasse’s name means ‘the Saxon’; composer Baldassare Galuppi (1706–85) is called ‘the man from Burano’ (after his birthplace); Mozart’s name means ‘Signor Knight of the Philharmonic Academy’.
1. Nitteti by Carlo Monza (c. 1735–1801), first given at the Teatro Regio Ducal on 21 January 1771.
2. ‘in the stars!’, i.e. heavenly.
3. Melchiorre Chiesa (fl. 1758–99), from 1762 maestro di cappella of S. Maria della Scala, Milan.
4. On 2 January 1771 the Gazzetta di Milano reported that ‘On Wednesday last the Teatro Regio Ducal reopened with the performance of the drama entitled Mitridate, Re di Ponto, which has proved to the public’s satisfaction as much for the tasteful stage designs as for the excellence of the Music and the ability of the Actors. Some of the arias sung by Signora Antonia Bernasconi vividly express the passions and touch the heart. The young Maestro di Cappella, who has not yet reached the age of fifteen, studies the beauty of nature and exhibits it adorned with the rarest Musical graces.’ See Deutsch, Documentary Biography, 130–1.
1. Ruggiero, ovvero L’eroica gratitudine, also composed to celebrate the wedding of Archduke Ferdinand.
2. Giovanni Manzuoli, who sang the title role in Ascanio in Alba; Giuseppe Luigi Tibaldi (1729- c. 1790), tenor.
3. The Mozarts had met the glass harmonica virtuoso Marianne Davies (1744-1819) in London; her sister, the soprano Cecilia Davies (c. 1756-1836), was a pupil of Hasse and sang in Ruggiero when it was performed at Naples in January 1772.
4. Dysentery.
1. The Grenser firm of instrument builders had been founded in 1744 by Carl Augustin Grenser (1720-1807).
2. i.e. the new prince-archbishop of Salzburg.
3. This was to be Lucio Silla K135.
4. On 17 August 1771, Leopold had come an agreement with the impresario Michele dall’Agata for a Venetian opera, but for unknown reasons the work was never composed.
5. The sonatas are probably K6-7, K8-9, K10-15 and K26-31; the portrait may be a copy of the 1764 engraving by Jean-Baptiste Delafosse (1721-75), based on the watercolour by Louis de Carmontelle (1717-1806), of Wolfgang, Nannerl and Leopold Mozart performing.
1. d’Asti, i.e. Francisco Aste d’Asteburg.
2. 28 October.
3. These may have included La locanda by Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743–1818) and La sposa fedele by Pietro Guglielmi (1728–1804).
1. Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810), soprano castrato. Rauzzini was engaged at Munich from 1766 and sang the role of Celio in the first performance of Lucio Silla.
2. Ignaz Joseph Hagenauer.
3. Heinrich Wilhelm von Heffner (?–1774), Salzburg court councillor.
1. Cordoni, who was to sing in the opera, took ill and was replaced by Bassano Morgnoni.
2. Anna Lucia de Amicis sang the role of Giunia in Lucio Silla.
1. Maria Anna Mozart’s letters to her husband are lost, so many references in Leopold’s letters to her (such as the ‘obstacles’ mentioned here) are obscure.
2. Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. Laxenburg was the imperial summer residence, south of Vienna.
3. Court chancellor Franz Felix Anton von Mölk.
4. Franziska Oesterling, the daughter of an army captain from Baden. She was a patient of Dr Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) and had lived in his house since 1772. Mesmer, who had known the Mozarts since their visit to Vienna in 1768, was famous for treating his patients with magnets and hypnotism, hence the term ‘mesmerism’. He is parodied in Mozart’s Così fan tutte (1790).
5. Gottlieb Friedrich Fischer was an engraver in Vienna.
6. Joseph Mesmer, son of Joseph Conrad Mesmer (1735-1804) and a second cousin of Dr Franz Anton Mesmer.
7. Joseph Leopold von Auenbrugger (1722-1809) was a doctor at the Holy Trinity Hospital in Vienna. The reference to his daughter is unexplained.
8. 7 August.
9. Matthäus Teyber, see List.
10.K66, written in 1769. St Ignatius’ feast day is 8 August.
11.K185, composed for the Mozarts’ Salzburg friend Judas Thaddäus von Antretter (1753-?) on the occasion of his graduation.
12. A jumble of Latin, French, German and Italian, meaning ‘Today we met Herr Edlenbach in the street. He gave us your best wishes and asked to be remembered to you and your mother. Farewell.’
1. Dr Franz Joseph Niderl von Aichegg.
2. Georg Joseph Robinig von Rottenfeld, who had died in 1760.
3. Joseph II had begun the process of confiscating Jesuit property in Vienna following the suppression of the Jesuit Order by Pope Clement XIV in July.
4. The painter Maria Rosa Barducci (c. 1744-86) was the wife of Johann Baptist Hagenauer, the court sculptor; she had painted a portrait of Mozart’s mother (see letters 105 and 110).
5. Johann Anton Niderl von Aichegg (?–1774) was the regional apothecary in Salzburg, but nothing is known about this case.
6. The wife of Franz Friedrich von Heffner.
1. Johann Nepomuk Sebastian Pernat (1734-94), canon of Munich cathedral; from 1775 he was spiritual councillor to the court of Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria. Maximilian Klement von Belval (?–1795) was a military official in Munich.
2. Nannerl was to come to Munich for the premiere of La finta giardiniera.
3. Dance hall.
4. Leopold’s Litany is his last known work in the genre, composed in 1762; Mozart’s is K125 of March 1772.
1. Joseph Gottfried, Count von Saurau (1720-75), cathedral dean in Salzburg.
2. Leopold had arranged for Nannerl to travel to Munich with Joseph Franz Xaver Gschwendtner.
3. That is, the Marienplatz in Munich.
1. Maria Anna Sophie, wife of Elector Maximilian III Joseph; Maria Antonia Walpurgis (1724-80), sister of Maximilian III Joseph and widow of Elector Friedrich Christian of Saxony (1722-1763).
2. Ferdinand Christoph, Count Waldburg-Zeil (1719-86), bishop of Chiemsee in Bavaria and a member of the Munich court, had formerly been dean of Salzburg cathedral.
3. Here Mozart refers obliquely to the sense of confinement that he felt in Salzburg.
4. The Mozarts’ fox terrier.
1. Archbishop Colloredo had arrived in Munich on 13 January 1775.
2. Charles VII (1697-1745), father of Elector Maximilian III Joseph, was Holy Roman Emperor (1742-5), during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48).
3. Franz Joseph Albert (1728-89), landlord of the Black Eagle in Munich.
4. Maria Cäcilia Barbara Eberlin (1728-1806), eldest daughter of the former Salzburg Kapellmeister and composer Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702-62).
5. Maria Anna Raab (?–1788), owner of the Tanzmeisterhaus on the Makartplatz, Salzburg, where the Mozarts’ had rented lodgings since the late autumn of 1773. In the Mozart family letters, she is frequently referred to as ‘Mitzerl’.
1. Siegmund von Antretter (1761-1800), Bavarian cadet.
2. Wolf Joseph Ludwig, Count Überacker (1743-1819), court councillor.
3. Official title of Leopold, Count Lodron (1719-84).
4. Up to this time, Wolfgang had composed four missae breves: K49 (1768), K65 (1769), K192 (1774) and K194 (1774); it is likely that the mass performed in Munich was one of the more recent ones, K192 or K194.
5. Domenico Fischietti (?1725–1810), formerly chief Kapellmeister at Dresden, active in Salzburg from 1772.
1. Although signed by Mozart, this letter, entirely in Italian, is in Leopold’s hand and was presumably composed by him too.
2. K222.
3. Shortly after his election as archbishop, Colloredo instituted a number of modernizing reforms, including a shortening of the mass. Mozart’s (or his father’s) characterization is slightly disingenuous however: for some important feasts and occasions, especially those celebrated by the archbishop himself, the length of masses in Salzburg was not restricted.
1. This petition does not survive.
2. In April 1777, Joseph II (travelling incognito as Count Falkenstein) had visited Paris on a diplomatic mission to save the marriage of his sister Marie Antoinette (1755-93) and the dauphin; on 31 July, on the return journey to Vienna, he stopped briefly in Salzburg.
1. Decreed in the council chamber of Salzburg.
2. Decreed as above.
1. Physiognomy. The businessman was Johann von Grimmel (1738-94). 2. Georg von Unold auf Grünenfurt (1758-1828); his brother was Jakob (1755- 1809).
2. Georg von Unold auf Grünenfurt (1758-1828); his brother was Jakob (1755-1809).
3. ‘We’re living like lords.’
4. Presumably Mozart refers to the anonymous portrait of 1777 showing him aged twenty–one, wearing the Cross of the Golden Spur; see Deutsch, Bildern, 13.
5. Hieronymus Colloredo.
6. ‘11 o’clock at night’.
7. The certificates he received on his election to the musical academies at Bologna and Verona.
1. Franz Joseph Johann Nepomuk Bullinger was a close family friend, see List.
2. Target-shooting with airguns was among the Mozart family’s favourite pastimes, and is mentioned many times in Leopold’s letters to his wife and son.
3. Rosalia Joly; she is often called Sallerl in the letters.
4. Maria Anna Katharina (Katherl) Gilowsky, see List.
5. Johann Christoph Glatz was a merchant in Augsburg. Wolfgang and his mother intended to go on there from Munich.
6. Leopold’s brother Franz Alois Mozart (1727–1791) still lived in Augsburg. Leopold had important contacts at the Catholic church of the Holy Cross, dating back to his youth.
7. Landlord of the Black Eagle in Munich; Leopold and Mozart had stayed at the Three Moors in Augsburg in 1763.
8. The instrument b
uilder Johann Andreas Stein (1728–92) was a long-standing friend of the Mozarts. He had last seen Wolfgang on his visit to Augsburg in 1763.
9. Franz Bioley, cloth merchant, and Johann Conrad Fingerlin, manufacturer.
10. The writer and theatre poet Johann Christoph Zabuesnig (1747–1827) had visited Salzburg in 1769 and written a poem in honour of Mozart. It reads, in part: ‘Here, where the Salza springs from gloomy rocks/And greets the open land with waters fair,/Cutting in two the happy land’s fair town,/Whose castle now with it the name can share,/A child, by Nature formed a work of art,/A wondrous boy one fortunate day was born,/Whose genius turned the fables of the past/To foolish stories, justly laughed to scorn./O child! by noble mind so lofty raised/That all too lowly writes my feeble pen,/If e’er thy merits can be duly praised,/Thy fame itself will be a poem then.’ See Deutsch, Documentary Biography, 86-7.
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