Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters (35 page)

My Dear Son,

In all probability this will be the last letter that you can be certain of receiving from me in Mannheim, and so it is addressed to you alone. How hard it is for me to accept that you’re moving even further away from me is something you may perhaps be able to imagine, but you cannot feel as acutely as I do the weight that lies
on my mind. If you take the trouble to recall what I did with you two children during your tender youth, you’ll not accuse me of timidity but, like everyone else, will concede that I am a man and have always had the courage to risk everything. But I did everything with the greatest caution and consideration that were humanly possible: – one can’t prevent accidents, for God alone can foretell the future. Until now, of course, we’ve been neither happy nor unhappy, but, thanks be to God, we’ve trodden a middle course. We’ve tried everything to make you happy and, through you, to make ourselves happier and at least to place your destiny on a firmer footing; but fate was against us. As you know, our last step has left me in very deep waters, and you also know that I’m now around 700 florins
in debt
and don’t know how I shall
support myself, your mother and your sister
on my
monthly income
, for as long as I live I cannot
hope to receive another farthing
from
the prince
.
¹
So it must be clear as day to you that the future fate of your old parents and of your sister, who undoubtedly loves you with all her heart, lies solely in your hands. Ever since you were born and, indeed, before that – in other words, ever since I was married – there is no doubt that I’ve had a difficult time
providing a livelihood
for a wife and 7 children,
²
2 servants and Mama’s mother, all on a fixed monthly income of only a little more than 20 florins, and to
pay for
accouchements, deaths and illnesses, expenses which, if you think them over, will convince you not only that I have never spent a farthing on the least pleasure for myself, but that, without God’s special mercy, I’d never have managed to
keep out of debt
in spite of all my hopes and bitter efforts: yet this is
the first time I’ve been in debt
. I gave up every hour of my life to you 2 in the hope of ensuring not only that in due course you’d both be able to count on being able to provide for yourselves but that I too would be able to enjoy a peaceful old age and be accountable to God for my children’s education, with no more cares but being able to live solely for my soul’s salvation and calmly awaiting my end. But God has willed and ordained that I must once again take on the
undoubtedly wearisome task
of giving lessons and of doing so, moreover, in a town where these strenuous efforts are so badly paid that it is not possible every month
to earn enough to support oneself and one’s family
. Yet one must be glad and talk oneself hoarse in order to
earn
at least
something
. Not only do I not distrust you, my dear Wolfgang, no, not in the very least, but I place all my trust and hope in your filial love: all depends on your good sense, which you certainly have – if only you will listen to it – and on fortunate circumstances. This latter cannot be coerced; but you will always consult your good sense – at least I hope so and beg of you to do so.

You’re now entering a completely different world: and you mustn’t think that it is simply prejudice that makes me see Paris as such a dangerous place,
au contraire
– from my own experience I’ve no reason at all to regard Paris as so very dangerous. But my situation then could not be more different from yours now. We stayed with an ambassador,
³
and on the second occasion in a self-contained apartment; I was a man of mature years and you were children; I avoided all contact with others and in particular
preferred not to become over-familiar with people of our own profession
; remember that I did the same in Italy. I made the acquaintance and sought out the friendship only of people of a higher social class – and among these only mature people, not young lads, not even if they were of the foremost rank. I never invited anyone to visit me regularly in my rooms in order to be able to maintain my freedom, and I always considered it more sensible to visit others at my convenience. If I don’t like a person or if I’m working or have business to attend to, I can then stay away. – Conversely, if people come to me and behave badly, I don’t know how to get rid of them, and even a person who is otherwise not unwelcome may prevent me from getting on with some important work. You’re a young man of 22; and so you don’t have that earnestness of old age that could deter a young lad of whatever social class, be he an adventurer, joker or fraud and be he young or old, from seeking out your acquaintance and friendship and drawing you into his company and then gradually into his plans. One is drawn
imperceptibly into this and cannot then escape. I shan’t even mention women, for here one needs the greatest restraint and reason, as nature herself is our enemy, and the man who does not apply his whole reason and show the necessary restraint will later do so in vain in his attempt to escape from the labyrinth,
a misfortune that mostly ends only in death
. You yourself may perhaps already have learnt from your limited experience how blindly we may often be taken in by jests, flatteries and jokes that initially seem unimportant but at which reason, when she awakes later on, is ashamed; I don’t want to reproach you. I know that you love me not just as your father but also as your staunchest and surest friend; and that you know and realize that our happiness and misfortune and, indeed, my very life – whether I live to a ripe old age or die suddenly – are in your hands as much as God’s. If I know you, I can hope for nothing but contentment, and this alone must console me during your absence, when I am deprived of a father’s delight in hearing, seeing and embracing you. Live like a good Catholic, live and fear God, pray most fervently to Him in reverence and trust, and lead so Christian a life that, even if I am never to see you again, the hour of my death may be free from care. With all my heart I give you a father’s blessing and remain until death
⁴
your faithful father and surest friend

Leopold Mozart

Here are our Paris acquaintances, all of whom will be delighted to see you. […]
⁵

[
Leopold’s postscript to his wife on the envelope
]

My Dear Wife,

As you’ll receive this letter on the 11th or 12th and as I doubt whether a further letter will reach Wolfg. in Mannheim, I’ll take my
leave of him with this enclosure! I’m writing this with tears in my eyes. Nannerl kisses her dear brother Wolfg. a million times. She would have added a note to my letter and said goodbye, but the letter was already full and in any case I didn’t let her read it. We ask Wolfg.
to take care of his health and to stick to the diet that he got used to at home
; otherwise he’ll have
to be bled
as soon as he arrives in Paris,
everything spicy
is bad for him. I expect he’ll take with him the big
Latin prayer book
that contains
all the psalms
for the full office of Our Lady. If he wants to have the
German
text of the office of Our Lady in Mannheim in order to have it in German too, he’ll have to try to obtain the very smallest format as the Latin psalms are difficult to understand. It would be better if he also had them in German. Learned contrapuntal settings of the psalms are also performed at the Concert Spirituel;
⁶
it’s possible to gain a great reputation in this way. Perhaps he could also have his
Misericordias
⁷
performed there. The opera singers aren’t coming but have gone instead to Straubing to entertain the Austrian officers. The prince has again forced the magistrature to hold 9 balls, the first one was yesterday and was attended by 30 persons; it lasted till half past one, but not a soul had arrived by half past 9 and it wasn’t till 10 that they started dancing; 1 capon and 6 mugs of wine were consumed. I hope you received the 2 sonatas for 4 hands,
⁸
the Fischer variations
⁹
and the rondo,
¹⁰
which were all parcelled up in the same letter. – – The late Herr Adlgasser hasn’t found a decent bellows blower in the afterlife; the cathedral’s old bellows blower, the 80-year-old Thomas, has followed him into the next world. The main news is that Mme Barisani
¹¹
has become incredibly jealous of her old and respectable husband as he and Checco
¹²
have on a handful of occasions been to perform at the home of handsome Herr
Freysauff, who has a relatively pretty but witless wife. There was an incredible fuss. Farewell. We kiss you millions of times

Mzt

Everyone sends their best wishes, especially Herr Bullinger and the wife of the sergeant of the bodyguards, Herr
Clessin
, Waberl Mölk etc.

My Dear Son,

I’ve read through your letter of the 4th with bewilderment and shock. I’m starting to answer it today, the 11th, as I was unable to sleep all night and am now so tired that I can write only slowly, one word at a time, but must complete it by tomorrow. Thank God, I have been well until now: but this letter, in which I recognize my son only by his failing in believing the first thing people say to him, laying bare his unduly kind heart to flattery and smooth words, allowing himself to be swayed this way and that by all the ideas that are put to him, and on the strength of ideas and baseless, impracticable and ill-considered plans letting himself be misled into sacrificing his own reputation and interests and even the interests and assistance owed to his old and honest parents to the interests of strangers; this letter has left me all the more dismayed in that I was hoping, not unreasonably, that a number of the situations that you’ve already faced and my own reminders, both spoken and written, would have convinced you that both for the sake of your own happiness and in order to be able to advance in the world and finally achieve your desired goal among such different types of people, be they good or bad, happy or unhappy, you should have concealed your kind heart beneath a veil of the greatest reserve, undertaking nothing without the greatest deliberation and never allowing yourself to be carried away by enthusiastic imaginings and vague and blind fancies. I beg you, my dear son, read this letter carefully – take time to read it
properly – merciful God, gone are those moments of contentment for me when, as child and boy, you never went to bed without standing on a chair and singing me the
oragna fiagata faà
,
¹
often kissing me on the tip of my nose and telling me that when I grew old, you’d put me in a glass-fronted box and protect me from the air so that I’d always be with you and you could honour me. – Listen to me patiently then. You are fully aware of our problems in Salzb. – you know how hard it is for me to make ends meet and ultimately why I kept my promise to let you leave and all my troubles. There were 2 reasons for your journey: either to find a good and permanent post; or, if that were not to succeed, to go to some big city where you could earn lots of money. Both plans were intended to help your parents and your dear sister to survive but above all to bring you fame and honour in the world, something that was partly achieved in your childhood, partly in your years of boyhood, but it now depends on you alone to raise yourself gradually to a position of the greatest eminence that a musician has ever known: you owe this to the exceptional talent that you’ve received from our most merciful God; and it depends only on your intelligence and way of life whether you die as an ordinary musician forgotten by the whole world or as a famous Kapellmeister whom posterity will read about in books – whether, cowed by a woman, you perish on a bed of straw in a parlour full of starving children or whether, after a Christian life of contentment, honour and posthumous fame, you die respected by all the world, with your family well provided for. Your journey took you to Munich – you know the reason for it – there was nothing that could be done. Well-meaning friends wanted to keep you there – your wish was to remain there: it was suggested that you should form a company, I don’t need to repeat all the details. At the time you thought the affair was manageable; – I did not think so – reread what I wrote on that occasion. You’re not without honour. – – Would it have done you honour, even if the affair had succeeded, to have depended on 10 people and their monthly charity? You were then extraordinarily
taken up with that little singer
²
at the theatre and wanted nothing more than to help the German theatre; now you declare that you don’t even want to write a comic opera. No sooner had you left the gates of Munich behind you than, as I foretold, your entire company of friendly subscribers had forgotten you. – And what would have become of you in Munich? – – Ultimately we can see God’s providence in all things. In Augsburg, too, you had your little fling and amused yourself with my brother’s daughter, who then had to send you her portrait. The rest I wrote in my initial letters to Mannheim. In Wallerstein you amused them endlessly, taking up a violin, dancing around and playing so that you were described to absent colleagues as a merry, high-spirited fool, thereby giving Herr Beecke a chance to disparage your merits, merits which thanks to your compositions and your sister’s playing these 2 gentlemen
³
have subsequently come to see in a different light, as she kept saying:
I’m only a pupil of my brother
, so that they now have the highest opinion of your art and have been very disparaging about Herr Beecke’s inferior compositions. You did very well to ingratiate yourself with Herr
Cannabich
in Mannheim. But it would have borne no fruit if he himself had not been seeking a twofold advantage. I’ve already written to you about the rest. But now it was the turn of Herr
Cannabich’s
daughter to be heaped with praises, with her character portrayed in the adagio of your sonata,
⁴
in short, she was now your favourite person. You then became acquainted with Herr
Wendling
, and it was now he who was your most honest friend, and I don’t need to repeat what happened next. Suddenly I find you have a new acquaintance in Herr
Weber
and everyone else is forgotten; now it is this family that is the most upright and Christian family, and their daughter
⁵
is the main character in the tragedy to be played out between her family and yours, and in the giddiness into
which your kind and open heart has drawn you, you imagine that all your inadequately thought-through plans are as infallibly practicable as if they were the most natural thing in the world.