Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters (5 page)

We’d only just got back to Vienna when our landlady told me that
Countess Leopold Kinsky had sent someone round every day to ask whether we’d returned.– – I went to see her on Christmas Day, and she said that she had been anxiously awaiting us and had postponed a dinner that she wanted to give for Field Marshal Daun,
⁴
who would like to meet us. And so she held her dinner on Monday. I shall now definitely be leaving here on Friday morning and with God’s help will reach Linz on Sunday; and on the eve of Epiphany, 5th Jan. 1763, I hope to be standing in your front room with you.
⁵
In the evening, of course! Otherwise you might think I meant
first thing in the morning
, although that wouldn’t strike you as all that strange as you’re used to getting up for Matins during Advent. You will now add the following to the pile of favours that you’ve already done for me, namely, wish our Father Confessor
⁶
the
healthiest
and happiest New Year in my name and ask him to continue to be merciful towards me; I would write to him myself if I were not so hesitant to torment him so often with a succession of my letters. And give my New Year greetings to Madame Robinig
⁷
and Fräulein Josepha
in optima forma
and to all our excellent friends, including, of course, yourself, your good wife and your whole household. And please give my best wishes to Herr Reifenstuel and ask him if I may leave my carriage at his house for a few days until I’ve found somewhere to keep it. In the mean time I hope we’ll all be well when we see each other on the 5th – I’m burning with desire to tell you a whole host of things and to be able to say to you that I continue to be your true friend

Mozart

Best wishes from my wife and children.

If you could heat the room for a few days, I’d be grateful. It doesn’t need to be much in the front stove.

[
On the envelope
]

It has been surprisingly cold here in recent days; and today in particular it’s exceptionally cold. Her Majesty the Empress has lost another princess, Princess Johanna, 13 years of age. She took my Wolferl by the hand and led him back and forth in her rooms when we were with her.

The Mozart family arrived backin Salzburg on 5 January 1763. Leopold was promoted to deputy Kapellmeister in the court music establishment on 28 February, receiving a modest increase in salary, and that evening Wolfgang played at court. But they did not stay in Salzburg for long: on 9 June the Mozarts set out on what was to become a three-and-a-half-year tour of the German states, France, England, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Their first stop was Munich, the capital of the prince-electors of Bavaria.

We’re stuck here in Munich. We got here on Sunday evening, the 12th; Monday was a state occasion on account of the Feast of St Anthony, so we drove to Nymphenburg.
¹
The Prince of Zweibrücken,
²
who knew us from Vienna, saw us from the castle as we were walking in the park and, recognizing us, beckoned to us from the window, so we went over to him and after talking to us about various things, he asked us whether the elector
³
knew we were there. We said no; so he
immediately sent a courtier who was standing next to him to ask the elector if he wanted to hear the children. – – Meanwhile we were to go for a walk in the park and wait for the answer. – – In fact a footman arrived at once and told us to return at 8 for the concert. It was 4 o’clock; and so we continued our walk through the park and saw Babenburg
⁴
but a sudden downpour and thunderstorm forced us to take shelter. To be brief, Woferl did well. We didn’t get home till a ¼ past 11, ate first and as a result got to bed very late. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings we were with Duke Clemens,
⁵
on Thursday evening we stayed at home on account of the heavy rain. It’s now a matter of some urgency that we work out how to proceed: they have the charming custom here of keeping people waiting for presents for a long time, so you have to be happy to recover your expenses. Herr Tomasini
⁶
has been here for 3 weeks. Only now has he been paid. Tell Herr Wenzel
⁷
he can imagine how delighted we were to meet here so unexpectedly. He recognized me before I recognized him as he has now grown tall, strong and handsome. He certainly acknowledged the old friendship that I had shown him in Salzburg, and this touched me and showed me that he has a good heart. He too is going to Stuttgart and Mannheim, but then he’s coming back to Vienna. So the bishop of Passau is dead? – –
Requiescat in pace! Judicia Dei
etc. God can thwart so many people’s plans [line illegible].

On the 18th the elector dined in town. We too were invited; he and his sister and the Prince of Zweibrücken talked to us throughout the meal; I got my boy to say that we were planning to leave the next day. Twice the elector said that he was sorry not to have heard my little girl, for there wasn’t enough time when we were at Nymphenburg, as my boy on his own took up most of the time improvising and then playing a concerto on the violin and at the keyboard; two ladies sang, and then it was over. And so when he said a second time:
I’d like to have heard her
, I could only say that
it wouldn’t matter if we
stayed a few days longer
. And so we’ve no choice but drive to Augsburg as quickly as possible on Wednesday. For yesterday there was a hunt. Today there is a French play and as a result she can’t play until tomorrow. I may thank God if I’m paid on Tuesday. I shan’t be detained by the duke, but he’s waiting to see what the elector gives me. Herr Tomasini has good reason to be displeased with the elector. He performed on 2 occasions and had to wait a long time before finally receiving 10 max d’or.
⁸
But the duke gave him a beautiful gold watch.
Basta!
I’ll be happy if I recover what I’ve had to spend here and what I may still need before I get to Augsburg. I can hardly wait to get out of here. I can’t complain about the elector. He’s extremely kind and said to me only yesterday that we’re already old acquaintances; it must be 19 years since we first met. But the apostles
⁹
think only of themselves and their purses. We dined recently with the Hamburg merchant Monsieur König, who visited us in Salzburg; he too was staying at Stürzer’s,
¹⁰
but at the front of the building, while we are 2 floors up in the new building. I also met a certain Herr Johann Georg Wahler of Frankfurt, who similarly dined with us and gave me his address. He lives on the Römerberg and is going to find private lodgings for me in Frankfurt. On the same occasion we met two Saxon councillors, Messrs de Bose and Hopfgarten;
¹¹
they are both the most delightful people and, God willing, we shall meet all these gentlemen again, either in Stuttgart or Mannheim, as they are taking the same route as us.

As I’m writing this letter every day, it will eventually be finished.

We are leaving tomorrow, the 22nd. Farewell. I am etc.

P.S.: We have now been paid. From the elector we received 100 florins, but from the duke 75. But what our bill will be at the inn we
shall have the honour of hearing tomorrow, Herr Stürzer has the reputation of giving good service, but he’s also good at writing and doing his sums, patience! Nannerl was most warmly applauded when she played for both the elector and the duke. As we were leaving, both of them invited us to return. The Prince of Zweibrücken will announce our arrival in Mannheim, he’s going there soon. Duke Clemens, by contrast, has provided us with a letter of recommendation to the elector of the Palatinate.
¹²

Tell our friends that we are well.

From Munich the Mozarts moved on to Augsburg, Leopold’s birthplace, where the children gave public concerts on 28 and 30 June and 4 July, and then by way of Ulm to Ludwigsburg, the court of the Duke of Württemberg.

Monsieur
,

I was detained in Augsburg and gained little or nothing from the delay, for what I earned was as quickly spent as everything is extremely expensive, although the landlord of the 3 Moors, Herr Linay, who is the most delightful man in the world, looked after me very well. Herr Weiser is witness to this, and those who came to the concerts were almost all Lutherans.
¹
Apart from Herr Provino, who came to all 3 with Madame Perinet, and Herr Calligari, who appeared once for the sake of his reputation, I didn’t see a single Catholic
businessman except Monsieur Mayr, the husband of Lisette Muralt; the others were all Lutherans: – – we left Augsb. on the 6th and by the evening were in Ulm, where we stayed only a night and the next morning. We wouldn’t even have spent the morning there if we’d not had difficulty obtaining horses. And now a calamity! When we arrived at the post stage at Blochingen we heard that the duke
²
had suddenly decided to go off on the night of the 10th to his hunting lodge at Grafenegg, which is 14 hours away. And so I quickly decided to go straight to Ludwigsburg via Constatt rather than to Stuttgart in order to catch him. I arrived in Ludwigsburg late on the 9th and was in time to see a play at the French theatre. But not until the morning of the 10th was I able to speak to the principal Kapellmeister Jommelli
³
and the Master of the Hounds, Baron Pöllnitz, for both of whom I had letters from Count Wolfegg.
⁴
But, in a word, it couldn’t be done. Herr Tomasini, who had already been there for a fortnight before me, had not managed to gain a hearing, and everyone tells me that the duke has the charming habit of making people wait a long time before hearing them and then making them wait a long time before giving them a present:
⁵
but I regard the whole business as the work of Herr Jommelli, who is doing all he can to weed out the Germans at this court and replace them with Italians. He has almost succeeded, too, and will be entirely successful because, apart from his annual salary of 4000 florins, his allowances for 4 horses, wood and light, a house in Stuttgart and a house in Ludwigsburg, he enjoys the duke’s favour to the highest degree, and his wife has been awarded a pension of 2000 florins on his death. How do you like that as a Kapellmeister’s post? – – Moreover, he has unlimited power over his
orchestra: and it is this that makes it so good. But you can tell how prejudiced Jommelli is in favour of his country by the fact that he and those of his compatriots who flock to his house to pay him their respects have been heard to say that it is amazing and scarcely credible that a child of German birth could be such a musical genius and have so much spirit and fire.
Ridete amici!
⁶

But I digress. My situation has now become all the more wretched and difficult in that the duke has taken all the horses belonging to the post and the hired coachmen. And so I’m forced to remain here today; even as I’m writing, I’m having to contend with constant interruptions in my attempts to track down some horses and am searching every nook and cranny of Ludwigsburg in order to track them down. So you see that to date I’ve nothing more to show for my pains than the fact that I have seen countries and towns and people that I wouldn’t otherwise have done. Ulm is an appallingly old-fashioned place, so tastelessly built that I often thought of you and wished you could see it. Just imagine houses where you have to see the whole storey and all the timberwork from the outside, just as it’s constructed, and if it’s a tall building, it’s painted, but the brickwork is nice and white or every brick is painted, just as it is, so that the wall and timberwork can be seen all the more clearly. It’s exactly the same at Westerstetten, Geissling – where ivory is worked and where
7 females
try to talk every passing stranger into parting with his money – and Goeppingen, Ploching and large parts of Stuttgart. NB. Please keep my letters, so that in due course I can explain things myself that it would take too long to describe here.

Ludwigsburg is a very strange place. It’s a town, but the town walls are made not so much of fences and garden railings as soldiers. When you spit, you spit into an officer’s pocket or a soldier’s cartridge case. In the street you hear nothing but:
Halt! Quick march! About turn!
etc. etc. You see nothing but weapons, drums and the equipment of war. At the entrance to the castle there are 2 grenadiers and 2 mounted dragoons with grenadier caps on their heads and cuirasses on their breasts, but with drawn swords in their hands and over each
of them a beautiful large tin roof instead of a sentry box: in a word, it’s impossible to see greater precision in sentry drill or a finer body of men. You see absolutely no other men except those of the grenadier type, so that many a sergeant-major is paid 40 florins a month. You will laugh! And it’s certainly laughable. When I stood at the window, I thought I could see nothing but soldiers waiting to play their parts in a play or opera. Just think that all these people look the same and every day their hair is done not in ringlets but just like any
petit-maître
,
⁷
in countless curls combed back and powdered snow-white, but with their beards greased coal-black. I’ll write more from Mannheim. I must close now. If you write, write to me at Mannheim and write on it that the letter is to remain at the post until I collect it. I received the music in Augsb. If I were to write everything, I should have much more to say. But I can’t help but tell you that Württemberg is the most beautiful country: from Geissling to Ludwigsburg you see nothing to the right or left but water, woods, fields, meadows, gardens and vineyards, and all of these at once, mixed together in the most beautiful way. My regards to everyone in Salzb., especially our Father Confessor, Madame Robinig and her household etc. etc. – etc. etc.
Complimenti sopra Complimenti. Addio!
I am your old