Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 莫扎特 Chapter 3 The Wonder Boy Crows Up

Nine months after the Mozart family returned to Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfie were off again, back to Vienna. Wolfie was growing up. His father saw that he and Nannerl could no longer make a living as child geniuses. Nannerl was a good musician, but she would never be a great one. And while Wolfie was amazing for a young boy, when he became a man, his music might not seem so amazing. Then what would happen?



Papa decided 1 Nannerl would no longer go on concert trips. Instead, she would look for a husband to support her. (Eventually, Nannerl got married and had three children. Although she no longer performed, for the rest of her long life she continued to teach music.)



As for Wolfie, he needed to find a job as a concertmaster in the court of a king or prince.



During Wolfie’s time, the only way to hear music was to hear it performed live. There were no CDs, tapes, or records. Kings and princes would hire musicians like Mozart to write and play music especially for them. In that way, they would always have beautiful music around them. And the musician, in turn, made a living by writing music and performing it.



Leopold also thought that it was time for Wolfie to make his debut 3 as an opera composer. An opera is a story told entirely 4 in songs and performed on a stage. Often an opera has ballet in it, too. Operas were very popular before there were movies or television, because they told exciting, dramatic stories through music and dance. Many performers were involved: singers to sing the songs and act out the stories; musicians to play the music, dancers to perform the ballet. The performers wore gorgeous costumes, and the stage sets were beautifully painted and very elaborate.



Operas were performed in specially 2 built opera houses in big cities like Milan, Paris, or Vienna. The opera houses themselves were grand places, with velvet-covered seats and fancy chandeliers. Altogether, an opera was a lavish 5 spectacle enjoyed by the very rich who could afford the expensive tickets. An opera might take more than two hours to be sung; it usually had several acts, and there were intermissions between them.



Wolfie wrote his first opera before his thirteenth birthday. Although he composed several great operas later in life, his first attempt wasn’t a success. The singers were angry at taking orders from a boy. They complained bitterly about the music and about Wolfie, too. The opera was canceled before it was ever performed. Wolfie did not receive the fee that had been promised to him.



Leopold was furious and thought that jealous composers were to blame. He wrote: “I can but tell you briefly 6 that the whole hell of music is in revolt to prevent the world from witnessing a child’s cleverness. It is impossible for me to press for the performance of the opera, knowing that there is a conspiracy 7 to spoil it ….”



But Leopold was not going to let this defeat his plans for Wolfie. From 1769 to 1773, Wolfie and his father made three trips to Italy, leaving his mother and Nannerl behind. Wolfie loved Italy, with its warm climate and golden light. He especially loved Venice, where people traveled in graceful 8 boats, called gondolas 9, through water-filled streets called canals. These trips were an important part of Wolfie’s musical education. In Italy, Wolfie was able to hear a different kind of music. It was lighter 10 and less serious than the music he was used to hearing and playing. This thrilled him. He loved learning about new kinds of music. He kept on composing, too, at a very rapid pace.



Much as he loved his new surroundings, Wolfie missed Mama and Nannerl. Letters filled in the gaps. “I kiss your hand a thousand times” and “I embrace my dearest sister with all my heart” he wrote home to them.



Wolfie and Papa went to Rome during Holy Week, the seven days before Easter. Wolfie knew that a very famous piece of music called Miserere was going to be sung by the Pope’s choir 11 at St. Peter’s Cathedral. That was the largest and most important Catholic church. The Miserere, written by the composer Allegri, was very special and holy music. The music had never been printed. No one outside the Pope’s choir had ever seen it. No other choir was allowed to sing it.



The service began. When Wolfie heard the glorious music filling the huge cathedral, he knelt down. He had never heard anything like it. Even when the service was over, he remained kneeling, as if in a trance. When Papa finally got him to leave, he kept humming the music. He wanted to remember it always.



That night, Wolfie couldn’t sleep. He kept hearing the music in his head. He got up and quietly searched for a pen and music paper. Then he sat down and began to write the notes he had heard. It all came back to him. Note for note, the great Miserere was down on paper. It was the first time this had ever been done outside the Pope’s choir room. All his life, people would be astonished by Wolfie’s ability to hear music and memorize it instantly.



From 1766, when he returned from his first grand tour, to 1773, Wolfie wrote more than twenty symphonies, several string quartets, and three short operas, as well as concert songs and church music. He was only seventeen years old. Most musicians are just getting started at this age. But not Wolfgang. Although hardly more than a boy, he had written enough music for a lifetime.



Although music was his greatest “joy and passion,” Wolfie found time to do other things. He enjoyed playing cards and billiards 12 and writing to his family. He especially liked writing funny and silly letters to entertain and amuse his reader. They were filled with puns, jokes, and coded messages. To a cousin, he wrote, “Now, however, I do myself the honor of inquiring how you are and how you do. Have you good digestion 13? Have, you, perhaps, congestion 14? Can you tolerate me, do you think? Do you write with pencil or with ink?” Clearly, he was having fun by trying to make the words in his letter rhyme. He called Nannerl “horse face” in letters to her. He was playful and even silly, full of good spirits and affection for his family and friends.



When he was twenty-one, Wolfie fell in love with Aloysia Weber. She lived in Mannheim, Germany. Aloysia was the daughter of a musician as well as a musician herself. Wolfie wanted to marry her, but his father said no. Papa Leopold told Wolfie to go to Paris, to “become famous and make money.” Leopold’s concerns about money and his family’s future had only gotten stronger with the years. He insisted that Wolfgang help support the family.



At one point, Papa learned that Wolfie had stopped teaching some paying students because they hadn’t shown up for a lesson. Instead, Wolfgang chose to teach others for free. That did not go over well with Leopold. Not at all. He scolded his son in an angry letter, saying, “… and you would rather, I suppose, leave your poor old father in need! The effort is too great for you, a young man, however good the pay, and it is more seemly, no doubt, that your fifty-eight-year-old father should run hither and thither 15 for a wretched fee so that he may win the needful subsistence for himself and his daughter in the sweat of his brow … so that you, in the meantime, can amuse yourself giving a girl lessons for nothing!”



Bowing to his father’s demands, Wolfie left Mannheim and Aloysia and went to Paris with his mother, although he continued writing letters to Aloysia. But his time in Paris was very disappointing. Wolfie was supposed to meet the Duchess of Chabot. He hoped she would become his patroness. He would write his beautiful music for her, and in return, she would provide him with a steady living. But when he arrived at the mansion 16, the duchess rudely kept him waiting in an unheated, freezing outer room. At last, she asked him to join her guests, who were busy drawing. No one had the manners to stop drawing while he played on a clavier, so that Wolfie wrote how he made music for “… the sofas, the table and walls.”



Also, Paris was so expensive. To make money, Wolfie began giving clavier lessons. But he didn’t like the work. It meant less time to write his own music. And creating music was something he had to do. It was as necessary as eating or breathing. While in Paris, he did manage to compose a symphony. The symphony filled him with pleasure. The night before the premiere, he had heard the musicians rehearsing. How awful they sounded. They needed another rehearsal 17. But there was no time. He was so worried that the audience wouldn’t like the symphony that he planned to skip the concert. He went to bed “in a discontented and angry frame of mind.”



The next day, however, Wolfgang changed his mind and went. To his surprise, the audience loved what they heard. They clapped and cheered. The Paris Symphony turned out to be a success after all.



Yet trouble soon followed. His mother was not well. She suffered from earaches 18 and sore throats. The chilly 19 climate in Paris made her worse. In her letters to Leopold, she complained of being cold all the time, even when there was a fire going in the room. In July of 1778, Anna Maria Mozart died.



Wolfgang was grief-stricken and stunned 20. His beloved mother was dead. How could he tell his father? Surely Leopold would somehow blame him. He wrote to a priest in Salzburg who was a family friend: “Mourn with me my friend!—This has been the saddest day of my life … I have to tell you that my mother, my dear mother is no more! … Let me now beg you to do me one friendly service, to prepare my poor father very gently for this sad news!”



When Leopold learned of his wife’s death in a far-off country, he did indeed blame his son. He said that Wolfie had not only forced his mother to accompany him to Paris but also neglected her while they were there.



The way for Wolfgang to ease his sadness was to write music—often at a furious pace. It was how he dealt with his grief over his mother. In 1779, Wolfgang’s father ordered him to come home. In Salzburg, Leopold had finally found a job for Wolfgang. Wolfgang was happy to leave Paris and its sad memories behind. Slowly and alone, Wolfie made his way back home.