MOZART OF NOISE
M
ozart had a weird life. He was born into an already musical family with his dad, Leopold, the Kapellmeister for the Archbishop of Salzburg. Leopold was clearly one of the sharpest quills in the drawer, and he quickly realized that his son had an awful lot of potential. Mozart's sister, Anna - who he called Nannerl - was pretty useful on the piano, but, fairly early on, Leopold recognized that Wolfgang was an all-rounder. He taught him everything he knew, schooling him in harmony, counterpoint and all the finer points of composition. At some point, he must have decided that the world should see his son, too, because most of Wolfgang's early years on the road were spent not so much touring as 'being toured'. The Mozart Family roadshow hit most of Europe, with dates in Paris and London. In fact, if you are ever in London and you happen to be standing in the queue for Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, take a look upwards and opposite - there's a plaque on the wall commemorating the building where Mozart stayed.
When he was nineteen, Mozart went on tour in his own right, taking his mum along for company. He took in Munich on the way, and it was during his stay with the family of the music copyist, Weber, that he that fell in love. Big-time. Her name was Aloysia and he fell wig over heels for her. Sadly for him, she didn't reciprocate his feelings at all. In addition, his mother fell ill and died on the trip, and so he left Paris doubly broken-hearted. Before long, back in Salzburg, he parted company with his and his dad's employer, the Archbishop of Salzburg from his letters, it looks as if he jumped virtually seconds before he was pushed - and upped and moved to Vienna, a place which very soon became the city of Mozart's dreams.
From here on in, he would not only write all his best stuff, but he would also find love again - and in the weirdest place. In fact, this is one thing he shares, spookily enough, with Haydn: they both ended up marrying the sister of the woman they had originally courted. For Haydn, it was the biggest mistake of his life. His wife was a complete beast for whom he felt no love whatsoever. She, in turn, had no love for him and would reputedly use the manuscripts of his beloved compositions to line her pastry tins, or as curlers for her hair.j5
Mozart, on the other hand, landed on his feet. When Aloysia went to the trouble of becoming a nun in order not to marry him©, Mozart married her sis, Constanze, and they got on like a Strauss on fire. Very happy, they were. And even though money was up and down, he was writing prolifically and coming up with the goods - the symphonies, string quartets, sonatas, serenades - lots of goodies.
SIGNIFICANT BIRTHDAY NEXT YEAR
W
e join Mozart again when he's twenty-nine. Twenty-nine! Remember, by his standards that's almost bus-pass time. He's really motoring, too. He's doing very well with his operas - the crowd just love them - although the first real belter, the first one that will really stay around for ever, has yet to come. He's already done the Haffner Serenade - a bit of background music, to be fair, written for one of the weddings of the powerful Haffner family - as well as The Abduction from the Seraglio, Idomineo and the? minor Mass, the latter just a couple of years ago. fi That's always baffled me, that one, cas curlers for her hair'. I mean, it's true, I'm sure, but how do you use, say, the score of the Clock Symphony as hair curlers7. Or maybe it wasn't the whole symphony, just the highlights. JUST THE HIGHLIGHTS!!!! Suit yourself.
The big things now, though, for Mozart are his piano concertos. Piano concertos for him were more or less party pieces, for when he stopped off on his travels to visit dukes and emperors and things. They were pieces which not only made him sound - and I imagine look -great, in that they were often technically difficult to play and yet had slow movements to die for. The slow movements, alone, had great, heart-rending tunes which had the genteel folk of the 1780s weeping into their snuffboxes. In one sense, they were the '45s' of then-period?", if you like, and, in another, they could be said to be the sort of 'spinal cord' of the body of music Mozart left behind - twenty-seven piano concertos, each one a chapter in the musical diary of his life. Each one can tell you a litde bit more about what was happening to him at the time. A little snapshot of him of that moment.
Take the one from 1785 itself, Piano Concerto No 21. A beautiful PC, with possibly one of the best power ballads of its type. Or should that be slow movements? It was written just weeks after Mozart had put the pen down on his previous Piano Concerto in D minor - he really was knocking these out - and it was not long after his marriage to Constanze. The outer movements are light and fluffy and full of the joys of spring, but the inner slowie has become justifiably famous not only in concert halls, but also in adverts and movies. In fact, it's often known as 'the Elvira Madijjan' concerto, just because someone used it in a Swedish film of the same name in 1967. Poor Mozart, I say. Although I suppose it could have been worse. The It Came from the Swamp! concerto is marginally less appealing, especially if it becomes 'your' tune.
GOETHE HEAVEN
O
ne year later and Mozart is still reigning supreme. Globally, 178S is an interesting time. The flavour of the month seems to be coming from the literary world and goes by the name of Robbie fiMmm, what a great essay subject: 'Mozart Piano Concerto slow movements the power ballads of their day. Discuss.' Extra points if you can compare and contrast Piano «loncerto 21 with ''Ihe Power of Love' by Jennifer Rush. Burns and his Poems Chiefly in a Scottish Dialect. This is the year that sees seemingly everyone doing the Scottish thing - throwing Scottish parties, having Scottish theme nights, failing to qualify for major sporting events, the lot. Elsewhere, Goethe, the toast of Germany -not to mention future Chas and Dave song - is currently attempting to become the toast of Italy too. He's on tour there for a couple of years, taking in the culture, networking, that sort of thing. Other than that, very litde of major future significance to impart for 1786, apart from the fact that someone discovered uranium.
Mozart's year is going from strength to strength. For him, it's the year when all his opera experience really begins to pay off, in terms of the 'annals of time' and 'posterity' and all that nonsense. (Remember how we said opera would have its day again?) He's been writing opera for yonks now, of course, but, all of a sudden, he premieres an opera in which everything just seems to gel. Everything manages to just… come together. Right now. It's pardy due to the fact that his 'words' man, a new librettist for Mm called Da Ponte, is coming up with some great 'books' for the operas in the first place. (Very often, just as in musicals, the libretto to an opera is simply called the book.) As a result, it's in Italian - not Mozart's first, but certainly his first for a while, and appeals to the Viennese audience who, for some reason, like their operas in Italian - and it no doubt does no harm that it's a comedy. Da Ponte had taken the story from a play by Beaumarchais, written just a couple of years ago. It was called then, and indeed it is called now, The Marriage of Figaro.
Its first night was the 1st of May, 1786, in Vienna, and it is said that its opening night was twice as long as it should have been because virtually every aria had to be encored immediately it was sung! In fact, its popularity led to the introduction of a royal order stating that opera houses were not allowed to do over-long encores - just the odd aria.
AMADEUS AND SO'S MY WIFE
T
alking of all things Mozart, I make no apologies about staying focused on him for a litde while longer. In fact, despite the fact that we've got almost another 220 years to cover in only the next 208 pages, I'm nevertheless going to throw caution to the wind and dedicate the next nine pages… to only four years. Four years, ladies, gentlemen and undecideds, four years. Without the aid of a safety net. But these are no ordinary four years as far as music is concerned. These are the last four years of Mozart's life! To do these four years justice, you would need many more pages that I have here, but I can, at least, draw the magnifying glass a little closer and set these forty-eight months apart. If we were a film, these next pages would be in slow motion. But first, let me just place Mozart's last four years in their context of world events. And, fittingly enough, it wasn't just for Wolfgang that this time was to be world-changing. Elsewhere, as well, it was a cataclysmic time.