American classical radio station WQXR in New York City has dedicated November as Mozart Month in which they’re rolling out, among other goodies, 20 essential Mozart recordings, Mozart quizzes, common myths about Wolfgang and a host of other musical delights.
In keeping with WQXR’s theme, I checked in with some musical historians and scholars to see if they might clarify some common misconceptions concerning Mozart; among the most hotly debated centers on how Mozart died-could he have been murdered or poisoned as many have speculated? What about the notion that he was just in the end, a buffoon or idiot savant who never really grew up, such as his uncontrollable bursts of laughter as depicted in the 1984 Academy Award winning motion picture ``Amadeus.’’ Others come to blows over whether his works merely flowed out of his head, saving him from the demanding task of constructing sketches and notations, much like his contemporaries suffered through.
When discussing Mozart and his creative mystique, it’s hard to think of him as a mere mortal, but rather as a genius endowed with superhuman powers, as if his music miraculously fell from the heavens to fete the world with his divinely inspired masterpieces.
It’s clearly a mountainous task to separate fact from fiction, mortal from immortal, myth from reality, when Mozart’s father, Leopold, described this child prodigy as ``the miracle which God let be born in Salzburg."
As Maynard Solomon described in his epic biography of this prolific and influential composer, Mozart was the most famous musical prodigy of history, who was considered from the outset, the quintessential, perfect child. ``He was received, feted, and honored by the royal families of Europe’’, Solomon writes, ``by the King and Queen of France, the Empress of Austria and her son the Emperor Joseph, the King and Queen of England, and Pope Clement himself. He and his family were showered with money and expensive gifts. He was kissed by empresses and petted by Marie Antoinette.’’
Now that’s a memorable childhood.
While there are unquestionably a number of myths surrounding Mozart, these are the hard facts. He was born on January 27, 1756 at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Austria, (a territory of the Holy Roman Empire), baptized with the name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus to Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart. He had a sister, Maria Anna (Nannerl), and the two of them were among the only surviving children out of the seven that Anna Maria bore. Mozart learned the harpsichord from the age of three or four, and began to compose under his father's strict and demanding supervision when he was five; by the age of six had already acquired a reputation throughout Europe as a musical prodigy; in 1764 at the age of eight, he performed before King Louis XV of France; and by age 12, composed his first opera.
Mozart's most prolific years came not in Salzburg, but in Vienna, from age 25 to his death at 35, where he taught piano (mostly to daughters of the rich), composed and performed his greatest piano concertos, married Constanze Weber; and beginning in 1782 with the Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), turned out a steady stream of masterpieces in practically every form and genre.
During his years in Vienna, Mozart also met and became fast friends with Franz Joseph Haydn, the Austrian composer who had profound influence on him. Other seminal influences shaping Mozart’s works during his Vienna years were born when he acquainted himself with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel.
Taken together, Mozart composed no fewer than 20 operas, 18 Masses, 27 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, 35 sonatas for piano and violin, and 41 symphonies, including The Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, G minor K550, and C major K551 (Jupiter') symphonies. His operas include Idomeneo (1780), Entfuhrung aus dem Serail/The Abduction from the Seraglio(1782), Le Nozze di Figaro/The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Cosi fan tutte/Thus Do All Women (1790), and Die Zauberflote/The Magic Flute (1791).
Mozart died at five minutes to 1 a.m. on Monday December 5, 1791, two months before his 36th birthday. The cause of death reported by a Berlin newspaper in 1791, a week after his death, was thought to be due to poisioning; more credible and recent findings attribute his death to a strep infection.
Now that the facts have been presented; it’s time to address common myths and misperceptions about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Q. What is the biggest myth or misconception about Mozart?
A. ``What I find absolutely inadequate is the idea that he [Mozart] was a kind of idiot-savant. On the contrary, one of the most extraordinarily impressive things about him is how he could understand the corners of human feelings, even at a rather young age. He must have been hypersensitive and therefore emotionally very vulnerable: certainly very aware of everything that was going on around him.’’
``The biggest myth about Mozart, is that his music is pure, joyous, and "easy". It is intense, dense, complex and has many layers. Joy and clarity is certainly only one of them, and often deceptive. To focus the attention only on that layer make us miss his very human and quite mysterious complexity.''
-Federico Cortese, Music Director of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras and Senior Lecturer on Music and Director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra in the Department of Music at Harvard University
Q. Mozart completed most of works by dint of sheer memory?
A. ``A generation ago scholars thought Mozart composed everything in his head and then notated it on paper after the creative process was over. He was most certainly capable of this, as works such as the Linz symphony (composed in four days) attest. But his process of notating in layers, revealed by the different ink tints in his manuscripts, and his surviving sketches (some 90% of which were destroyed by his widow), have revealed a more nuanced sense of his creative process.’’
``The fragments—a larger number than by any other major composer (1 in 5 over his lifetime, 1 in 3 during the mature Vienna years)—are extraordinary in what they reveal about the creative process—both how he conceived his works and how he wrote them down. Above all, the fragments frequently contain some of his most interesting, and most experimental ideas, and not infrequently one wonders why he finished some of his works instead of those left in draft stage (and by that I don’t mean the Requiem or other works begun in 1791, where clearly it is a question of death staying his hand).’’
-Robert Levin, pianist, musicologist, composer, and Mozart scholar. Levin has completed and reconstructed a number of classical works, including unfinished compositions by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Q. What are we to make of the suggestion that around July, 1791, Mozart was visited by a tall, sickly-looking stranger clad in gray who presented an anonymous letter commissioning him to compose a Requiem as quickly as he could, no matter the price?
A. ``The REQUIEM was commissioned in the summer of 1791, from Count Walsegg-Stuppach (1763-1827), a fellow freemason and acquaintance. To be written in memory of his wife who died in February of that year. However, the count did send an anonymous messenger to negotiate with Mozart.''
``And there is little evidence to support the suggestion that Walsegg, like some have argued, intended to claim the Requiem as his own.''
-Andrew Clark, Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard University
***
Robert Greenberg, American composer, pianist, musicologist, and currently historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, puts to rest a great many myths surrounding Mozart in his series of lectures (Great Lectures) through The Teaching Co., entitled, ``Mozart—His Life and Music.’’
Based on the compelling material Greenberg presented through his lectures, I posed the following questions.
Q. While living, was Mozart as popular among the masses as say John Lennon or a Mick Jagger, and what about the suggestion his music was the product of divine inspiration?
Dr. Greenberg: A. ``Mozart's music was NOT considered populist, easy listening, new age sweet-stuff in his own lifetime. On the contrary, music that we turn to today for its lyricism and for the solace it offers from our overly complex world was considered by many of Mozart's contemporaries to be too long, to “academic", and unnecessarily complex. Mozart had talent, yes, by the bucketful, but oh my, he did work hard. And let's not make it easy on ourselves by thinking of Mozart as a freak, an eternal child, an idiot touched by the hand of God. Unfair and untrue.''
Q. How much validity is there in the theory, advanced by some writers, that Mozart was murdered by his rival composer, Antonio Salieri?
Greenberg. A. ``And on what do these writers (and many others) base THEIR premise? In 1823, at the age of 73, Antonio Salieri slashed his own throat. He survived this little "shaving accident" and, until his death two years later, claimed that he had poisoned Mozart. Aha!! So the Italians got him after all, snotty little Austrian upstart! Nipped him in his prime, they did! Arrivaderci, Amadeo!
``Well, not really. There's virtually no reliable evidence that points to Salieri, or the involvement of any Italian "cabal" in Mozart's death. And Salieri was stark raving looners when he made his "confession"; he might as well have professed to being Blanche du Bois.’’
Q. Was Mozart poisoned, perhaps by the masons in revenge for his disclosure of masionic practices and secrets in the Magic Flute, a two-act opera by Mozart which premiered in 1791 at the Schikander Theater in Vienna?
Greenberg. A. ``Mozart was not poisoned. Not one of the doctors who attended him in his final days or the doctors that examined him after his death ONCE MENTIONED IN THEIR REPORTS EVEN THE POSSIBILITY THAT HE HAD BEEN POISONED. And if indeed Mozart HAD been poisoned by aqua toffana, as was suggested, he would have suffered from a severe burning pain in the mouth, throat and abdomen, scalding tears, muscle spasms, a blue line on the gums, among other things. Mozart experienced none of these symptoms.''
Q. So, what did kill Mozart?
Greenberg. A. ``According to his death certificate, Mozart died of "heated millary fever" which was 18th century for "haven't a clue.’’ A contemporary newspaper claimed that he died of "dropsy of the heart," a swelling of the body due to water retention as a result of kidney failure. So, kidney failure has also been blamed for Mozart's death, a failure that would have been brought on by a streptococcal infection, viral hepatitis, or some other viral illness. According to Dr. Peter J. Davies in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (1983), Mozart died from Henoch-Schonlein syndrome, ANOTHER secondary illness brought on by a viral infection.’’
Q. Were Mozart’s remains ever recovered?
Greenberg. A. ``Although it has commonly been assumed that Mozart's remains were lost to posterity - like most people of his time and station he was buried in a communal grave - a skull reputed to be Mozart's was unearthed ten years after his death by the gravedigger who had interred him. The skull ended up in Salzburg's Mozart Museum, where it is today, its authenticity still in dispute. Anyway, in the early 1990's, the skull was analyzed by a team of French anthropologists from the University of Provence. Wear on the teeth confirmed that the skull had belonged to a man between 25 and 40 years of age. And when the researchers superimposed photographs of the skull on portraits of Mozart, they found that the skull's features - in particular the cheek bones and the egg-shaped forehead - matched perfectly.''
-Bill Lucey
November 5, 2013
Comments