Agnes Selby is a friend and Mozart historian. I previously featured her in an entry showcasing her book, Constanze, Mozart's Beloved. In the following article, Agnes offers insight into the life of Leopold Mozart and the intense relationship he experienced with his genius son, Wolfgang.
Sherry
Leopold Mozart: Paternal Pride and Prejudice by Agnes Selby
The early Mozart biographers proclaim the pivotal role Leopold Mozart played in his son, Wolfgang Mozart’s life. His influence was claimed to have been beneficial as far as Wolfgang’s musical development was concerned, as well as in the formation of his character. More recent writers have recognised, however, the elements of destructiveness in Leopold’s upbringing of his gifted son, pointing out the father’s need to manipulate Wolfgang for his own advantage. When finally Wolfgang rebelled against his father’s will he had only ten years of life left to him. Yet these were the glorious years when Wolfgang’s genius blossomed, burst free from the confines imposed by the will of his father.
Curiously enough, the veneration of Leopold as the father of a genius began with the woman he most resented, his daughter-in-law, Constanze. When Constanze and her second husband, Nikolaus von Nissen embarked on the writing of Wolfgang Mozart’s monumental documentary biography, Constanze placed her stamp of approval on Leopold Mozart’s role in his son’s life. The biography was based on letters between father and son handed over to Nissen and Constanze by Leopold’s daughter, Nannerl. The letters revealed Leopold’s strict and unforgiving nature which failed to lessen Constanze’s admiration for him as the man who grounded Wolfgang in the principles and the framework of musical composition.
As a child of the eighteenth century, she did not question Leopold Mozart’s motives. She would have seen in his actions a demonstration of a father’s love for his son. In her praise of Leopold Mozart, Constanze may also have been motivated by her respect for Nannerl who, after all, entrusted her father’s letters to her second husband, Nissen. Any reservations she may have had were kept to herself for, after all, Constanze had nothing to gain from expressing private criticism in Mozart’s biography and thereby hurting Leopold Mozart’s descendants - her own sons.
As early Mozartean writers tended to copy from each other, Leopold Mozart has emerged unscathed and untouched by the vagaries of literary fate which so often reinvent the lives of famous people. Constanze’s tendency to agree with Leopold’s treatment of his son is nevertheless somewhat surprising as she herself had been a victim of his prejudice and severe and unforgiving attitude to life.
Leopold Mozart was a man of many contradictions. He thought of himself as a devoted father who gave unstintingly to the two prodigies he was privileged to bring into the world. In return, however, he extracted a price the burden of which lay heavily upon his children’s shoulders. He was openly generous in his praise of other musicians yet his sarcastic asides annulled the praise he proffered. For instance, his colleague, Michael Haydn, the brother of Joseph Haydn, who often filled Leopold’s shoes during his long absences from his Court duties, was most frequently the butt of his sarcastic remarks. Leopold was possibly the most famous impresario of a child prodigy in musical history and yet his efforts fell short of their objective. Had he survived his son, he might have marvelled at Constanze’s ability to market his son’s genius, as she did not miss a single opportunity to enhance her late husband’s name during the fifty years of her life after her husband’s death.
Leopold travelled all over Europe remorselessly seeking recognition for his children, in the process exposing them to every imaginable contagion in the disease-riddled capitals of the continent resulting in a legacy of ill-health for both Nannerl and Wolfgang and in the end costing Wolfgang his life. Leopold’s many travels suggest a desire for self-promotion, a passionate desire to flee the monotony of his life at the Salzburg Court and an urge to mingle on an equal footing with the nobility he despised because he wasn’t one of them.
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was the son of Johann Georg Mozart, a bookbinder whose opportunity to become a Master of his trade came through marriage. He married Maria Banegger the widow of his late employer. The couple lived in the Frauentorstrasse in Augsburg and the house is preserved to this day as the Mozarthaus. When Maria Banegger died after only a few years of marriage, Johann Georg married the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a wealthy weaver. Leopold Mozart was the first of eight children born to Johann Georg Mozart and his young wife, Anna Maria Sulzer in 1719.
Anna Maria Mozart was a beautiful woman and Leopold inherited her Nordic good looks. His compulsive and obsessive nature may also have been inherited from his mother who in her old age dissipated the family fortune in law suits and divided her family with her continuous bickering. Near the end of her life she was restrained by the Augsburg authorities from creating further problems. Leopold Mozart fled from his mother and his siblings and severed his connections with all members of his family with the exception of his youngest brother, Alois, also a bookbinder and the father of Basle to whom Wolfgang’s "infamous" letters were later addressed. (These letters contain the kind of scatological humour which was often expressed during those days and it needs to be seen in the context of the period.)
As a youngster Leopold Mozart showed no scholastic ability. However, this all changed when he was enrolled at the Jesuit Grammar School in Augsburg, where he completed the formidable curriculum with distinction. This was an expensive school but Leopold’s school fees were discounted as his father bound the prayer books for the Augsburg Cathedral. When Leopold graduated he was proficient in Latin, Greek and French and had studied Logic, Physics, Mathematics and History. He was a gifted violinist who had often performed in school concerts and he was also an outstanding organist. Leopold’s interest in music led him to correspond with the great J. S. Bach who was at the time a member of the Correspondence Society in Leipzig. Leopold studied music by correspondence with Meirand Spiess, the Music Director and Prior of the Benedictine Abbey at Irrsee.
After his father’s death Leopold moved to Salzburg and enrolled at the Benedictine University with the original intention of studying Theology. At the beginning of the first semester, however, he had enrolled to study Philosophy and Jurisprudence. He was an exemplary scholar during the first year but then his love of music and the application of all his time to the study of music earned him a dismissal from the University.
Leopold entered the service of Count Thurn-Valsassina und Taxis in Salzburg as a valet "with musical obligations". Leopold seemed happy in the Count’s service and he dedicated his six trio sonatas, Opus I to the Count. Leopold’s words in his dedication liken the Count to a paternal son (Paterno Sole). The wording is not much different from Wolfgang’s dedication of his six string quartets to "Papa" Haydn. He remained in the Count’s service for three years when in 1743 he was appointed fourth violinist to the court orchestra under Leopold Anton von Firmian, the last independently reigning archbishop of Salzburg. Archbishop Firmian is remembered for solving the centuries-old religious problems between Catholics and Protestants by expelling twenty-two thousand Protestants from his land. Leopold worked his way up to second violinist and Court Chamber Composer (1757) but the Archbishop who played the greatest role in Leopold Mozart’s life was Count Sigismund Christoph Schrattenbach. It was under his reign that Leopold attained the position of court composer and Vice-Kapellmeister in 1763.
Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo took office in 1772 and with his arrival the fulfillment of Leopold Mozart’s career aspirations at the Salzburg court vanished. In his desire to imitate the Viennese Court, the Archbishop appointed a Neapolitan composer, Domenico Fischietti as Kapellmeister of his orchestra thus by-passing Leopold Mozart. Leopold realised that his hopes of becoming Kapellmeister were forever blighted and the bitterness he felt at what he considered a betrayal never left him.
Wolfgang’s own disenchantment with Salzburg was influenced by his father, who never found in Salzburg the stimulus and professional satisfaction he craved for. It is, therefore, surprising to consider Leopold’s negative reaction to Wolfgang’s desire to escape from what he considered a professionally stagnant environment.
Leopold Mozart’s letters to his son after Wolfgang moved to Vienna are unfortunately not extant. Nissen, who with his wife Constanze stands accused by historians of having destroyed them, also decried their loss in his introduction to his Mozart biography. From Wolfgang’s replies, however, the picture of a bitter Leopold emerges. It is a forbidding portrait of a disappointed and frustrated man. A portrait of a man desperately trying to keep his son anchored in the very quagmire in which he considered himself to be captive.
At first his appointment to the Archbishop’s orchestra was a great blessing to Leopold. On November 21, 1747 he married Anna Maria Pertl who for some time had been his great love. He married above his station as Anna Maria was the daughter of Nikolaus Pertl, a lawyer and the magistrate of the district of St. Gilgen. Nikolaus Pertl, however died young and left his wife and daughter in poverty. Except for her good name, Anna Maria Pertl brought no material trappings to the marriage. There is no doubt that this was a marriage based on love and affection. Thus Wolfgang Mozart was born in 1756 into a loving family. He was the youngest of seven children of whom only two survived, Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl who had been born five years earlier on 30 July, 1751.
In Salzburg the Mozarts lived in a small three-bedroom apartment on the top floor at No. 9 Getreidegasse. The house belonged to Lorenz Hagenauer, a rich merchant who became their true and trusted friend. Leopold earned extra money for his family by teaching the violin and piano. During the year of Wolfgang’s birth Leopold published his Treatise on the Violin School which, according to Goethe’s friend, Karl Friedrich Zelter was a book which will be useful as long as the violin remains a violin, as indeed it has remained a book studied to this day by all serious interpreters of 18th century violin music. Leopold Mozart was a prolific composer and apart from church music, he composed orchestral suites and delightful pieces for toy instruments. The Toy Symphony earlier attributed to Joseph Haydn was in fact composed by Leopold Mozart. Some of Leopold’s music was also attributed to Wolfgang but it has now been established that the three songs Die Grossmutige Gelassenheit K. 149; Geheime Lied K. 150 and Die Zufriedenheit im Niedrigen Stande K. 151 are in fact all Leopold Mozart’s compositions. It is indeed a compliment to Leopold that these works were at first ascribed to his illustrious son.
Leopold’s early desire to see his son established as Court Composer at a German Court such as Mannheim or Munich, inspired Wolfgang’s and his mother’s ill-fated journey to Paris in 1777. Although Wolfgang was by now twenty-one years old, Leopold would not allow him to travel on his own and this restriction resulted in his mother’s death in Paris. The letters Leopold wrote to his son during the eighteen months Wolfgang was away from Salzburg are a study in musical politics and paternal commands. Any emotional needs Wolfgang may have had are dealt with swiftly by the father and without a single thought given to the effect such letters would have on his son. Mercilessly, Leopold was quick to blame the death of his wife in Paris on his son.
While in Mannheim, Wolfgang found his way along the cobblestoned streets to the lottery office opposite which resided the music copyist, Fridolin Weber. There he was welcomed by Weber’s four daughters who would influence the remainder of his life. Starved for love and suddenly free of the strictures imposed by his father, Wolfgang promptly fell in love with Aloysia, the second oldest and the most beautiful of the Weber girls. Barely seventeen years old, she was an accomplished pianist and linguist. When Wolfgang heard her perform his compositions, he found in them a new meaning that he himself had not been aware of. Most of all, this future prima donna of the Viennese Opera impressed Wolfgang with her voice. For the first time in his life Wolfgang no longer cared about his own career but wanted to dedicate his life to furthering Aloysia’s. Wolfgang planned to travel to Italy where Aloysia’s voice would be appreciated. He was going to take with him Fridolin Weber as chaperon and the eldest sister, Josepha, the future star of the Schikaneder company, as cook so that he could continue to enjoy her culinary delicacies. In a letter to Leopold he likened his own family to the Weber’s, a faux pas his father would never forgive.
Needless to say, Leopold’s reaction was swift in his condemnation of his son’s plan. With an anger surely comparable to that of the Commandatore in Mozart’s later opera, Don Giovanni, Leopold wrote to his son on 11 February, 1778: "As for your proposal (I can hardly write when I think of it), your proposal to travel about with Herr Weber and, be it noted, his two daughters - it has nearly made me lose my reason! My dearest son! How could you have allowed yourself to be bewitched even for an hour by such a horrible idea!" Wolfgang was so upset that he became sick but he had to accede to his father’s wishes and continue on his journey to Paris. After his mother’s death, he found his only solace in the hope that he would see his beloved Aloysia on his return journey. During all this drama Wolfgang barely noticed the little girl with the pretty eyes, the fourteen-year-old Constanze Weber who was to become his wife and the guardian of his posthumous fame. Wolfgang was loath to return to Salzburg and the suspicion arises that his plans to travel with Aloysia were also plans to liberate himself from his father. He drove his father to almost demented fury with his procrastination about his return journey.
Family problems were always resolved by Leopold alone, never allowing room for discussion. This may also have been due to parental attitudes to children during the 18th Century but Leopold sought and indeed continued to rule his children’s will well into their adulthood.
Leopold’s letters to his son during his Paris journey contain long litanies of his own financial woes. He always made sure that Wolfgang was aware of his obligation to support his family and repay the debt that his father had allegedly incurred on his behalf. In a letter to his son in February 1778 Leopold complained that he was as poor as Lazarus, his clothing as shabby and torn, and that he had to wear old socks and shoes to church, all this to impress upon Wolfgang his responsibility towards his father who was making so many sacrifices for him!!
As a result Wolfgang was torn between the desire to flee his father or return to the tyranny of Salzburg in order to help him. Wolfgang was bound to his family by ties stronger than blood; by his sense of guilt at having let his mother die in Paris and his responsibility for the debts incurred by his father to finance the ceaseless journeys undertaken by the whole family for Wolfgang’s benefit. It is a wonder that his talent survived the burdens laid upon him and did not shrivel up under his father’s severe and critical eye. Leopold convinced his son to return to Salzburg but when Wolfgang was commissioned to compose the opera Idomeneo for the Munich opera an opportunity presented itself for him to travel to Vienna. In early 1781 Archbishop Colloredo was visiting his ailing father in Vienna and required all his servants, cooks and musicians to accompany him. Wolfgang travelled to Vienna from Munich with only the clothes he was wearing but once there, he soon contrived to be dismissed from Colloredo’s service. Wolfgang remained in Vienna when all the other servants returned to Salzburg. Wolfgang’s act of insubordination against his employer finally ended the control his father had exercised over him.
Nannerl did not fare so well. She had been in love with a cavalry officer and when Leopold finally broke this liaison, Nannerl spent a year in total depression. Seemingly unconcerned, Leopold wedded her to an elderly nobleman, Baron Johann Baptist Berchtold von Sonnenburg, whose third wife she became, having to care for the children from her husband’s previous marriages. She gave birth to her first child, named after Leopold, on 27 July 1785 in her father’s home in Salzburg and returned to her husband in St. Gilgen without her baby, leaving him thereafter in Leopold’s care. Many Mozartean writers have applauded this deed as her supreme expression of love for her father. It is an unfathomable act of a totally oppressed woman unable to withstand her father’s entreaties. So convinced was Leopold that Wolfgang’s genius was due to his own efforts that he believed that another such genius was not entirely out of the question. His letters to Nannerl at St. Gilgen describe in detail the musical progress her baby was making. Little Leopold, however, had no talent whatsoever, a fact that Leopold Mozart did not live to see. Little Leopold grew up to be a cavalry officer and later in life became a bureaucrat in the Austrian Taxation Department.
In 1786 Wolfgang made plans to travel to London. He did not like to be parted from Constanze for lengthy periods and so he turned to his father with the request that his two sons be placed in his father’s care. Leopold had at least two servants looking after Nannerl’s little boy, hence Wolfgang did not feel that his own two children would be an imposition.
Leopold promptly rejected his son’s request. He dashed off a letter to Nannerl the tone of which reveals the coldness of his reply (not extant) to his son.
"You can easily imagine that I had to express myself very emphatically, as your brother actually suggested that I should take charge of his two children because he was proposing to undertake a journey through Germany to England in the middle of Carnival. I wrote therefore very fully and added that I would send him the continuation of my letter by the next post. Herr Muller, the good and honest maker of silhouettes, had said a lot of nice things about little Leopold to your brother, who heard in this way that the child is living with me. I had never told your brother. So that is how the brilliant idea occurred to him or perhaps to his wife. Not at all a bad arrangement! They could go off and travel - they might even die - or remain in England - and I would have to run off after them with the children. As for payment he offers me for the children and for the maids to look after them = Basta! If he cares to do so, he will find my excuse very clear and instructive."
One might wonder how Leopold’s letter affected Wolfgang and Constanze and whether the continuation of Leopold’s sermon was even read by them. The Mozarts’ little boy, also called Leopold, died of suffocation on 15 November, 1786 and was buried in St. Marx cemetery on the very day, 17 November, when Leopold penned his acrimonious letter to Nannerl.
Leopold Mozart’s relationship with Wolfgang deteriorated because of his inability to grant his son the freedom of an adult existence. Leopold’s blind hatred of Mozart’s wife, Constanze finally broke Wolfgang’s trust in his father. It is difficult to assess if this hatred of Constanze and her family stemmed from Leopold’s disappointment that his son did not marry into the nobility or that Wolfgang’s transference of his dependency from his father to Constanze deprived Leopold of his most vital link with his son. Leopold’s hatred of Constanze and her family had a continuing influence on Mozartean scholars. We find even so distinguished a scholar as Alfred Einstein hurling insults at Mozart’s beloved wife and her accomplished family of musicians and singers.
Yet it is interesting to note that Leopold’s letters to Nannerl, when in January, 1785 he visited his son in Vienna, actually express his approbation of his daughter-in-law whom he praised for running an economical household and her mother and sisters for entertaining him regally. These comments were ignored by writers who preferred his earlier reference to Constanze when he called his son’s new bride a slut. This slur inspired writers to pick up pencil and paper to recount the apocryphal stories of Constanze’s sisters parading in front of the army barracks in Vienna with a view to picking up prospective husbands.
Where this scurrilous information came from is not known. All the while Constanze’s sister, Aloysia was married to Joseph Lange, a celebrated Shakespearean actor and painter and was herself the highest paid prima donna of the German Opera. Constanze’s eldest sister, Josepha was studying singing in Graz on an Imperial scholarship. On her return from Graz, Josepha joined the Schikaneder company and was the first Queen of the Night in Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. Constanze’s youngest sister, Sophie, fourteen years old at the time of Constanze’s marriage to Mozart, is well known in Mozartean history as the young maiden who suffered Leopold Mozart’s company while he lay sick during his visit to his son’s home in Vienna. Later she witnessed Wolfgang’s death and according to her report to Nissen, her brother-in-law expired in her arms. Some of Leopold’s angry utterances made Wolfgang"scream in rage" but to Mozartean writers they were manna from heaven, upon which they could feed their historical in prejudices.
After his daughter, Nannerl returned to her husband’s household in St. Gilgen, Leopold dedicated the rest of his life to his grandson. He occasionally attended Archbishop Colloredo’s court and looked forward to the occasional theatre productions that took place in Salzburg. He became ill and died of heart failure on 28 May, 1787 and had the final say even in death.
Leopold voiced his displeasure with his son by leaving his whole estate to his daughter with the exception of his personal items. These were to be auctioned and the proceeds were to be divided between his two children. There were 579 items to be auctioned but only 314 were sold, Nannerl retaining the most valuable objects. All the valuable gifts given to the young Wolfgang during his many travels were retained by Nannerl. Wolfgang’s scores which had remained in Salzburg when he so swiftly departed to Vienna from Munich took until December 1787 to be returned to him.
Maynard Solomon in his Mozart - A Life has estimated that Nannerl received from her father somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 florins. In her old age, when out of pity Constanze organised a collection for "Mozart’s impoverished sister" among London’s music lovers, Nannerl was actually in possession of more than 6,000 florins, left at the time of her death to her only remaining child, Leopold. When his father died, Wolfgang only received a settlement of 1,000 florins.
Nannerl may have been gratified by her father’s will, considering it a final proof that she was, after all, her father’s most beloved child. There is no doubt that her early youth was spent in the shadow of her brother and that she harboured a hidden resentment against him for the rest of her life.
Interestingly, the grandson Leopold Mozart never knew, Wolfgang’s youngest child, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, bore the closest resemblance to his grandfather. He had more than an average musical talent and became a music teacher in Lemberg, Poland. Like his grandfather, he was a man of romantic and lofty ideas but could never quite bring them to fruition. In his portrait he looks like Leopold. In appearance and bearing the two men are so similar that they could be mistaken for the portrait of the same man painted at different stages of life.
It is an irony that Leopold Mozart was destined to share his final resting place with his detested daughter-in-law, Constanze and her second husband Nikolaus von Nissen. The grave also houses the final remains of Constanze’s aunt, Genevieva Weber, the mother of Carl Maria von Weber, the father of the German romantic movement.
The musical heritage of the Mozart family ended with the death of Franz Xaver Mozart (Wolfgang Mozart’s son) on July 19, 1844 at Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) at the age of 53. Neither of Mozart’s sons married and there were no descendants. Nannerl’s great- granddaughter, Bertha Forschter, died in 1917 and Leopold Mozart’s great-great grandniece, Karoline Grau, died in 1965. I have not been able to confirm the story of a descendant of "Basle" Mozart, a milliner who was taken from a mental asylum in Germany with the rest of the asylum’s inmates to the ovens of a concentration camp in Hitler’s Germany.
Sherry
Leopold Mozart: Paternal Pride and Prejudice by Agnes Selby
The early Mozart biographers proclaim the pivotal role Leopold Mozart played in his son, Wolfgang Mozart’s life. His influence was claimed to have been beneficial as far as Wolfgang’s musical development was concerned, as well as in the formation of his character. More recent writers have recognised, however, the elements of destructiveness in Leopold’s upbringing of his gifted son, pointing out the father’s need to manipulate Wolfgang for his own advantage. When finally Wolfgang rebelled against his father’s will he had only ten years of life left to him. Yet these were the glorious years when Wolfgang’s genius blossomed, burst free from the confines imposed by the will of his father.
Curiously enough, the veneration of Leopold as the father of a genius began with the woman he most resented, his daughter-in-law, Constanze. When Constanze and her second husband, Nikolaus von Nissen embarked on the writing of Wolfgang Mozart’s monumental documentary biography, Constanze placed her stamp of approval on Leopold Mozart’s role in his son’s life. The biography was based on letters between father and son handed over to Nissen and Constanze by Leopold’s daughter, Nannerl. The letters revealed Leopold’s strict and unforgiving nature which failed to lessen Constanze’s admiration for him as the man who grounded Wolfgang in the principles and the framework of musical composition.
As a child of the eighteenth century, she did not question Leopold Mozart’s motives. She would have seen in his actions a demonstration of a father’s love for his son. In her praise of Leopold Mozart, Constanze may also have been motivated by her respect for Nannerl who, after all, entrusted her father’s letters to her second husband, Nissen. Any reservations she may have had were kept to herself for, after all, Constanze had nothing to gain from expressing private criticism in Mozart’s biography and thereby hurting Leopold Mozart’s descendants - her own sons.
As early Mozartean writers tended to copy from each other, Leopold Mozart has emerged unscathed and untouched by the vagaries of literary fate which so often reinvent the lives of famous people. Constanze’s tendency to agree with Leopold’s treatment of his son is nevertheless somewhat surprising as she herself had been a victim of his prejudice and severe and unforgiving attitude to life.
Leopold Mozart was a man of many contradictions. He thought of himself as a devoted father who gave unstintingly to the two prodigies he was privileged to bring into the world. In return, however, he extracted a price the burden of which lay heavily upon his children’s shoulders. He was openly generous in his praise of other musicians yet his sarcastic asides annulled the praise he proffered. For instance, his colleague, Michael Haydn, the brother of Joseph Haydn, who often filled Leopold’s shoes during his long absences from his Court duties, was most frequently the butt of his sarcastic remarks. Leopold was possibly the most famous impresario of a child prodigy in musical history and yet his efforts fell short of their objective. Had he survived his son, he might have marvelled at Constanze’s ability to market his son’s genius, as she did not miss a single opportunity to enhance her late husband’s name during the fifty years of her life after her husband’s death.
Leopold travelled all over Europe remorselessly seeking recognition for his children, in the process exposing them to every imaginable contagion in the disease-riddled capitals of the continent resulting in a legacy of ill-health for both Nannerl and Wolfgang and in the end costing Wolfgang his life. Leopold’s many travels suggest a desire for self-promotion, a passionate desire to flee the monotony of his life at the Salzburg Court and an urge to mingle on an equal footing with the nobility he despised because he wasn’t one of them.
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was the son of Johann Georg Mozart, a bookbinder whose opportunity to become a Master of his trade came through marriage. He married Maria Banegger the widow of his late employer. The couple lived in the Frauentorstrasse in Augsburg and the house is preserved to this day as the Mozarthaus. When Maria Banegger died after only a few years of marriage, Johann Georg married the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a wealthy weaver. Leopold Mozart was the first of eight children born to Johann Georg Mozart and his young wife, Anna Maria Sulzer in 1719.
Anna Maria Mozart was a beautiful woman and Leopold inherited her Nordic good looks. His compulsive and obsessive nature may also have been inherited from his mother who in her old age dissipated the family fortune in law suits and divided her family with her continuous bickering. Near the end of her life she was restrained by the Augsburg authorities from creating further problems. Leopold Mozart fled from his mother and his siblings and severed his connections with all members of his family with the exception of his youngest brother, Alois, also a bookbinder and the father of Basle to whom Wolfgang’s "infamous" letters were later addressed. (These letters contain the kind of scatological humour which was often expressed during those days and it needs to be seen in the context of the period.)
As a youngster Leopold Mozart showed no scholastic ability. However, this all changed when he was enrolled at the Jesuit Grammar School in Augsburg, where he completed the formidable curriculum with distinction. This was an expensive school but Leopold’s school fees were discounted as his father bound the prayer books for the Augsburg Cathedral. When Leopold graduated he was proficient in Latin, Greek and French and had studied Logic, Physics, Mathematics and History. He was a gifted violinist who had often performed in school concerts and he was also an outstanding organist. Leopold’s interest in music led him to correspond with the great J. S. Bach who was at the time a member of the Correspondence Society in Leipzig. Leopold studied music by correspondence with Meirand Spiess, the Music Director and Prior of the Benedictine Abbey at Irrsee.
After his father’s death Leopold moved to Salzburg and enrolled at the Benedictine University with the original intention of studying Theology. At the beginning of the first semester, however, he had enrolled to study Philosophy and Jurisprudence. He was an exemplary scholar during the first year but then his love of music and the application of all his time to the study of music earned him a dismissal from the University.
Leopold entered the service of Count Thurn-Valsassina und Taxis in Salzburg as a valet "with musical obligations". Leopold seemed happy in the Count’s service and he dedicated his six trio sonatas, Opus I to the Count. Leopold’s words in his dedication liken the Count to a paternal son (Paterno Sole). The wording is not much different from Wolfgang’s dedication of his six string quartets to "Papa" Haydn. He remained in the Count’s service for three years when in 1743 he was appointed fourth violinist to the court orchestra under Leopold Anton von Firmian, the last independently reigning archbishop of Salzburg. Archbishop Firmian is remembered for solving the centuries-old religious problems between Catholics and Protestants by expelling twenty-two thousand Protestants from his land. Leopold worked his way up to second violinist and Court Chamber Composer (1757) but the Archbishop who played the greatest role in Leopold Mozart’s life was Count Sigismund Christoph Schrattenbach. It was under his reign that Leopold attained the position of court composer and Vice-Kapellmeister in 1763.
Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo took office in 1772 and with his arrival the fulfillment of Leopold Mozart’s career aspirations at the Salzburg court vanished. In his desire to imitate the Viennese Court, the Archbishop appointed a Neapolitan composer, Domenico Fischietti as Kapellmeister of his orchestra thus by-passing Leopold Mozart. Leopold realised that his hopes of becoming Kapellmeister were forever blighted and the bitterness he felt at what he considered a betrayal never left him.
Wolfgang’s own disenchantment with Salzburg was influenced by his father, who never found in Salzburg the stimulus and professional satisfaction he craved for. It is, therefore, surprising to consider Leopold’s negative reaction to Wolfgang’s desire to escape from what he considered a professionally stagnant environment.
Leopold Mozart’s letters to his son after Wolfgang moved to Vienna are unfortunately not extant. Nissen, who with his wife Constanze stands accused by historians of having destroyed them, also decried their loss in his introduction to his Mozart biography. From Wolfgang’s replies, however, the picture of a bitter Leopold emerges. It is a forbidding portrait of a disappointed and frustrated man. A portrait of a man desperately trying to keep his son anchored in the very quagmire in which he considered himself to be captive.
At first his appointment to the Archbishop’s orchestra was a great blessing to Leopold. On November 21, 1747 he married Anna Maria Pertl who for some time had been his great love. He married above his station as Anna Maria was the daughter of Nikolaus Pertl, a lawyer and the magistrate of the district of St. Gilgen. Nikolaus Pertl, however died young and left his wife and daughter in poverty. Except for her good name, Anna Maria Pertl brought no material trappings to the marriage. There is no doubt that this was a marriage based on love and affection. Thus Wolfgang Mozart was born in 1756 into a loving family. He was the youngest of seven children of whom only two survived, Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl who had been born five years earlier on 30 July, 1751.
In Salzburg the Mozarts lived in a small three-bedroom apartment on the top floor at No. 9 Getreidegasse. The house belonged to Lorenz Hagenauer, a rich merchant who became their true and trusted friend. Leopold earned extra money for his family by teaching the violin and piano. During the year of Wolfgang’s birth Leopold published his Treatise on the Violin School which, according to Goethe’s friend, Karl Friedrich Zelter was a book which will be useful as long as the violin remains a violin, as indeed it has remained a book studied to this day by all serious interpreters of 18th century violin music. Leopold Mozart was a prolific composer and apart from church music, he composed orchestral suites and delightful pieces for toy instruments. The Toy Symphony earlier attributed to Joseph Haydn was in fact composed by Leopold Mozart. Some of Leopold’s music was also attributed to Wolfgang but it has now been established that the three songs Die Grossmutige Gelassenheit K. 149; Geheime Lied K. 150 and Die Zufriedenheit im Niedrigen Stande K. 151 are in fact all Leopold Mozart’s compositions. It is indeed a compliment to Leopold that these works were at first ascribed to his illustrious son.
Leopold’s early desire to see his son established as Court Composer at a German Court such as Mannheim or Munich, inspired Wolfgang’s and his mother’s ill-fated journey to Paris in 1777. Although Wolfgang was by now twenty-one years old, Leopold would not allow him to travel on his own and this restriction resulted in his mother’s death in Paris. The letters Leopold wrote to his son during the eighteen months Wolfgang was away from Salzburg are a study in musical politics and paternal commands. Any emotional needs Wolfgang may have had are dealt with swiftly by the father and without a single thought given to the effect such letters would have on his son. Mercilessly, Leopold was quick to blame the death of his wife in Paris on his son.
While in Mannheim, Wolfgang found his way along the cobblestoned streets to the lottery office opposite which resided the music copyist, Fridolin Weber. There he was welcomed by Weber’s four daughters who would influence the remainder of his life. Starved for love and suddenly free of the strictures imposed by his father, Wolfgang promptly fell in love with Aloysia, the second oldest and the most beautiful of the Weber girls. Barely seventeen years old, she was an accomplished pianist and linguist. When Wolfgang heard her perform his compositions, he found in them a new meaning that he himself had not been aware of. Most of all, this future prima donna of the Viennese Opera impressed Wolfgang with her voice. For the first time in his life Wolfgang no longer cared about his own career but wanted to dedicate his life to furthering Aloysia’s. Wolfgang planned to travel to Italy where Aloysia’s voice would be appreciated. He was going to take with him Fridolin Weber as chaperon and the eldest sister, Josepha, the future star of the Schikaneder company, as cook so that he could continue to enjoy her culinary delicacies. In a letter to Leopold he likened his own family to the Weber’s, a faux pas his father would never forgive.
Needless to say, Leopold’s reaction was swift in his condemnation of his son’s plan. With an anger surely comparable to that of the Commandatore in Mozart’s later opera, Don Giovanni, Leopold wrote to his son on 11 February, 1778: "As for your proposal (I can hardly write when I think of it), your proposal to travel about with Herr Weber and, be it noted, his two daughters - it has nearly made me lose my reason! My dearest son! How could you have allowed yourself to be bewitched even for an hour by such a horrible idea!" Wolfgang was so upset that he became sick but he had to accede to his father’s wishes and continue on his journey to Paris. After his mother’s death, he found his only solace in the hope that he would see his beloved Aloysia on his return journey. During all this drama Wolfgang barely noticed the little girl with the pretty eyes, the fourteen-year-old Constanze Weber who was to become his wife and the guardian of his posthumous fame. Wolfgang was loath to return to Salzburg and the suspicion arises that his plans to travel with Aloysia were also plans to liberate himself from his father. He drove his father to almost demented fury with his procrastination about his return journey.
Family problems were always resolved by Leopold alone, never allowing room for discussion. This may also have been due to parental attitudes to children during the 18th Century but Leopold sought and indeed continued to rule his children’s will well into their adulthood.
Leopold’s letters to his son during his Paris journey contain long litanies of his own financial woes. He always made sure that Wolfgang was aware of his obligation to support his family and repay the debt that his father had allegedly incurred on his behalf. In a letter to his son in February 1778 Leopold complained that he was as poor as Lazarus, his clothing as shabby and torn, and that he had to wear old socks and shoes to church, all this to impress upon Wolfgang his responsibility towards his father who was making so many sacrifices for him!!
As a result Wolfgang was torn between the desire to flee his father or return to the tyranny of Salzburg in order to help him. Wolfgang was bound to his family by ties stronger than blood; by his sense of guilt at having let his mother die in Paris and his responsibility for the debts incurred by his father to finance the ceaseless journeys undertaken by the whole family for Wolfgang’s benefit. It is a wonder that his talent survived the burdens laid upon him and did not shrivel up under his father’s severe and critical eye. Leopold convinced his son to return to Salzburg but when Wolfgang was commissioned to compose the opera Idomeneo for the Munich opera an opportunity presented itself for him to travel to Vienna. In early 1781 Archbishop Colloredo was visiting his ailing father in Vienna and required all his servants, cooks and musicians to accompany him. Wolfgang travelled to Vienna from Munich with only the clothes he was wearing but once there, he soon contrived to be dismissed from Colloredo’s service. Wolfgang remained in Vienna when all the other servants returned to Salzburg. Wolfgang’s act of insubordination against his employer finally ended the control his father had exercised over him.
Nannerl did not fare so well. She had been in love with a cavalry officer and when Leopold finally broke this liaison, Nannerl spent a year in total depression. Seemingly unconcerned, Leopold wedded her to an elderly nobleman, Baron Johann Baptist Berchtold von Sonnenburg, whose third wife she became, having to care for the children from her husband’s previous marriages. She gave birth to her first child, named after Leopold, on 27 July 1785 in her father’s home in Salzburg and returned to her husband in St. Gilgen without her baby, leaving him thereafter in Leopold’s care. Many Mozartean writers have applauded this deed as her supreme expression of love for her father. It is an unfathomable act of a totally oppressed woman unable to withstand her father’s entreaties. So convinced was Leopold that Wolfgang’s genius was due to his own efforts that he believed that another such genius was not entirely out of the question. His letters to Nannerl at St. Gilgen describe in detail the musical progress her baby was making. Little Leopold, however, had no talent whatsoever, a fact that Leopold Mozart did not live to see. Little Leopold grew up to be a cavalry officer and later in life became a bureaucrat in the Austrian Taxation Department.
In 1786 Wolfgang made plans to travel to London. He did not like to be parted from Constanze for lengthy periods and so he turned to his father with the request that his two sons be placed in his father’s care. Leopold had at least two servants looking after Nannerl’s little boy, hence Wolfgang did not feel that his own two children would be an imposition.
Leopold promptly rejected his son’s request. He dashed off a letter to Nannerl the tone of which reveals the coldness of his reply (not extant) to his son.
"You can easily imagine that I had to express myself very emphatically, as your brother actually suggested that I should take charge of his two children because he was proposing to undertake a journey through Germany to England in the middle of Carnival. I wrote therefore very fully and added that I would send him the continuation of my letter by the next post. Herr Muller, the good and honest maker of silhouettes, had said a lot of nice things about little Leopold to your brother, who heard in this way that the child is living with me. I had never told your brother. So that is how the brilliant idea occurred to him or perhaps to his wife. Not at all a bad arrangement! They could go off and travel - they might even die - or remain in England - and I would have to run off after them with the children. As for payment he offers me for the children and for the maids to look after them = Basta! If he cares to do so, he will find my excuse very clear and instructive."
One might wonder how Leopold’s letter affected Wolfgang and Constanze and whether the continuation of Leopold’s sermon was even read by them. The Mozarts’ little boy, also called Leopold, died of suffocation on 15 November, 1786 and was buried in St. Marx cemetery on the very day, 17 November, when Leopold penned his acrimonious letter to Nannerl.
Leopold Mozart’s relationship with Wolfgang deteriorated because of his inability to grant his son the freedom of an adult existence. Leopold’s blind hatred of Mozart’s wife, Constanze finally broke Wolfgang’s trust in his father. It is difficult to assess if this hatred of Constanze and her family stemmed from Leopold’s disappointment that his son did not marry into the nobility or that Wolfgang’s transference of his dependency from his father to Constanze deprived Leopold of his most vital link with his son. Leopold’s hatred of Constanze and her family had a continuing influence on Mozartean scholars. We find even so distinguished a scholar as Alfred Einstein hurling insults at Mozart’s beloved wife and her accomplished family of musicians and singers.
Yet it is interesting to note that Leopold’s letters to Nannerl, when in January, 1785 he visited his son in Vienna, actually express his approbation of his daughter-in-law whom he praised for running an economical household and her mother and sisters for entertaining him regally. These comments were ignored by writers who preferred his earlier reference to Constanze when he called his son’s new bride a slut. This slur inspired writers to pick up pencil and paper to recount the apocryphal stories of Constanze’s sisters parading in front of the army barracks in Vienna with a view to picking up prospective husbands.
Where this scurrilous information came from is not known. All the while Constanze’s sister, Aloysia was married to Joseph Lange, a celebrated Shakespearean actor and painter and was herself the highest paid prima donna of the German Opera. Constanze’s eldest sister, Josepha was studying singing in Graz on an Imperial scholarship. On her return from Graz, Josepha joined the Schikaneder company and was the first Queen of the Night in Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. Constanze’s youngest sister, Sophie, fourteen years old at the time of Constanze’s marriage to Mozart, is well known in Mozartean history as the young maiden who suffered Leopold Mozart’s company while he lay sick during his visit to his son’s home in Vienna. Later she witnessed Wolfgang’s death and according to her report to Nissen, her brother-in-law expired in her arms. Some of Leopold’s angry utterances made Wolfgang"scream in rage" but to Mozartean writers they were manna from heaven, upon which they could feed their historical in prejudices.
After his daughter, Nannerl returned to her husband’s household in St. Gilgen, Leopold dedicated the rest of his life to his grandson. He occasionally attended Archbishop Colloredo’s court and looked forward to the occasional theatre productions that took place in Salzburg. He became ill and died of heart failure on 28 May, 1787 and had the final say even in death.
Leopold voiced his displeasure with his son by leaving his whole estate to his daughter with the exception of his personal items. These were to be auctioned and the proceeds were to be divided between his two children. There were 579 items to be auctioned but only 314 were sold, Nannerl retaining the most valuable objects. All the valuable gifts given to the young Wolfgang during his many travels were retained by Nannerl. Wolfgang’s scores which had remained in Salzburg when he so swiftly departed to Vienna from Munich took until December 1787 to be returned to him.
Maynard Solomon in his Mozart - A Life has estimated that Nannerl received from her father somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 florins. In her old age, when out of pity Constanze organised a collection for "Mozart’s impoverished sister" among London’s music lovers, Nannerl was actually in possession of more than 6,000 florins, left at the time of her death to her only remaining child, Leopold. When his father died, Wolfgang only received a settlement of 1,000 florins.
Nannerl may have been gratified by her father’s will, considering it a final proof that she was, after all, her father’s most beloved child. There is no doubt that her early youth was spent in the shadow of her brother and that she harboured a hidden resentment against him for the rest of her life.
Interestingly, the grandson Leopold Mozart never knew, Wolfgang’s youngest child, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, bore the closest resemblance to his grandfather. He had more than an average musical talent and became a music teacher in Lemberg, Poland. Like his grandfather, he was a man of romantic and lofty ideas but could never quite bring them to fruition. In his portrait he looks like Leopold. In appearance and bearing the two men are so similar that they could be mistaken for the portrait of the same man painted at different stages of life.
It is an irony that Leopold Mozart was destined to share his final resting place with his detested daughter-in-law, Constanze and her second husband Nikolaus von Nissen. The grave also houses the final remains of Constanze’s aunt, Genevieva Weber, the mother of Carl Maria von Weber, the father of the German romantic movement.
The musical heritage of the Mozart family ended with the death of Franz Xaver Mozart (Wolfgang Mozart’s son) on July 19, 1844 at Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) at the age of 53. Neither of Mozart’s sons married and there were no descendants. Nannerl’s great- granddaughter, Bertha Forschter, died in 1917 and Leopold Mozart’s great-great grandniece, Karoline Grau, died in 1965. I have not been able to confirm the story of a descendant of "Basle" Mozart, a milliner who was taken from a mental asylum in Germany with the rest of the asylum’s inmates to the ovens of a concentration camp in Hitler’s Germany.
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