His Lonely Soul

Salzburg, 1791.

It had never rained this hard in central Europe before. Not ever.

Escorted by the howling wind, the rain mercilessly beat on the stone pavement, determined to smash it to bits. It endlessly pound on the shut oak doors, trying its best to force them open. People hurrying to find a shelter looked disheveled, soaked, miserable, funny.

The only things that managed to retain their dignity in the violent rain were the statues of saints and apostles. They remained calm and solemn, their expressions invariably serious and contemplative. But they seemed more lost in thought today than usual. Were they remembering that particular January thirty-five years ago, that January when a child was born?

Thousands of miles away, in another city—in Vienna—it was also raining. At first it was just a little drizzle, light and not at all threatening. The sunray still managed to pierce through the clouds now and then, giving people hope that it might lighten up any moment. Then the drizzle turned into a steady shower. The rain grew harder and harder until it was absolutely pouring. The clouds gathered up, blocking out the sun, blackening the sky. It was difficult not to feel oppressed and sad with the clouds closing in and the sky crying its heart out bitterly.

A horse and cart passed through the now almost deserted streets. The clattering of the horses’ hoofs echoed loudly, adding a dash of eeriness to the already depressing atmosphere. A simple coffin lay in the cart: a lonely coffin, shrouding the lonely body within.

The horse and cart passed through streets after streets until it reached the graveyard in the outskirts of the city. The coffin was lifted carelessly out of the cart, carried across the graveyard to where the paupers were buried. Its occupant was thrown into a big hollow where there were already three or four other bodies, and buried hurriedly without ceremony. The grave was left unmarked. Mourners who were detained by the rain that day never did later find out where exactly the body rested. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever will.

100 years later the Austrian government erected in the center of the graveyard a proper marble monument with an angel sobbing over the grave stone. On the stone were carved these simple but immortal words in gold:

W. A. Mozart

1756—1791

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart quit the world, unnoticed, unattended, and lonely. It seemed ironical as well as sad and infuriating that this was the same man who had in his infancy caused great sensations, received thunderous applauses, accepted souvenirs presented by the government, and enjoyed favors bestowed on by the royal families; it was the same man who had taken Europe by storm when he emerged as a mature composer, composing heavenly music to liberate human souls; and it was the same man who forever changed the future course of music.

Yet it was perhaps fit for Mozart to leave this way. Throughout his life, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been lonely and sad, although even he himself might not have been aware of it.

Mozart was born on the 27^th of January, 1756, in the Austrian city of Salzburg. His parents christened him Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theopolius Amadeus Mozart. But fortunately for the world, his family decided early on to call him simply Wolfgang.

Little Wolfgang, after making his first loud cry to the world heard, was sleeping soundly in his mothers arms, not at all knowing that he would later make his voice reverberate throughout Austria, throughout the world, throughout history. The sleeping baby little knew that he would grow up to be a man whose life was overwhelmed by his legend; that his genius for music would be extraordinary, and perhaps, unique; that he would spend his short stay on earth composing more superb music than nearly any composer before or after him.

Perhaps his papa, Leopold Mozart—composer, violinist, and theorist—also had little idea what he had just received from God. Or maybe he knew, for he named his precious little boy “Amadeus”—beloved by God.

Little Wolfgang’s musical talent was soon evident. When he was four, Wolfgangerl tried his hand at composing what he called a “concerto,” inventing his own system of notation. When his papa managed to distinguish the notes he scribbled down from the inkblots, he stared long at the sheet, and then tears, tears of joy and wonder, fell from his eyes. He knew then and there that he had in his possession something as rare as when the moon blocked out the sun.

Leopold now devoted himself to the task of guiding and exploiting “the miracle that God let be born in Salzburg”. Under his careful instructions, Wolfgang began to soar. The boy could easily memorize long and complicated pieces of music; became a virtuoso pianist and violinist by the time he was 6; wrote his first symphony at the age of 8; and conducted his first full scale opera at 12.

To all appearances, little Wolfgang was a happy child. He was perfectly compliant and undemanding, working for the commonweal, which is to say, for the ideal family of which he was so integral a part. He delighted in his role as virtuoso-magician-prodigy; he rejoiced in applause and caresses, in being able to bring honor and fortune to his family; he derived pleasure from his celebrity and its accompanying adulation. It was a seductive role for him: from the age of six he wielded extraordinary power over his audiences, moving them to enthusiasm and rapture. And though he may not have been altogether conscious of it, he held great power over his family, for he had become its main source of wealth and statues, a breadwinner charged with contributing to the support of his mother, father, and sister.

But anyone who troubled to look could have perceived many early signs of Mozart’s difficulty in sustaining his multiple burdens: he was quick to tears, stricken and often taken ill by the loss or absence of friends, bereft when his constant pleas to “love me” were not reciprocated.

The truth was that little Wolfgang was not happy at all; and the source of his unhappiness was his family, and to be more exact, his father, his loving and encouraging father. Leopold Mozart had gained esteem, even glory, from his role as begetter, instructor, and impresario of so noble a little creature, and he had seized every opportunity to turn labors of his miraculous child into a cash equivalent, reaping extraordinarily large sums of money form the family’s European tours.Yet it was inevitable that little Wolfgang would not always remain little Wolfgang. It was inevitable that he would mature and grow up, that he would one day reach the age and attain the physical size that no longer justified his role as a child prodigy—and Leopold dreaded this.

From dreading Mozart’s maturity Leopold eventually undertook to prevent it from coming to pass. In his adolescence and young adulthood, Mozart was not allowed to travel unless accompanied by his father, who made all the practical decisions and appraised every opportunity with a view to the family’s interest. Even when Mozart set out from Salzburg at the age of twenty-one and the archbishop refused to give Leopold Mozart leave to travel, Frau Mozart went along as her husband’s agent, covertly pledged to report home any sign that their son was going astray.

Also following Mozart on his journey were Leopold’s exhortation and remonstrances, transparent attempts to barricade his son within the family. Mozart was instructed to be wary of both the friendship of men and the love of women. “All men are villains” (“Alle Menschen sind alle Böswichter”) was a common theme of Leopold Mozart’s letters to his son. “Trust no one!” he warned, adding, “All friendships have their motives.” “All men are villains!” he reiterated. “The older you become and the more associate with people, the more you will realize the sad truth.”¹ To Leopold Mozart’s mind, the greatest hazard was that Mozart might form a family of his own to which he would owe his primary allegiance. Without significant exception, Leopold opposed to interfered with all of his son’s love affairs, up to and including his marriage to Constanza Weber in 1782, an event that rent the family fabric beyond repair.

Thus, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first attempted to emerge from the bosom of his family, he discovered that his way was barred. His extraordinary family, rather than being a loving haven within which he could grow to maturity, has somehow come to resemble a kind of debtor’s prison from which he could only escape by the most strenuous effort.

His hometown Salzburg was not much comfort to him either. Strange enough, during Mozart’s life and long after his death, what Salzburg showed to its most outstanding son was at best indifference, more usually hostility. In 1781, Mozart was literally kicked out of the court of Salzburg. “Don’t you ever come back!” Salzburg was yelling to Wolfgang.

He fled to Vienna; and Salzburg began to take the trouble of “forgetting” this son. When Mozart left Salzburg, he was given up for dead. When he did die, memorial gatherings and concerts were held in his honor in Vienna, Prague, Kassel, and Berlin, but not in Salzburg. Between 1792 and 1797, Mozart’s widow, Constanza Mozart, held benefit concerts featuring his music in Vienna, Prague, Graz, Linz, Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin, but no such concert took place in Salzburg. Beginning in May 1792, Mozart monuments were erected in various cities in Europe, but it was not until 1842 that Schwanthaler’s bronze Mozart statue was unveiled in Salzburg.² In nearby Graz, where the first such monument was erected, an academy devoted to Mozart’s music was founded as early as February 1793, and about seventy of his works were performed there between 1791 and 1797. But in Salzburg no Mozart society came into being until 1841 (and no effective one until 1870), and few performances of his works took place in the decades after his death.

Thus, a beloved son—a favorite son, judging from the great enthusiasm Salzburg is finally showing nowadays—was deliberately forgotten and disinherited from his own city. And this same beloved son was effectively disinherited by his father as well—in more than a metaphoric sense.

So Mozart settled down instead in Vienna. What his circumstances were in Vienna is still a matter of heated debate. Some historians say that Vienna was not too much better than Salzburg, not appreciating this musical genius properly, and even rejecting him, for the Viennese public and music critics found his music “too revolutionarily new, too sophisticated”. Some stated that the Austrian capital gave him a warm welcome spiritually but never materially, and that Mozart spent his life dashing off one master piece of another to earn his bread but never quite earning it. Some suggested that Mozart’s salary was actually quite higher than that of other composers. But there was no doubt that Mozart never obtained a secure job in the church or at court. Instead, he eked out a precarious living by selling his works, teaching music, and borrowing money from his friends.

But more than financial difficulties, Mozart was suffering from lack of understanding and appreciation. True, the notoriously fickle Viennese public amazingly remained quite delighted by him. But Emperor Joseph II, the biggest potential patron, remarked to Mozart after the first performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serai (The Abduction from the Seraglio): “Too many notes, my dear Mozart.” A laymen’s incomprehension would still be easy to laugh off, but his musical contemporaries’ harsh judgment stabbed Mozart’s heart. “No one can doubt his genius. But he is always unsteady. His ideas were frequently in a state of flux. Just look at the symphonies, for all their pomp and fire and brilliance, they lack that sense of unity, that sense of clarity, and directness of presentation, which we rightly admires, for example, in the works of Herr Salieri. Noble simplicity, what is wrong with that?” said a musical critic on Mozart’s ingenious Symphony No. 39.

To understand Mozart’s 39^th Symphony, it is important to know a little of the circumstances under which he composed it. It was composed in the summer of 1888, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 32 and at the height of his creative powers. Yet his already sad and lonely existence had once again been marked by tragedy. The death of his father Leopold the previous year—a blow he never did recover from though they were practically estranged—was now followed by that of his six-month-old baby daughter, Teresa, the third child that he and his wife Constanza had lost to premature death.

In the weeks following Teresa’s death, Mozart sat down and wrote this, his 39^th Symphony (His well-known 40^th Symphony in G minor would follow in a few weeks’ time). It is a work with a savage brutality unlike any one has seen in Mozart’s works before. The very opening adagio has got this really almost ugly pugnacious quality to it, like a huge motor driving it. Those downward and upward violin scales that are turning it and the stark drums that are forever rising all force and push the audience to the next jarring forte. Yet right after this difficult and unusual opening, there comes a charming and soothing andante which would not have half the potency it does had it not been preceded by that jarring opening material. This is the genius of Mozart: he is so human. He totally understood that you cannot have joy without pain, terror without consolation, love without grieve. Here in the 39^th Symphony, he shows it.

Perhaps it is always the fate of geniuses. Their ideas and mind travel way ahead of their time, so that it is simply beyond their contemporary’s mental grasp to understand, enjoy, and appreciate them. And with such a genius as Mozart—Amadeus, who received his direction straight from God himself, one could say—the case could only be even more so. His soul is doomed to loneliness.

He was never welcomed back by his hometown Salzburg. He was never forgiven by his father and sister for wishing to have a life of his own and marrying the woman he loved. He was never recognized in his life as the kind of genius he really was. Yet despite all these, he was tossing out of himself one master piece after another, steadfastly working to enlighten and liberate the human mind. 21 piano sonatas, 27 piano concertos, 41 symphonies, 18 masses, 13 operas, 9 oratorios and cantata, 2 ballets, 40 concertos for various instruments, numerous string quartets, trios and quintets, violin and piano duets piano quartets, and the songs.  This astounding output includes hardly one work less than a masterpiece. 

Although he suffered hard in his life, Mozart only occasionally let that slip in his music. He sounds forever delightful and happy, like the eternal child we believe him to be. “Mozart is happiness before it has gotten defined,” said author Arthur Miller. “Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us,” remarked the distinguished theologian Karl Barth.

 He composed alone, grieved alone, and left alone, yet leaving us a legacy of immortal works. “Mozart is the musical Christ,” the Russian composer Tchaikovsky was not exaggerating. Like Christ, he was the favored son of God sent to earth to lift mortal souls; like Christ, he created miracle after miracle during his short stay on earth; like Christ, he was unappreciated, misunderstood, rejected, and alone; and like Christ, he died but lives on. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's—the spirit of loneliness, of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering—a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages. 

Notes:

1.       Letters, p334, 18-20, October 1777 (no.262)

2.       For details, see Georg Abdon Pichler, Salzburg’s Landes-Geschichte Part One: Allgemeine Geschichte (Salzburg, 1861), vol.1, pp1036-37; Jahe-Deiters, vol.2, p.707; and Rudolph Angermuller, Das Salzburger Mozart-Denkmal (Bad Honnef, Germany, 1992). The proclamation of the Salzburg Mozart Monument Committee was published in September 1836.

References:

1.       Maynard Solomon, Mozart: A Life, Harper Perennial Press, 1995

2.       Simon P. Keefe (Editor), The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, Cambridge University Press, 2003

3.       Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe (Editors), The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopaedia, Cambridge University Press, 2006

4.       John Burrows (General Editor), Classical Music, Dorling Kindesley(DK) Limited, 2004

5.       John Stanley, Classical Music: The Great Composers and Their Masterworks, Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, 1994, 2005

Mozart’s music, far from being a function to life, is a reflection of it. Mozart was getting to grips with the two fundamental truths of the human condition: life and death. With only three more years to live, he was to revolutionize instrumental and orchestra writing, crystallized in his last great trilogy of symphonies which changed the future course of music.

In the summer of 1888, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 32. He was at the height of his creative powers. Yet his life had already been marked by tragedy. The death of his father Leopold the previous year was now followed by that of his six-month-old baby daughter, Teresa, the third child that he and his Constanza had lost to premature death.

In the weeks following Teresa’s death, Mozart sat down and wrote this, his 40^th symphony in G minor, a work of fury, anguish, and despair. It’s Mozart at his most distressed. This first movement is flighty, unsettling, weird, almost on the edge of chaos. Yet of course, as ever, Mozart shows he is in complete control.

It is a monumental piece of work in which he was able to encapsulate really the whole human experience.

The symphonic form Mozart inherited was nothing like this. Symphonies were small-scale warm-up numbers between concerts. They could deal with one or two episodes of life, a couple of primary colors. But with Mozart and the full spectrum, he could genuinely express the world.

Even in this most turbulent time in his life, Mozart is saying: “Look! What I can do!”