A Gifted Imperial Family
That solid musical education which she had received from her father, Maria Theresia bestowed upon her children, and their attainments in the art seem to have justified the time and labor spent. In 1749, at the age of seven and six, Christina and Maria Elizabeth took part in one of the festive musical pieces; Marie Antoinette was able to appreciate Gluck and lead the party in his favor in later years at Paris. Joseph is as much known in musical as in civil and political history. When Emperor he had his daily hour of music in his private apartments, playing either of several instruments or singing, according to the whim of the moment; and Maximilian, the youngest, acquired a good degree of skill both in singing and in the treatment of his favorite instrument, the viola. Beethoven once told Schindler that the Elector thought very highly of Mattheson. In his reminiscences of a visit to Vienna in 1783, J. F. Reichardt gives high praise to the musical interest, skill and zeal of Emperor Joseph and his brother Archduke Maximilian, and a writer in “Cramer’s Magazine,” probably Neefe, tells of a “remarkable concert” which took place at court in Bonn on April 5, 1786, at which the Elector played the viola, Duke Albrecht the violin, “and the fascinating Countess Belderbusch the clavier most charmingly.”
Maximilian had become personally acquainted with Mozart in Salzburg in 1775, where the young composer had set Metastasio’s “Il Re pastore” to music to be performed in his honor (April 23rd); from which time, to his credit be it said, he ever held the composer and his music in kindest remembrance. When in 1781 Mozart determined to leave his brutal Archbishop of Salzburg and remain in Vienna, the Archduke showed at all events a desire to aid him.
Yesterday (writes the composer November 17, 1781) the Archduke Maximilian summoned me to him at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. When I entered he was standing before a stove in the first room awaiting me. He came towards me and asked if I had anything to do to-day? “Nothing, Your Royal Highness, and if I had it would always be a grace to wait upon Your Royal Highness.” “No; I do not wish to constrain anyone.” Then he said that he was minded to give a concert in the evening for the Court of Wurtemberg. Would I play something and accompany the aria? I was to come to him again at 6 o’clock. So I played there yesterday.
Mozart was everything to him (continues Jahn); he signalized him at every opportunity and said, if he were Elector of Cologne, Mozart would surely be his chapelmaster. He had also suggested to the Princess (of Wurtemberg) that she appoint Mozart her music teacher, but received the reply that if it rested with her she would have chosen him; but the Emperor—“for him there is nobody but Salieri!” cries out Mozart peevishly—had recommended Salieri because of the singing, and she had to take him, for which she was sorry.
Jahn gives no reason why Mozart was not engaged for Bonn. Perhaps he would have been had Lucchesi resigned in consequence of the reduction of his salary; but he kept his office of chapelmaster and could not well be dismissed without cause. Mattioli’s resignation was followed by the call of Joseph Reicha to the place of concertmaster; but for Mozart no vacancy occurred at that time. Maximilian was in Vienna during most of the month of October, 1785, and may have desired to secure Mozart in some way, but just at that time the latter was, as his father wrote, “over head and ears busy with the opera ‘Le Nozze di Figaro.’” Old Chapelmaster Bono could not live much longer; which gave him hope, should the opera succeed, of obtaining a permanent appointment in Vienna; and, in short, his prospects seemed just then so good that his determination—if he should really receive an offer from the Elector—to remain in the great capital rather than to take his young wife so far away from home and friends as the Rhine then was, and, in a manner, bury himself in a small town where so few opportunities would probably be given him for the exercise of the vast powers which he was conscious of possessing, need not surprise us.
Was it the good or the ill fortune of the boy Beethoven that Mozart came not to Bonn? His marvellous original talents were thus left to be developed without the fostering care of one of the very greatest of musical geniuses, and one of the profoundest of musical scholars; but on the other hand it was not oppressed, perhaps crushed, by daily intercourse with that genius and scholarship.
Maximilian, immediately after reaching Bonn as Elector, ordered full and minute reports to be made out concerning all branches of the administration, of the public and court service and of the cost of their maintenance. Upon these reports were based his arrangements for the future. Those relating to the court music are too important and interesting to be overlooked, for they give us details which carry us instantly into the circle which young Beethoven has just entered and in which, through his father’s connection with it, he must from earliest childhood have moved. They are three in number, the first being a list of all the individuals constituting the court chapel; the second a detailed description of the singers and players, together with estimates of their capabilities; the third consists of recommendations touching a reduction in salaries. A few paragraphs may be presented here as most intimately connected with significant personages in our history; they are combined and given in abstract from the first two documents. Among the tenors we find
Father and Son in the Court Chapel
J. van Beethoven, age 44, born in Bonn, married; his wife is 32 years old, has three sons living in the electorate, aged 13, 10 and 8 years, who are studying music, has served 28 years, salary 315 fl. “His voice has long been stale, has been long in the service, very poor, of fair deportment and married.”