Story-Lives of Great Musicians

by Francis Jameson Rowbotham

'The carriage which was to convey the travellers drew up at the door.'[ToList]

At Munich, where they first halted, Wolfgang endeavoured to secure an engagement at the Elector's Court; but there was no vacancy, and although his playing brought forth many promises of future help in addition to applause, the prospect of obtaining immediate engagements fell empty to the ground. 'Fine words and bravissimos pay neither the postboy nor the host,' wrote the practical Leopold Mozart, when Wolfgang applied to him for advice, and so mother and son went on to Mannheim. Here, indeed, the prospects seemed to be much brighter. Mannheim was a thoroughly musical town, and Mozart soon won both esteem and admiration at the hands of the musicians. The Elector, Karl Theodor, maintained an excellent orchestra, and with Cannabich, the conductor, Wolfgang soon became great friends, giving music-lessons to his daughter Rose. Nevertheless, albeit so gifted, and capable of winning applause wherever he played, Mozart was constantly looking for work that would bring in sufficient ready-money to maintain himself and his mother, until something of a permanent nature could be found for him. But here again disappointment followed disappointment. He was desirous of staying the winter in Mannheim, in order to join some friends who were leaving for Paris in the spring, but he must first find something to do. He seized upon the opportunity of playing before the Elector and the Electress as a possible means of securing their children as pupils, and for some time success in this direction seemed imminent. But his application was put off from day to day; weeks passed over, and nothing was settled.

Amidst these hopes and delays Leopold Mozart was writing from Salzburg urging Wolfgang to decide upon a course of action. He reminded him that he had put his time to but little use up to the present, and that it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to supply the money for their maintenance. Wolfgang must give him longer notice of their change of plans, as 'otherwise all will go wrong'; and he warns his son to be careful lest he be stranded without money—and 'no money meant no friends.'

There was justice in these urgings and warnings, for it was a fact that to Wolfgang life in Mannheim had become so pleasant and easy-going that it was time that he should be reminded of the call of duty. In the midst of intercourse with friends, who were only too willing to second his wishes to remain in Mannheim, Mozart was in danger of forgetting the sacrifices which were being made for him at home. Both father and daughter were indeed denying themselves and working hard to keep up the supplies of money. In addition to being heavily in debt on Wolfgang's account, Leopold had increased his labours by giving music-lessons at a small fee, whilst Marianne was practising all manner of shifts to make ends meet. Each fresh disappointment which her brother's letters conveyed caused 'Nannerl's' tears to flow with sympathy and vexation, and added to her father's anxieties.

The latest letter had brought the depressing intelligence that, after tedious delays, the Elector had decided that he could not see his way to offering Mozart the engagement which he sought. Nothing remained to be done, therefore, but to relinquish the idea of wintering in Mannheim. But coupled with this announcement of failure, Wolfgang had let drop some complaints on the subject of lesson-giving which aroused his father to the pitch of administering a severe rebuke. Wolfgang's protest was to the effect that so long as he was called upon to seek work in the shape of music-lessons at small fees, the time which he felt ought to be given to composition must suffer serious curtailment, with the result that his progress would inevitably be hindered, if it were not brought to an actual standstill. There was doubtless sound sense behind this protest, for who could deny that Wolfgang's aims were high, or that he possessed the power to accomplish great things with his art? It is, however, easy to understand that his expressed disinclination to give music-lessons touched his father on a tender point. 'And so,' Leopold writes, with more bitterness than he has ever shown before in his letters—'and so you will throw away chances of earning money, whilst your old father has to run from house to house for a wretched pittance in order to support himself and his daughter, and to send the little that remains to you, instead of paying his debts!' He begs Wolfgang to reflect whether he was not treating him as hardly as the Archbishop himself. Then follows a remark which refers to Mozart's proneness to place undue reliance on promises, instead of using his own judgment. 'You have judgment,' says Leopold, 'but a trifle too much of conceit and self-love, and you are inclined to be over-confiding, and to open your heart to every one you meet.'

However, Wolfgang's stay in Mannheim was, after all, prolonged over the winter, through the efforts which his friends made to procure him work; but when the spring came round, and the three musicians whom he had promised to accompany to Paris were ready to start upon their journey, he found an excuse for letting them go without him. Leopold Mozart was a deeply religious man, and when he learnt from Wolfgang that his reason for breaking off his intended journey was that his three companions had not a particle of religion in them, he approved his son's judgment without expressing any surprise at the tardiness of his discovery.

But Mozart had a deeper reason, which he was not so anxious to disclose, and which perhaps he could not, without knowing his mind exactly at the time, have explained. Be this as it may, however, Mozart could never have been surer of anything than that his father would have disapproved in the strongest manner of the feelings which were swaying him at that moment. Yet if Leopold had but read between the lines of his son's letters he must have seen why it was that Wolfgang was seemingly so blind to his own interests, and so forgetful of his duty to those who loved him at home. The fact is Wolfgang was in love. And if the vigilant eye of the kindest and tenderest father that ever watched with unremitting care over the welfare of a gifted son could have pierced the space that separated him from Wolfgang at the moment when he was perusing that letter of excuse, it might have lighted upon the following little scene which was being enacted in the parlour of a small house in Mannheim.

A young man is seated at the harpsichord playing the accompaniment of a song from the manuscript before him. Every now and then he lifts his eyes from the music-sheet to let them rest upon the fair young face of the maiden standing beside him, and that oft-repeated glance reveals more than admiration for the singer's notes, pure and melodious as her singing is—more than a recognition of the singer's charms, sweet beyond question as those charms are; it reveals, in a word, the love which is burning within the player's breast, a love as yet unspoken, but beside which even art herself must for the time sink her supremacy.

Aloysia Weber, the fifteen-year-old maiden for whom Mozart had conceived this attachment, was the second daughter of Fridolin Weber, a member of the Elector's band. The young composer had been attracted first by her voice, and later by her personal beauty, and both of these gifts had gained in power through the sympathy he felt for the family who were in poor circumstances. He longed to be able to help them; Aloysia's singing was of a high order, and only needed to be heard in public to secure the approval of the connoisseurs; he had already written a song specially for her, and she sang it as well as he could wish. Thus he wrote to his father, in the hope of enlisting the latter's interest in his protégé, adding that he only wished his father could hear her sing. But he gave no indication in the letter of those deeper feelings which animated his desire to be of use to the family.