The relentless dislike for the Webers that both Leopold and Nannerl continued to harbor was not mollified by this visit, which proved uncomfortable as long as it lasted. Wolfgang and his wife were relieved when the troublesome “duty call” came to its chilly end and they were back in Vienna once more. There was no end of professional business for Mozart to transact—composition in flooding abundance, lessons to give, concerts (“academies”) to organize, musical personages to cultivate. Just now, at least, there were no interminable travels such as had filled Mozart’s boyhood years. His pupils were sometimes talented, sometimes the reverse. A few striking names stand out among them—Johann Nepomuck Hummel, Xaver Süssmayr, Thomas Attwood. Of the composers and executants with whom he came in contact we must mention Clementi, Salieri, Paisiello, Righini, Haydn. With Clementi he appeared as a pianist in a contest before Joseph II and some visiting Russian blue-bloods. So evenly were the two players matched that the competition was declared a draw. Paisiello, composer of The Barber of Seville, was a lovable character for whom Wolfgang developed a great liking. Salieri, a disciple of Gluck and a teacher of Schubert, appears to have criticized some of Mozart’s works, and Viennese gossip did what it could to make the matter worse. The result was that Salieri lives on in history largely because of a wild slander that he had given Mozart a poison causing the latter’s untimely death!
The meeting with Joseph Haydn resulted in one of the noblest and most rewarding friendships the records of music afford. Artistically their creations benefited inestimably from the mutual influence of their works and personalities. Haydn, says Dr. Karl Geiringer, “was fascinated by Mozart’s quicksilver personality, while Mozart enjoyed the sense of security that Haydn’s steadfastness and warmth of feeling gave him.” It was as if the two men kindled brighter sparks in each other’s souls. They played chamber music together whenever Haydn made a trip to Vienna, and the younger man was quick to acknowledge that it was from his older colleague he first really learned to write string quartets. The six that he composed between 1782 and 1785 and dedicated with moving words to his “beloved friend Haydn” are doubtless among the finest he wrote. It was on a visit of Leopold Mozart’s to Vienna that Haydn made to him the oft-quoted remark: “I tell you before God and as an honest man that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation!” And later, when someone questioned a detail in Don Giovanni and asked Haydn’s opinion, he replied: “I cannot settle this dispute, but this I know: Mozart is the greatest composer that the world now possesses.... It enrages me to think that the unparalleled Mozart has not yet been engaged by some imperial or royal court! Do forgive this outburst; but I love the man too much!” It is heartbreaking that Haydn was not able, as he would have loved to be, to secure a post for Mozart in England.
Mozart had another encounter of a different sort at this period in Vienna—acquaintance with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Through the Baron van Swieten he had an opportunity to know the scores of Bach and Handel and later even to write for certain Handel oratorios “additional accompaniments” for use in performances Van Swieten was in the habit of giving on Sundays at the Imperial Library and in some private homes. And the depth, the grandeur, and the polyphony of these masters he assimilated to the added greatness of his own most mature works.
“Haffner” Symphony
With his concerts, teaching, clavier playing, and miscellaneous composing Mozart may well have felt, as he remarked on one occasion, that “people sometimes expected impossibilities of me.” The Haffner family in Salzburg, for instance, asked Leopold to write a symphony for some family festivity, to be ready in something like a fortnight! Wolfgang, at that time up to his ears in a quantity of other schemes, found the labor shifted to his own shoulders by his father, who was otherwise busied. Somehow or other he contrived to turn out (in a trifle over the appointed time, it is true) the work we now know as the “Haffner” Symphony. The excellent Salzburg burgomaster, Sigmund Haffner appears to have been well pleased. The composer himself instantly forgot the work and was astonished and delighted when, a considerable time afterwards, his father sent him the score. He worked at several operatic projects but nothing lasting came of them—not even of The Goose of Cairo, which contains charming passages and which, now and then, people have attempted to revive. There was, indeed, an amateur performance in Vienna of Idomeneo. But these and several other schemes must all be dismissed as transient compared with the masterpiece we now approach—Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro).
Le Nozze di Figaro
Mozart had longed for years to write a German opera. He boasted of himself as a thoroughly patriotic German and longed for the day when “we should dare to ‘feel as Germans and even, if I may say so, to sing in German.’” The nearest he had come to composing a German Singspiel was when as a child he had produced his little song-play Bastien und Bastienne and again when, in 1782, he turned out the inimitable Die Entführung aus dem Serail. But his ambitions soared even higher and he consumed no end of time and energy perusing the countless opera books sent to him without finding anything that suited his true artistic and dramatic purposes. For a while he had dreamed of accomplishing something in his Mannheim days, even listening with interest, but nothing more, to stuff like Holzbauer’s Gunther von Schwarzburg. Though he briefly thought of a Rudolf von Habsburg, he had no choice, in the end, but to return to Italian models—now, however, with a difference!
Soon after the amateur presentation of Idomeneo in Vienna he had the good fortune to be brought together with Lorenzo da Ponte, whose real name was Emmanuele Conegliano and who belonged to a Jewish family in Ceneda, near Venice. The youth entered a theological seminary and became an industrious student with a poetic bent, which resulted in quantities of Italian and Latin verse. An outspoken adventurer, with countless amorous escapades à la Casanova to his credit, he began his theatrical career in Dresden, went to Vienna where he was to enjoy the favor of Joseph II, and in the process of time went to London and finally to America, where he became a teacher of languages, a liquor merchant, a theater enthusiast, and what-not. He died in New York many years after Mozart but, like him, was buried in a grave of which all traces have been lost.
Mozart suggested to his picturesque collaborator (who cheerfully wrote opera books for Salieri, Martin, Righini, and others) a libretto to be adapted from Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ Les Noces de Figaro, of which Paisiello had recently composed Beaumarchais’ predecessor, Le Barbier de Seville. But Figaro had been prohibited in France because it reflected on the morals of the aristocracy and the same ban had been in effect in Vienna. Da Ponte, altering it for Mozart’s purposes, adroitly eliminated its barbed satire and then, tactfully explaining his alterations to the Emperor, secured his permission for the performance. The composer, who limited his teaching to the afternoon in order to complete the score, had been “as touchy as gunpowder and threatened to burn the opera” if it were not produced by a certain time. To Joseph II’s credit it must be said that the music delighted him as soon as Mozart played him a few samples.
Figaro was produced at the Burgtheater on May 1, 1786. A lucky star shone on its birth in spite of intrigues set in motion against it. Its success was tremendous and was abundantly foreshadowed during the rehearsals. The Irish tenor, Michael Kelly (Italianized as “Occhelly”), left us in his memoirs a striking account of the delight with which the singers and orchestra joined the listeners at the end of the first act in acclaiming the composer. “I shall never forget,” he says, “his little animated countenance when lighted up with the glowing rays of genius; it is as impossible to describe as it would be to paint sunbeams.” Father Mozart wrote to Nannerl that, not only had almost every number to be repeated, but that, at the following performance, five were encored, the “Letter Duet” having to be sung three times. In the end the Emperor forbade repetitions. That season Figaro received nine hearings—and for the two following years not a single one! Mozart’s opponents, after a momentary check, had conspired successfully once more.