Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

by Herbert F. Peyser

Prague

Luckily, the incorrigibly musical Czechs championed Mozart to the limit! With Die Entführung he had won them heart and soul, and by the time Figaro reached Prague, that city was on the way to becoming the true Mozart capital of Europe. From that moment nothing seemed greatly to matter but that opera. In the composer’s own words, people would listen to nothing else and talk of nothing else. Its melodies were worked up into dance arrangements. Players in beer gardens and even the wandering street musicians who begged for pennies on corners had to sing or strum their Non piu andrai and the rest of the tunes if they wanted any passer-by to pay attention to them. “Truly a great honor for me,” mused the composer. Prague, now a high altar of Mozart worship, was for some time to remain so.

The creator of Figaro had valued friends in Prague. Among the dearest of these were the Duscheks, whom he had known in Salzburg—Franz, a gifted pianist and composer, and his wife, Josefa, both older than Mozart. Josefa, an excellent musician, became an exceptional singer, and for her Wolfgang was to compose some superb though difficult concert arias. She was well-to-do and, with the money an admirer lavished on her, she bought herself an estate known as the Bertramka—still one of the show places of Prague, despite the vicissitudes of more than a century and a half. Here Mozart was often an honored guest, and to this day the villa and the hilly gardens surrounding it seem to breathe his spirit.

The permanent Italian company that supplied opera to the people of Prague, though not large, was exceedingly capable. At this time it was managed by a certain Pasquale Bondini. Its two efficient conductors (both of them Bohemians), Josef Strobach and J. B. Kucharz, were heart and soul devoted to Mozart. The intensely music-loving Czechs jammed Mozart’s academies and could not hear enough of his symphonies and clavier works. Small wonder, therefore, that Bondini resolved to take advantage of the heaven-sent opportunity of Mozart’s presence to commission him to write a new opera for the company next season. The fee was the usual sum of 100 ducats (no more!), the opera—Don Giovanni.

Actually, much more could be said of this Prague visit of Mozart’s. At one of his concerts he presented for the first time the D major Symphony which sent its hearers into such raptures that the world has forever named it the “Prague” Symphony. When he arrived from Vienna it had been arranged that he was to stay with the Duscheks, but, Josefa being away, Mozart accepted the hospitality of the aristocrat, Count Thun, and sat as an honored guest among the great of the land. He doubtless remembered how at Colloredo’s court his table companions had been cooks and grooms! He was taken to the sumptuous dwelling of still another local patrician, the Count Canal. And so it continued from day to day. Yet he found time to write a piece for a wandering harpist, which the latter played everywhere, boasting that Mozart had specially composed it for him.

Death of Leopold Mozart

In February 1787, Mozart was back in Vienna in a joyous frame of mind. One may question that this jubilant mood was of long duration. That the new opera was to be ready as early as the following October was hardly the greatest of his worries, for Mozart, like Haydn, Bach, and other masters of that century, was accustomed to a speed of creative production that puts our machine age to shame. The welcome the Viennese accorded the returning traveler, flushed by the recollection of his recent triumphs, was frosty. Also, there came the news that his father’s health was failing. “Naturally,” reflected Leopold, “old people do not grow younger!” Wolfgang wrote his parent in words that nobly convey the essence of his own mature philosophy:

“I need not tell you with what anxiety I await better news from you ... although I am wont in all things to anticipate the worst. Since death is the true goal of our lives, I have made myself so well acquainted during the past two years with this true and best friend of mankind that the idea of it no longer holds any terror for me, but rather much that is tranquil and comforting. And I thank God that He has granted me the good fortune to obtain this opportunity of regarding death as the key to our true happiness. I never lie down in bed without considering that, young as I am, perhaps I may on the morrow be no more. Yet not one of those who know me say that I am morose or melancholy, and for this I thank my Creator and wish heartily that the same happiness may be given to my fellow men.”

One is moved to think of Shubert’s words to his father a few years later when, looking upon the lakes and peaks of the Austrian Alps, he wrote:

“As if death were the worst thing that could befall one ... could one but look on these divine lakes and mountains ... he would deem it a great happiness to be restored for a new life to the inscrutable forces of the earth!”