And, indeed, this last was the only cause of solicitude the father had when his son started on his journey. Not that he had any doubt as to the young man’s character or goodness of heart. He had as much faith in both as in the “superiority of his son’s talents.” What alarmed him was Wolfgang’s want of experience. Wolfgang had never traveled alone. And who had better opportunity to know the extent of this inexperience than the faithful mentor who, as the son himself confesses, had always served him like a friend, nay like a servant? The father’s utterances here are full of beauty. They show us many a trait characteristic of the whole life of the yet youthful but immortal prodigy of art.
The father writes: “You know, my son, that you will have to do everything for yourself, and that you are not accustomed to get along entirely without the help of others; that you are not very familiar with the different kinds of coin, and that you have not the least idea how to pack your things, or to do much else which must be done.” He continues: “I would also remind you, that a young man, even if he had dropped down from heaven and stood head and shoulders above all the masters of art, will never get the consideration due him. To win this, he must have reached a certain age, and so long as a person is under twenty, enviers, enemies and persecutors will find matter for blame in his youth, in the little importance attached to him and his small experience.” And later: “My son, in all your affairs, you are hasty and headlong. Your whole character has changed since your childhood and boyhood years. As a child, you were rather serious than childish. Now, as it seems to me, you are too quick to answer every one in a jesting way at the very first provocation; and that is the first step towards familiarity which one must avoid in this world, if he cares to be respected. It is your good heart’s fault that you can see no defect in the person who pays you a clever compliment, who professes esteem for you and lauds you to the heavens, and that you take him into your confidence and give him your love.”
Even if all this paternal chiding was provoked only by the one special cause of which we shall soon have something to say, it is, nevertheless, true that the father here touches upon some of Mozart’s characteristic traits, especially his confiding goodness of heart, his wit and jocoseness in everything, which were led into wrong channels by the quickness of his mind. The parting of father and son was heart-rending indeed. We are sure that the words in which Leopold Mozart describes his feelings, when Wolfgang, in company with his mother, started out on his travels in September, 1777, came from the very bottom of a father’s heart. “After you had gone,” he writes, “I went, very tired, up the steps and threw myself in a chair. I tried hard to restrain myself on the occasion of our leave-taking, that I might not make our separation still more painful, and in my excitement I forgot to give my son a father’s blessing. I ran to the window and begged a blessing upon both of you, but I did not see you go out through the gate, and we could not but think that you had already passed it, because I sat there a long time without thinking of anything.” Nannerl cried so much that she was taken sick, and it was evening before either she or her father had so far recovered from the shock as to be able to distract themselves by attending to some little home duties, and enjoying what remained to them of domestic bliss. “Thus did this sad day pass—a sadder day than I believed life could ever bring me,” says the father, in his account of it, when answering the first letter he received from his son after his departure.
Wolfgang himself was very cheerful. He was out again in the bracing atmosphere of freedom. His confidence in human nature, the result of inexperience, hid from his eyes the thorns of life which were destined henceforth to sting him till he died. Trusting in his talents and his good will, he thought that his pathway would be strewn with roses. His father, in a somewhat gloomy excess of zeal writes him: “Cling to God, I beg you; you must do it, my dear son, for men are all knaves.”... “The older you get and the more you have to do with men, the more will you learn this bitter truth. Think only of the many promises, all the sycophancy and the hundred other things we have met with, and then draw your own conclusions as to how much you can build on human aid.” All Salzburg wondered and revolted at the course pursued by the archbishop, for young Mozart got his dismissal immediately and in a very unkind and ungracious way. The father, indeed, was allowed to retain his position, but the dissatisfaction of the court at the loss was very great, for strangers found nothing to admire but Wolfgang. One of the cathedral canons afterwards admitted this to Mozart himself, and the steward of the household, Count Firmian, who was very fond of Mozart, gives the following account of a conversation overheard by him while waiting on the court:
“We have now one musician less. Your illustrious grace has lost a great performer.”
“How so?”
“He is the greatest piano-player I ever heard in my life. As a violinist he served your illustrious grace exceedingly well, and he was besides a very good composer.”
The archbishop was silent.
All this was a rich source of satisfaction to Wolfgang, but it did not lessen his father’s cares. The preparations for his journey were of course very carefully made, even in the minutest details, especially in what related to his compositions, that he might “be able to show what he could do in everything:” in concertos for the piano and violin, sonatas, airs and ensemble pieces of the most various kind. The sonatas for the piano alone—as we would remark here to the lovers of music—known as Nos. 279-284 in L. Kœchel’s “Chron. themat. Verzeichniss,” are, as to their form, perfectly full of beauty, and the matter of them frequently interests us by the distinctness of its almost speaking pictures of life. More significant and important yet is the sonata in C major. Its Andante cantabile, in F major (3/4), is a dramatic scene which, although on a small scale, clearly bespoke the hand of the future composer of Figaro and Don Giovanni. And the variations with which the sonata in A major (6/8) begins were hardly equaled by Beethoven in his Op. 26. The trio in the minuet, on the other hand, was a full scene from life, taken from the Carnival to which the closing Alla Turca alludes. Compared with these youthful works of Mozart—for they belong to the end of the year 1770—what are the sonatas of Ph. E. Bach, and even of Joseph Haydn?
The travelers had also, with the assistance of the father, made every other preparation for their journey. The boot-tree or stretcher, even, which was, at the time, a necessary part of a traveler’s outfit, was not forgotten. And yet their first stopping-place was near enough. The father had once before knocked at the doors of Munich. Now the son went to seek his fortune by calling personally on the good-hearted elector.