CHAPTER I.
1756-1777.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY TRAVELS.
Mozart’s Parentage—Early Development of his Genius—Character as a Child—Travels at the age of Six—Received by Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette—Mozart and Goethe—Meeting with Madame de Pompadour—The London Bach’s Opinion of Young Mozart—Asked to Write an Opera by Joseph II—Assailed by Envy—Padre Martini—Notes Down the Celebrated Miserere from Ear—The Pope Confers on him the Order of the Golden Spurs—A Member of the Philharmonic Society of Bologna—First Love—Personal Appearance—Troubles with the Archbishop.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in the city of Salzburg, on the 27th of January, 1756. His father, Leopold, was descended from a family of the middle class of the then free imperial city of Augsburg, and had come to Salzburg, the domicile of a prince-bishop and the seat of an excellent university, to study law. But as he had to support himself by teaching music, even while pursuing his legal studies, he was soon compelled to enter entirely into the service of others. He became valet de chambre to a canon of the Roman church, Count Thurm; afterwards court-musician and then capellmeister[1] to the archbishop. He had married in 1747 a young girl, educated in a neighboring convent. Himself and wife were considered the handsomest couple in Salzburg in their day. Of seven children born to them, they lost all but two, Maria Anna, known by the pet-name of Nannerl, and our Wolfgang, most frequently called Wolferl. Anna was about five years older than Wolfgang, and both gave evidence, from the time they were little children, of an extraordinary talent for music.
An old friend of the family tells us how, from the moment young Mozart had begun to give himself to music, he cared neither to see nor hear anything else. Even his childish games and plays did not interest him unless accompanied by music. “Whenever,” says our informant, “we carried our toys from one room to another, the one of us who had nothing to carry was always required to play, or sing a march,” ... and further: “He [Mozart] grew so extremely attached to me because I kept him company and entered into his childish humors, that he frequently asked me ten times in a day, if I loved him; and when I sometimes said no, only in fun, the tears instantly glistened his eyes, his little heart was so kind and tender.”
We learn from the same source that he manifested no pride or awe, yet he never wished to play except before great connoisseurs in music; and to induce him to do so it was sometimes necessary to deceive him as to the musical acquirements of his hearers. He learned every task that his father gave him, and put his soul so entirely into whatever he was doing that he forgot all else for the time being, not excepting even his music. Even as a child, he was full of fire and vivacity, and were it not for the excellent training he received from his father, who was very strict with him, and of a serious turn of mind, he might have become one of the wildest of youths, so sensitive was he to the allurements of pleasure of every kind, the innocence or danger of which he was not yet able to discover.
When only five years of age he wrote some music in his Uebungsbuch or Exercise-book, which is yet to be seen in the Mozarteum[2] in Salzburg; also some little minuets; and, on one occasion, his father and the friend of the family mentioned above, surprised him engaged on the composition of a concerto so difficult that no one in the world could have played it. His ear was so acute, and his memory for music so good from the time he was a child, that once when playing his little violin, he remembered that the Buttergeige, the “butter-violin,” so-called from the extreme smoothness of its tones, was tuned one-eighth of a tone lower than his own. On account of this great acuteness of hearing, he could not, at that age, bear the sound of the trumpet; and when notwithstanding his father once put his endurance of it to the test, he was taken with violent spasms.
His readiness and skill in music soon became so great that he was able to play almost everything at sight. His little sister also had made very extraordinary progress in music at a very early age, and the father in 1762, when the children were respectively six and ten years of age, began to travel with them, to show, as he said, these “wonders of God” to the world.
The first place they went to was Munich, then as now the real capital of Southern Germany, and after that to Vienna. Maria Theresa and her consort were very fond of music. They received the children with genuine German cordiality, and little Wolfgang without any more ado, leaped into the lap of the Empress and kissed her; just as he had told the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who had helped him from the slippery floor: “You are good and I’ll marry you.” The youngest son of Maria Theresa, the handsome and amiable grand-duke, Maximilian, was of the same age as young Mozart, and always remained his friend, as he was, subsequently, the patron of Beethoven. The picture of Mozart and his little sister dressed in the clothes of the imperial children hangs on the walls of the Mozarteum; his animated eyes and her budding beauty have an incomparable charm.