We have Mozart’s letter to the archbishop. It saw the light—being found among the official papers of the archbishopric—just one hundred years after it was written. It gives us a great deal of information concerning a circumstance which had a great influence on Mozart’s life, and which was finally the cause of the most decided catastrophes to him. It shows us, at the same time, what was the entire tone of the period, and especially of Salzburg subserviency. Mozart writes:
“To His Illustrious Grace, Most Reverend Prince of the Holy Roman Empire:
Most Gracious Liege-Lord and Herr Herr!
I dare not trouble your illustrious grace with any minute description of our pitiful circumstances. My father has most humbly, upon his honor and conscience, and with all truth, called the attention of your illustrious grace to those circumstances in his most humble petition presented to your grace on the 14th of March of this year. But as your illustrious grace’s most gracious and propitious decision, which was hoped for, did not come to him, my father would have most humbly begged your illustrious grace, as long ago as the month of June, most graciously to allow us to make a journey of a few months, to the end that we might in this way do something to help ourselves in our necessity, were it not that your illustrious grace most graciously ordered that all your grace’s musicians should keep themselves in readiness for the occasion of his imperial majesty’s [Joseph II] passage through your grace’s city. After this, my father most humbly asked this same permission, but your illustrious grace refused it to him, and most graciously expressed a conviction that I, who am only half engaged in your grace’s service, might travel alone. Our circumstances are those of urgent need. My father resolved to send me on my way alone. But here also your illustrious grace interposed some most gracious objections. Most gracious liege-lord and Herr Herr, parents laboriously strive to put their children in a position such that they may earn their own daily bread; and this is a duty which they owe to themselves and to the state.
The more talents children have received from God, the greater are their obligations to make use of those talents for the amelioration of their own and their parents’ circumstances, to assist their parents and to take heed for their own advancement and for the future. The gospels teach us thus to put our talents out at interest. I therefore, in conscience, owe it to God to be grateful to my father who spends untiringly his every hour on my education; to lighten his burthen; and to care for my sister; for it would pain me greatly if, after spending so many hours at the piano, she should not be able to turn what she has so laboriously learned to account.
Your illustrious grace will, therefore, most graciously allow me to ask most humbly for my dismissal from your grace’s service, as I am forced to make use of the month of September this fall which is just beginning, so that I may not be exposed to the inclemency of the severe weather of the cold months which follow so soon upon it. Your illustrious grace will not take this most humble petition of mine ungraciously, as your grace most graciously pronounced against me three years ago, when I asked leave to travel to Vienna, told me that I had nothing to hope for, and that I would do better to seek my fortune in some other place. Most humbly do I thank your illustrious grace for all the high favors I have received from your grace, and with the flattering hope of being able to serve your illustrious grace with greater approval when I shall have reached man’s estate, I commend myself to the favor and grace of
Your most illustrious Grace,
My most gracious liege-lord and Herr Herr.
Most humbly and obediently,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
[Addressed]
To His Illustrious Grace
The Archbishop of Salzburg, etc., etc.;
The most humble and obedient petition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”
It is no easy matter to imagine all that must have occurred before the father resolved to permit his son to take a step which might possibly cost himself both his position and his livelihood, but it may all be very readily divined from the following passages in the Mozart letters. The son writes: “I hope that you meet with less vexation now than when I was in Salzburg, for I must confess that I was its sole cause.” And again: “I was badly treated, I did not deserve it. You naturally sympathized with me, but too much. That was the principal reason why I hastened away from Salzburg.” And the father: “You are, indeed, right, my dear son. I felt the greatest vexation at the contemptible treatment which you received. It was that that preyed on my heart so, that kept me from sleeping, that was ever in my thoughts, and which would have surely ended by consuming me entirely.” And here follows an outburst characteristic of the feelings of the Mozarts: “My dear son, when you are happy, so am I, so is your mother, so is your sister, so are we all. And that you will be happy I hope from God’s grace, and through the confidence I place in your sensible behavior.”