I do not know of any later letters. Marianne kept up no correspondence with her brother's widow; from a letter to Sonnleithner (July 2, 1819), we gather that she had not heard from her sister-in-law since 1801, that she knew nothing of the children, and had only heard of her second marriage by chance.
In 1801 the Baron von Sonnenburg died, and his widow retired with her children to Salzburg, where she lived in comfort, if not in wealth. She returned to her old occupation, and gave music lessons—for money certainly, but not from need, since her simple and frugal way of life enabled her even to lay by a portion of her income. She was always much respected and liked in Salzburg. In 1820 she became blind, a misfortune which she bore with equanimity, and even cheerfulness, as the following anecdote will show: Receiving a visit from a lady whom she disliked—people who were fond of her paid her frequent visits to afford her amusement in her misfortune—she exclaimed, when at last the visitor had departed, "What an infliction to be obliged to converse with that person! I am glad that I cannot see her!"
She died at an advanced age in her native town, October 29, 1829.
APPENDIX II. ARRANGEMENTS OF MOZART'S CHURCH MUSIC.
ARRANGEMENTS OF MOZART'S CHURCH MUSIC.
EVEN cantatas which appeared under Mozart's name (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel, and elsewhere) are perhaps, after his operas, the most widely known of his works, and upon them in a great measure rests his fame as a composer of church music. Of these cantatas, however, only one, the second (and that with altered words), was left in its present state by Mozart; the others were all put together after his death from separate portions of various church compositions, often widely differing in the time, the object and the style of their composition, and having undergone arbitrary alterations and additions. Nothing but the newly adopted words holds them together, and these are generally trivial, often in direct contradiction to the spirit of the original words.
The parody of Goethe's song "Der du Leid und Sehnsucht stillest," which in Cantata III. replaces the original "Alma redemptoris," may serve as an example. This double injustice done to the composer may be explained as arising from the tendency of an age which turned to its own immediate convenience any music which came to hand, with little feeling for the work of art as a whole and little respect for the right of the author to the integrity of his work or for the claims of historical accuracy.
The following is the result of a survey of the cantatas and their component parts (Anh., 124-130 K.):—[See Page Image]