One of the longest adulthood journeys of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a visit, beginning in spring 1789, to a series of cities lying northward of his adopted home in Vienna: Prague, Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin.
One of the longest adulthood journeys of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a visit, beginning in spring 1789, to a series of cities lying northward of his adopted home in Vienna: Prague, Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin.
The journey took place during a difficult period of Mozart's career when he was no longer earning much money from concerts, and his income from the composition of operas had not made up the difference. He was borrowing money, for example from his friend Michael Puchberg, and the financial situation was very worrisome. [1]
Mozart's passage to Berlin was free of charge: he accompanied his aristocratic patron and fellow Mason Prince Karl Lichnowsky, (a patron of both Mozart and Beethoven) who had his own reasons for visiting Berlin and had offered Mozart a ride. [2]
Mozart and Lichnowsky departed Vienna on the morning of 8 April 1789. [2] They reached Prague on 10 April. In a letter written that day to his wife Constanze, Mozart reported the good news that oboist Friedrich Ramm, traveling from Berlin, told him that Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, was eagerly awaiting him in Potsdam. [3] The King was a great potential source of concert income and commissions for new works. Mozart also reported to Constanze that he had worked out an agreement with Domenico Guardasoni, the director of the Italian opera in Prague, for a new opera for a fee of 250 ducats (ca. 1,000 florins). [1]
They arrived in Dresden on 12 April, and lodged at the "Hôtel de Pologne". This hotel was the scene of a concert performed the next day; according to Deutsch, "Mozart performed quartets with the organist Anton Teyber and the cellist Anton Kraft; they also played the String trio, K. 563." [2] At the same concert, Mozart accompanied his friend Josepha Duschek who also travelled to Dresden from her home in Prague. Duschek sang arias from The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni . In a letter to his wife, Mozart writes that they arranged a quartet at the hotel, which they performed in the chapel. "Wir hatten bei uns a l'hotel de Boulogne ein quartett arrangirt. - wir machten es in der Kappelle mit Antoine Tayber..." [3]
The following day, Mozart performed for Elector Friedrich August III of Saxony and his wife Amalie; his collaborators included the nine-year-old cellist Nikolaus Kraft and Duschek. Mozart played the newly written Coronation Concerto K. 537, and was on the next day awarded a snuff-box with 100 ducats. [2]
The following day (15 April), Mozart had lunch with the Russian ambassador, Prince Alexander Belovselsky-Beloserky, and then conducted a trial of skill, first on organ, then on the piano, against organist Johann Wilhelm Hässler. [2] [3]
On either 16 or 17 April Mozart paid a visit to the consistorial councillor Christian Gottfried Körner, a friend of Friedrich Schiller. Körner's sister-in-law Dora Stock was a talented artist and took the occasion to sketch a portrait of Mozart, shown here, in silverpoint on ivory board. This may have been the last portrait of the composer to be produced. [2]
On 18 April Lichnowsky and Mozart departed for Leipzig, where they arrived two days later. Mozart spent three days here. He visited the famous Thomaskirche, where Johann Sebastian Bach had served as music director several decades earlier. Mozart had become a great admirer of Bach's music during his early years in Vienna, thanks to the influence of Gottfried van Swieten. Mozart improvised on the organ of the Thomaskirche. Cantor Friedrich Doles, who had been a pupil of Bach, and organist Karl Friedrich Görner, the son of Johann Gottlieb Görner, manipulated the stops of the organ for him. Probably on this occasion, the choir of the Thomasschule performed Bach's motet 'Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225, and Mozart took advantage of the occasion to copy the composition out of all choirparts.
On 23 April, Mozart traveled from Leipzig to Potsdam, near Berlin, where King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia maintained his principal residence and arrived on 25 April. As noted above, Mozart had told his wife that the King was anxiously awaiting him; if so, the arrival was a disappointment as the following court document indicated:
Reading this, the King scribbled in the margin "Directeur du Port", meaning that Mozart should be referred to Jean-Pierre Duport, the director of the royal chamber music. According to Deutsch, Mozart was "not on good terms" with Duport. [2] Attempting (in Solomon's view) to "curry favor", he composed (29 April) a set of nine piano variations on a minuet by Duport, K. 573. [1] No royal audience was granted at this time, and indeed, there is no solid evidence that Mozart even remained in Potsdam.
On 8 May, Mozart briefly returned to Leipzig, where on 12 May he gave a concert at the Gewandhaus . The concert program consisted entirely of Mozart's music: the piano concerti K. 456 and K. 503, two scenas for soprano (K. 505, K. 528) performed by Josepha Duschek, the fantasy for piano solo K. 475, and two unidentified symphonies. Following a custom of the time, the first of the symphonies was split, the first two movements being played at the opening of the concert and the second two before the intermission. [2]
The concert, organized on short notice, apparently was not well attended. Mozart writes back home, that "from the point of view of applause and glory this concert was absolutely magnificent but the profits were wretchedly meager" (letter, 16 May 1789).
Prince Lichnowsky, who had been traveling with Mozart up to this time, left Leipzig in mid-May, and Mozart's subsequent travels were on his own. [2] It may have been during the journey that Mozart incurred a financial debt to Lichnowsky. The amount of the debt was 1415 florins, for which the Prince successfully sued him in October 1791, not long before the composer's death. [4]
Mozart lingered in Leipzig until 17 May, partly due to his wish (reported in a letter to Constanze) to remain in the company of a group of friends also visiting the city (Johann Leopold Neumann, Frau Neumann, and Josepha Duschek). His departure was also delayed, he told Constanze, by a dearth of horses available for traveling. [1]
Mozart then returned to Berlin, arriving on 19 May. [1] In his letters to Constanze, on this second stay in Berlin he performed before the King and Queen at the royal palace (26 May), reporting his receipt of an award of 100 Friedrichs d'or (around 800 florins) and commissions from the King for six string quartets and a set of six easy piano sonatas for Princess Friederieke. [2]
The night Mozart arrived in Berlin, he apparently attended a performance of his own opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail . Local newspapers apparently did not report his presence, but it was recorded much later (1856) in the posthumously published memoirs of a distinguished figure of German literature, Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853). [2] Tieck was not quite 16 at the time; he refers to himself in the third person.
Mozart left Berlin on 28 May, traveled via Dresden to Prague, where he stayed from 31 May to 2 June, and finally arrived home in Vienna at midday on 4 June. [2]
The trip was the first that Mozart took following his marriage to Constanze in 1782 during which his wife did not accompany him. Mozart wrote frequently to Constanze in the early stages of the trip, but the loss of many letters makes it uncertain whether he continued this regular correspondence. Maynard Solomon, in his Mozart biography, alleges that during the journey Mozart was unfaithful, pursuing an affair with Duschek, whose own itinerary through Germany (she lived in Prague) frequently intersected Mozart's. [5] However, this hypothesis is generally rejected and has been disproven by American musicologist Bruce Alan Brown. [6]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works of virtually every genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture".
Gottfried Freiherr van Swieten was a Dutch-born Austrian diplomat, librarian, and government official who served the Holy Roman Empire during the 18th century. He was an enthusiastic amateur musician and is best remembered today as the patron of several great composers of the Classical era, including Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Peter Schreier was a German tenor in opera, concert and lied, and a conductor. He was regarded as one of the leading lyric tenors of the 20th century.
Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky was the second Prince Lichnowsky and a chamberlain at the Imperial Austrian court. He is remembered for his patronage of music and his relationships with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Maria Aloysia Antonia Weber Lange was a German soprano, remembered primarily for her association with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Emanuel Schikaneder was a German impresario, dramatist, actor, singer, and composer. He wrote the libretto of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute and was the builder of the Theater an der Wien. Peter Branscombe called him "one of the most talented theatre men of his era". Aside from Mozart, he worked with Salieri, Haydn and Beethoven.
Jean-Pierre Duport was a cellist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Along with his brother, Jean-Louis Duport, he was active in the musical life of France and Germany. Jean-Pierre was the son of a dancing master, and a student of the founder of the French school of cello playing Martin Berteau (1691–1771).
Maria Constanze Cäcilia Josepha Johanna Aloysia Mozart was a trained Austrian singer. She was married twice, first to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; then to Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. She and Mozart had six children: Karl Thomas Mozart, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, and four others who died in infancy. She became Mozart's biographer jointly with her second husband.
The Cello Concerto Nr. 1 in C Major (Op.4) is a cello concerto by Antonín Kraft.
There is no question that the Praguers of the late eighteenth century exhibited a special appreciation for the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, even though, as recently pointed out by Daniel E. Freeman, confirmations of this fact attributed to Mozart himself in sayings such as "Meine Prager verstehen mich" have only come down to posterity second or third hand. Perhaps the most valuable direct testimony that attests to the discernment of the musical public in Prague with regard to Mozart's music comes from Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, which was first performed in Prague:
It is not easy to convey an adequate conception of the enthusiasm of the Bohemians for [Mozart's] music. The pieces which were admired least of all in other countries were regarded by those people as things divine; and, more wonderful still, the great beauties which other nations discovered in the music of that rare genius only after many, many performances, were perfectly appreciated by the Bohemians on the very first evening.
On 5 December 1791, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at his home in Vienna, Austria at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) had a powerful influence on the works of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Beethoven held Mozart in high regard; some of his music recalls Mozart's, he composed several variations on Mozart's themes and he modeled a number of his compositions on those of the older composer.
Joseph Lange was an actor and amateur painter of the 18th century. Through his marriage to Aloysia Weber, he was the brother-in-law of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Jahn's Hall was a concert hall in late 18th century Vienna. It was the property of a restaurateur/caterer named Ignaz Jahn, and seated "400 at the most". It is remembered as a performance venue for works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Josepha Duschek (1754–1824) was an outstanding soprano of the Classical era. She was a friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote a few works for her to sing.
Johann Ignaz Ludwig Fischer, commonly called Ludwig Fischer, was a German opera singer, a notable bass of his time.
Cäcilia Cordula Weber was the mother of Constanze Weber and the mother-in-law of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died after a short illness on 5 December 1791, aged 35. His reputation as a composer, already strong during his lifetime, rose rapidly in the years after his death, and he became one of the most celebrated of all composers.
Caterino Tommaso Mazzolà was an Italian poet and librettist. Born into a wealthy family from the islands of Murano, he and his family moved to Venice around 1767, but after a few years he moved to Treviso. He married in 1780 and having already met Giacomo Casanova and Lorenzo Da Ponte, started work as a librettist.
"Bella mia fiamma, addio", K. 528, is a concert aria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for solo soprano and orchestra, composed in Prague in 1787. The text of this aria is taken from the 1772 opera Cerere placata, composed by Niccolò Jommelli with text by Michele Sarcone. The aria was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1881.
| Biography | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Music |
| ||
| Family |
| ||
| Influences | |||
| Related | |||
