Subject: Leopold Mozart - Paternal Pride and Prejudice
From: Gary Smith
To: All
Date Posted: 13:51:02 06/27/04 ()
Email Address: smithworld@earthlink.net
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LEOPOLD MOZART - PATERNAL PRIDE and PREJUDICE.
By Agnes Selby.
[Agnes has graciously allowed us to post this article on Leopold Mozart here at the Forum. We encourage everyone to supply material you believe of interest. if you have questions, or projects you'd like us to consider, please contact us via our email address. GES)
The early Mozart biographers proclaim the pivotal role Leopold Mozart played in his son, Wolfgang Mozart’s life. His influence was claimed to have been beneficial as far as Wolfgang’s musical development was concerned, as well as in the formation of his character. More recent writers have recognized, however, the elements of destructiveness in Leopold’s upbringing of his gifted son, pointing out the father’s need to manipulate Wolfgang for his own advantage. When finally Wolfgang rebelled against his father’s will he had only ten years of life left to him. Yet these were the glorious years when Wolfgang’s genius blossomed, having burst free from the confines imposed by the will of his father.
Curiously enough, the veneration of Leopold as the father of a genius began with the woman he most resented, his daughter-in-law, Constanze. When Constanze and her second husband, Nikolaus von Nissen embarked on the writing of Wolfgang Mozart’s monumental documentary biography, Constanze placed her stamp of approval on Leopold Mozart’s role in his son’s life. The biography was based on letters between father and son handed over to Nissen and Constanze by Leopold’s daughter, Nannerl. The letters revealed Leopold’s strict and unforgiving nature, which failed to lessen Constanze’s admiration for him as the man who grounded Wolfgang in the principles and the framework of musical composition.
As a child of the eighteenth century, she did not question Leopold Mozart’s motives. She would have seen in his actions a demonstration of a father’s love for his son. In her praise of Leopold Mozart, Constanze may also have been motivated by her respect for Nannerl who, after all, entrusted her father’s letters to her second husband, Nissen. Any reservations she may have had were kept to herself for, after all, Constanze had nothing to gain from expressing private criticism in Mozart’s biography and thereby hurting Leopold Mozart’s descendants - her own sons.
As early Mozartean writers tended to copy from each other, Leopold Mozart has emerged unscathed and untouched by the vagaries of literary fate, which so often reinvent the lives of famous people. Constanze’s tendency to agree with Leopold’s treatment of his son is nevertheless somewhat surprising as she herself had been a victim of his prejudice and severe and unforgiving attitude to life.
Leopold Mozart was a man of many contradictions. He thought of himself as a devoted father who gave unstintingly to the two prodigies he was privileged to bring into the world. In return, however, he extracted a price the burden of which lay heavily upon his children’s shoulders. He was openly generous in his praise of other musicians yet his sarcastic asides annulled the praise he proffered. For instance, his colleague, Michael Haydn, the brother of Joseph Haydn, who often filled Leopold’s shoes during his long absences from his Court duties was most frequently the butt of his sarcastic remarks. Leopold was possibly the most famous impresario of a child prodigy in musical history and yet his efforts fell short of their objective. Had he survived his son, he might have marveled at Constanze’s ability to market his son’s genius, as she did not miss a single opportunity to enhance her late husband’s name during the fifty years of her life after her husband’s death.
Leopold traveled all over Europe remorselessly seeking recognition for his children, in the process exposing them to every imaginable contagion in the disease-riddled capitals of the continent resulting in a legacy of ill-health for both Nannerl and Wolfgang and perhaps in the end helping to cost Wolfgang his life. Leopold’s many travels suggest a desire for self-promotion, a passionate desire to flee the monotony of his life at the Salzburg Court and an urge to mingle on an equal footing with the nobility he despised because he wasn’t one of them.
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was the son of Johann Georg Mozart, a bookbinder whose opportunity to become a Master of his trade came through marriage. He married Maria Banegger the widow of his late employer. The couple lived in the Frauentorstrasse in Augsburg and the house is preserved to this day as the Mozarthaus. When Maria Banegger died after only a few years of marriage, Johann Georg married the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a wealthy weaver. Leopold Mozart was the first of eight children born to Johann Georg Mozart and his young wife, Anna Maria Sulzer in 1719.
Anna Maria Mozart was a beautiful woman and Leopold inherited her Nordic good looks. His compulsive and obsessive nature may also have been inherited from his mother who in her old age dissipated the family fortune in lawsuits and divided her family with her continuous bickering. Near the end of her life she was restrained by the Augsburg authorities from creating further problems. Leopold Mozart fled from his mother and his siblings and severed his connections with all members of his family with the exception of his youngest brother, Alois, also a bookbinder and the father of Basle to whom Wolfgang’s “infamous” letters were later addressed. (These letters contain the kind of scatological humour, which was often expressed during those days, and it needs to be seen in the context of the period.)
As a youngster Leopold Mozart showed no scholastic ability. However, this all changed when he was enrolled at the Jesuit Grammar School in Augsburg, where he completed the formidable curriculum with distinction. This was an expensive school but Leopold’s school fees were discounted as his father bound the prayer books for the Augsburg Cathedral. When Leopold graduated he was proficient in Latin, Greek and French and had studied Logic, Physics, Mathematics and History.
As well, he was a gifted violinist who had often performed in school concerts and was also an outstanding organist. Leopold’s interest in music led him to correspond with the great J. S. Bach who was at the time a member of the Correspondence Society in Leipzig. Leopold studied music by correspondence with Meirand Spiess, the Music Director and Prior of the Benedictine Abbey at Irrsee.
After his father’s death Leopold moved to Salzburg and enrolled at the Benedictine University with the original intention of studying Theology. At the beginning of the first semester, however, he had enrolled to study Philosophy and Jurisprudence. He was an exemplary scholar during the first year but then his love of music and the application of all his time to the study of music earned him a dismissal from the University.
Leopold entered the service of Count Thurn-Valsassina und Taxis in Salzburg as a valet “with musical obligations”. Leopold seemed happy in the Count’s service and he dedicated his six trio sonatas, Opus I to the Count. Leopold’s words in his dedication liken the Count to a paternal sun (Paterno Sole). The wording is not much different from Wolfgang’s dedication of his six string quartets to “Papa” Haydn. He remained in the Count’s service for three years when in 1743 he was appointed fourth violinist to the court orchestra under Leopold Anton von Firmian, the last independently reigning archbishop of Salzburg. Archbishop Firmian is remembered for solving the centuries-old religious problems between Catholics and Protestants by expelling twenty-two thousand Protestants from his land. Leopold worked his way up to second violinist and Court Chamber Composer (1757). But the Archbishop who played the greatest role in Leopold Mozart’s life was Count Sigismund Christoph Schrattenbach. It was under his reign that Leopold attained the position of court composer and Vice-Kapellmeister in 1763.
Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo took office in 1772 and with his arrival the fulfillment of Leopold Mozart’s career aspirations at the Salzburg court vanished. In his desire to imitate the Viennese Court, the Archbishop appointed a Neapolitan composer, Domenico Fischietti as Kapellmeister of his orchestra thus by-passing Leopold Mozart. Leopold realized that his hopes of becoming Kapellmeister were forever blighted and the bitterness he felt at what he considered a betrayal never left him.
Wolfgang’s own disenchantment with Salzburg was influenced by his father, who never found in Salzburg the stimulus and professional satisfaction he craved for. It is, therefore, surprising to consider Leopold’s negative reaction to Wolfgang’s desire to escape from what he considered a professionally stagnant environment.
Leopold Mozart’s letters to his son after Wolfgang moved to Vienna are unfortunately not extant. Nissen, who with his wife Constanze stands accused by historians of having destroyed them, also decried their loss in his introduction to his Mozart biography. From Wolfgang’s replies, however, the picture of a bitter Leopold emerges. It is a forbidding portrait of a disappointed and frustrated man. A portrait of a man desperately trying to keep his son anchored in the very quagmire in which he considered himself to be captive.
At first his appointment to the Archbishop’s orchestra was a great blessing to Leopold. On November 21, 1747 he married Anna Maria Pertl who for some time had been his great love. He married above his station, as Anna Maria was the daughter of Nikolaus Pertl, a lawyer and the magistrate of the district of St. Gilgen. Nikolaus Pertl however died young and left his wife and daughter in poverty. Except for her good name, Anna Maria Pertl brought no material trappings to the marriage. There is no doubt that this was a marriage based on love and affection. Thus Wolfgang Mozart was born in 1756 into a loving family. He was the youngest of seven children of whom only two survived, Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl who had been born five years earlier on 30 July 1751.
In Salzburg the Mozarts lived in a small three-bedroom apartment on the top floor at No. 9 Getreidegasse. The house belonged to Lorenz Hagenauer, a rich merchant who became their true and trusted friend. Leopold earned extra money for his family by teaching the violin and piano. During the year of Wolfgang’s birth, Leopold published his Treatise on the Violin School, which, according to Goethe’s friend, Karl Friedrich Zelter was a book, which will be useful as long as the violin remains a violin, as indeed it has remained a book studied to this day by all serious interpreters of 18th century violin music. Leopold Mozart was a prolific composer and apart from church music, he composed orchestral suites and delightful pieces for toy instruments. The Toy Symphony earlier attributed to Joseph Haydn was in fact composed by Leopold Mozart. Some of Leopold’s music was also attributed to Wolfgang but it has now been established that the three songs Die Grossmutige Gelassenheit K. 149; Geheime Lied K. 150 and Die Zufriedenheit im Niedrigen Stande K. 151 are in fact all Leopold Mozart’s compositions. It is indeed a compliment to Leopold that these works were at first ascribed to his illustrious son.
Leopold’s early desire to see his son established as Court Composer at a German Court such as Mannheim or Munich, inspired Wolfgang’s and his mother’s ill-fated journey to Paris in 1777. Although Wolfgang was by now twenty-one years old, Leopold would not allow him to travel on his own and this restriction resulted in his mother’s death in Paris. The letters Leopold wrote to his son during the eighteen months Wolfgang was away from Salzburg are a study in musical politics and paternal commands. Any emotional needs Wolfgang may have had are dealt with swiftly by the father and without a single thought given to the effect such letters would have on his son. Mercilessly, Leopold was quick to blame the death of his wife in Paris on his son.
While in Mannheim, Wolfgang found his way along the cobblestone streets to the lottery office opposite, which resided the music copyist, Fridolin Weber. There he was welcomed by Weber’s four daughters who would influence the remainder of his life. Starved for love and suddenly free of the strictures imposed by his father, Wolfgang promptly fell in love with Aloysia, the second oldest and the most beautiful of the Weber girls. Barely seventeen years old, she was an accomplished pianist and linguist. When Wolfgang heard her perform his compositions, he found in them a new meaning that he himself had not been aware of. Most of all, this future prima donna of the Viennese Opera impressed Wolfgang with her voice. For the first time in his life Wolfgang no longer cared about his own career but wanted to dedicate his life to furthering Aloysia’s. Wolfgang planned to travel to Italy where Aloysia’s voice would be appreciated. He was going to take with him Fridolin Weber as chaperon and the eldest sister, Josepha, the future star of the Schikaneder Company, as cook so that he could continue to enjoy her culinary delicacies. In a letter to Leopold he likened his own family to the Weber’s, a faux pas his father would never forgive.
Needless to say, Leopold’s reaction was swift in his condemnation of his son’s plan. With an anger surely comparable to that of the Commandatore in Mozart’s later opera, Don Giovanni K.527, Leopold wrote to his son on 11 February, 1778: “As for your proposal (I can hardly write when I think of it), your proposal to travel about with Herr Weber and, be it noted, his two daughters - it has nearly made me lose my reason! My dearest son! How could you have allowed yourself to be bewitched even for an hour by such a horrible idea!” Wolfgang was so upset that he became sick but he had to accede to his father’s wishes and continue on his journey to Paris. After his mother’s death, he found his only solace in the hope that he would see his beloved Aloysia on his return journey. During all this drama Wolfgang barely noticed the little girl with the pretty eyes, the fourteen-year-old Constanze Weber who was to become his wife and the guardian of his posthumous fame. Wolfgang was loath to return to Salzburg and the suspicion arises that his plans to travel with Aloysia were also plans to liberate himself from his father. He drove his father to almost demented fury with his procrastination about his return journey.
Family problems were always resolved by Leopold alone, never allowing room for discussion. This may also have been due to parental attitudes to children during the 18th Century but Leopold sought and indeed continued to rule his children’s will well into their adulthood.
Leopold’s letters to his son during his Paris journey contain long litanies of his own financial woes. He always made sure that Wolfgang was aware of his obligation to support his family and repay the debt that his father had allegedly incurred on his behalf. In a letter to his son in February 1778 Leopold complained that he was as poor as Lazarus, his clothing as shabby and torn, and that he had to wear old socks and shoes to church, all this to impress upon Wolfgang his responsibility towards his father who was making so many sacrifices for him!!
As a result Wolfgang was torn between the desire to flee his father or return to the tyranny of Salzburg in order to help him. Wolfgang was bound to his family by ties stronger than blood; by his sense of guilt at having let his mother die in Paris and his responsibility for the debts incurred by his father to finance the ceaseless journeys undertaken by the whole family for Wolfgang’s benefit. It is a wonder that his talent survived the burdens lay upon him and did not shrivel up under his father’s severe and critical eye. Leopold convinced his son to return to Salzburg but when Wolfgang was commissioned to compose the opera Idomeneo for the Munich opera an opportunity presented itself for him to travel to Vienna. In early 1781 Archbishop Colloredo was visiting his ailing father in Vienna and required all his servants, cooks and musicians to accompany him. Wolfgang traveled to Vienna from Munich with only the clothes he was wearing but once there, he soon contrived to be dismissed from Colloredo’s service. Wolfgang remained in Vienna when all the other servants returned to Salzburg. Wolfgang’s act of insubordination against his employer finally ended the control his father had exercised over him.
Nannerl did not fare so well. She had been in love with a cavalry officer and when Leopold finally broke this liaison, Nannerl spent a year in total depression. Seemingly unconcerned, Leopold wedded her to an elderly nobleman, Baron Johann Baptist Berchtold von Sonnenburg, whose third wife she became, having to care for the children from her husband’s previous marriages. She gave birth to her first child, named after Leopold, on 27 July 1785 in her father’s home in Salzburg and returned to her husband in St. Gilgen without her baby, leaving him thereafter in Leopold’s care. Many Mozartean writers have applauded this deed as her supreme expression of love for her father. It is an unfathomable act of a totally oppressed woman unable to withstand her father’s entreaties. So convinced was Leopold that Wolfgang’s genius was due to his own efforts that he believed that another such genius was not entirely out of the question. His letters to Nannerl at St. Gilgen describe in detail the musical progress her baby was making. Little Leopold, however, had no apparent talent whatsoever, a fact that Leopold Mozart did not live to see. Little Leopold grew up to be a cavalry officer and later in life became a bureaucrat in the Austrian Taxation Department.
In 1786 Wolfgang made plans to travel to London. He did not like to be parted from Constanze for lengthy periods and so he turned to his father with the request that his two sons be placed in his father’s care. Leopold had at least two servants looking after Nannerl’s little boy; hence Wolfgang did not feel that his own two children would be an imposition.
Leopold promptly rejected his son’s request. He dashed off a letter to Nannerl, the tone of which reveals the coldness of his reply (not extant) to his son.
“You can easily imagine that I had to express myself very emphatically, as your brother actually suggested that I should take charge of his two children because he was proposing to undertake a journey through Germany to England in the middle of Carnival. I wrote therefore very fully and added that I would send him the continuation of my letter by the next post. Her Muller, the good and honest maker of silhouettes, had said a lot of nice things about little Leopold to your brother, who heard in this way that the child is living with me. I had never told your brother. So that is how the brilliant idea occurred to him or perhaps to his wife. Not at all a bad arrangement! They could go off and travel - they might even die - or remain in England - and I would have to run off after them with the children. As for payment he offers me for the children and for the maids to look after them - Basta! If he cares to do so, he will find my excuse very clear and instructive.”
One might wonder how Leopold’s letter affected Wolfgang and Constanze and whether the continuation of Leopold’s sermon was even read by them. The Mozarts’ little boy, also called Leopold, died of suffocation on 15 November, 1786 and was buried in St. Marx cemetery on the very day, 17 November, when Leopold penned his acrimonious letter to Nannerl.
Leopold Mozart’s relationship with Wolfgang deteriorated because of his inability to grant his son the freedom of an adult existence. Leopold’s blind hatred of Mozart’s wife, Constanze finally broke Wolfgang’s trust in his father. It is difficult to assess if this hatred of Constanze and her family stemmed from Leopold’s disappointment that his son did not marry into the nobility or that Wolfgang’s transference of his dependency from his father to Constanze deprived Leopold of his most vital link with his son. Leopold’s hatred of Constanze and her family had a continuing influence on Mozartean scholars. We find even so distinguished a scholar as Alfred Einstein hurling insults at Mozart’s beloved wife and her accomplished family of musicians and singers.
Yet it is interesting to note that Leopold’s letters to Nannerl, when in January 1785 he visited his son in Vienna, actually express his approbation of his daughter-in-law whom he praised for running an economical household and her mother and sisters for entertaining him regally. These comments were ignored by writers who preferred his earlier reference to Constanze when he called his son’s new bride a slut. This slur inspired writers to pick up pencil and paper to recount the apocryphal stories of Constanze’s sisters parading in front of the army barracks in Vienna with a view to picking up prospective husbands.
Where this scurrilous information came from is not known. All the while Constanze’s sister, Aloysia was married to Joseph Lange, a celebrated Shakespearean actor and painter and was herself the highest paid prima donna of the German Opera. Constanze’s eldest sister, Josepha was studying singing in Graz on an Imperial scholarship. On her return from Graz, Josepha joined the Schikaneder company and was the first Queen of the Night in Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. Constanze’s youngest sister, Sophie, fourteen years old at the time of Constanze’s marriage to Mozart, is well known in Mozartean history as the young maiden who suffered Leopold Mozart’s company while he lay sick during his visit to his son’s home in Vienna. Later she witnessed Wolfgang’s death and according to her report to Nissen, her brother-in-law expired in her arms.
After Nannerl gave birth to her first child, she returned to her husband’s household in St. Gilgen, letting Leopold dedicate the rest of his life to his grandson. He occasionally attended Archbishop Colloredo’s court and looked forward to the occasional theatre productions that took place in Salzburg. He became ill and died of heart failure on 28 May 1787 and had the final say even in death.
Leopold voiced his displeasure with his son by leaving his whole estate to his daughter with the exception of his personal items. These were to be auctioned and the proceeds were to be divided between his two children. There were 579 items to be auctioned but only 314 were sold, Nannerl retaining the most valuable objects. All the valuable gifts given to the young Wolfgang during his many travels were retained by Nannerl. Wolfgang’s scores which had remained in Salzburg when he so swiftly departed to Vienna from Munich took until December 1787 to be returned to him.
Maynard Solomon in his Mozart - A Life has estimated that Nannerl received from her father somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 florins. In her old age, when out of pity Constanze organized a collection for “Mozart’s impoverished sister” among London’s music lovers, Nannerl was actually in possession of more than 6,000 florins, left at the time of her death to her only remaining child, Leopold. When his father died, Wolfgang only received a settlement of 1,000 florins.
Nannerl may have been gratified by her father’s will, considering it a final proof that she was, after all, her father’s most beloved child. There is no doubt that her early youth was spent in the shadow of her brother and that she harbored a hidden resentment against him for the rest of her life.
Interestingly, the grandson Leopold Mozart never knew, Wolfgang’s youngest child, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, bore the closest resemblance to his grandfather. He had more than an average musical talent and became a music teacher in Lemberg, Poland. Like his grandfather, he was a man of romantic and lofty ideas but could never quite bring them to fruition. In his portrait he looks like Leopold. In appearance and bearing the two men are so similar that they could be mistaken for the portrait of the same man painted at different stages of life.
It is an irony that Leopold Mozart was destined to share his final resting place with his detested daughter-in-law, Constanze and her second husband Nikolaus von Nissen. The grave also houses the final remains of Constanze’s aunt, Genevieva Weber, the mother of Carl Maria von Weber, the father of the German Romantic Movement.
The musical heritage of the Mozart family ended with the death of Franz Xaver Mozart (Wolfgang Mozart’s son) on July 19, 1844 at Karlovy Vary
(Karlsbad) at the age of 53. Neither of Mozart’s sons married and there were no descendants. Nannerl’s great- granddaughter, Bertha Forschter, died in 1917 and Leopold Mozart’s great-great grandniece, Karoline Grau, died in 1965. I have not been able to confirm the story of a descendant of “Basle” Mozart, a milliner who was taken from a mental asylum in Germany with the rest of the asylum’s inmates to the ovens of a concentration camp in Hitler’s Germany.
Copyright: Agnes Selby (Courtesy “Quadrant”).
Subject: Violin Concerto In C K271a
From: dennis
To: All
Date Posted: 05:03:32 06/19/04 ()
Email Address:
Message:
The Violin Concerto in D K271a is handed down in two copies that
apparently originated independent of each other:
1) as a full score copy from the collection of Aloys Fuchs (now in
Prussian State Library, Berlin); and
2) in a set of parts in Paris that Eugene Sauzay (a Paris Violinist)
made in 1837 for his teacher and father-in-law Pierre Baillot, from
the autograph that must have been found in the possession of
Francois Antonie Habeneck (a famous Paris conductor and Violinist
in the 19th Century and also a student of Baillot).
It is unclear from what model Fuchs prepared his copy. Fuchs
remarked in one of his catalogues "Violin Concerto--with
orchestra which in Salzburg in autograph score shall be found?
The authenticity is first of all yet to establish". The most unusual
aspect of the Fuchs copy is that its layout does not correspond to
any other copy of a Mozart work. The solo Violin is not entered on
the topmost, but lowest staff of the score.
In the Paris set of parts Baillot wrote on the finale page "Concerto
for Violin, Composed by Wolfgang Amadee Mozart, in Salzburg, on
July 16, 1777. Copied by Euguene Sauzay from the full score
manuscript of this author belonging to Mr. Habeneck in 1837".
Robert Levin pointed out that contrary to Fuchs' layout, a scrap of
paper pasted in this source lists the instruments in the exact order
used by Mozart and with the horn solmisation found, e.g., in
Mozart's other Violin Concertos. Since none of Mozart's other
Violin Concertos were published at this time, this coincidence
cannot be explained away easily. The Concerto was first published
in 1907 by Albert Kopfermann, after Fuchs' copy.
How and why did Sauzay obtain and copy Mozart's autograph (if it
was the autograph)? In his "Memoires" Sauzay wrote of reviving
Mozart Concertos with his wife in their apartments. As Augustine
Sauzay was a distinguished pianist, these were probably Piano
Concertos, but it seems likely the copy of this Violin Concerto in D
was made for these occasions, perhaps in chamber form. How the
Violin Concerto manuscript would have got to Paris is unclear. One
thought is that Mozart sold the autograph directly to someone in
Paris; a second is the connection of the pianist Marie Bigot de
Moragues' (a friend of Sauzay) husband to music publishers in
Vienna. Sauzay or Baillot perhaps played the solo part in Paris. As
a matter of fact 2 Cadenzas are found pasted to the Paris music
pages that might originate from Baillot. A third Cadenza pasted
inside could originate from Sauzay. According to the French
custom of the time the wind parts are transcribed on separate
sheets for the piano, probably by the composer/violinist
Alexander Boëly. The Sauzay and Fuchs copies have small
deviations in addition to a 37 measure longer closing section of
the 3rd movement in the Fuchs copy. Fuchs' copy also contained
cadenzas to all movements, certainly not Mozart's according to
Kopfermann, who did not print them. That Mozart himself revised
these 37 measures with another of 7 measures is seen by some as
being authentic, according to his September 11, 1778, letter in
which he writes "If I have time, I shall rearrange some of my Violin
Concertos, and shorten them".
Köchel did not know the Concerto, so it was not listed in K1. In K2
(1905) Walderese listed the Concerto as K271a, dating it July 16,
1777, and stating the lost autograph had been in the possession
of Habeneck in Paris in 1837. After its publication in 1907 (and
first performance on November 4, 1907, in Dresden) scholars
lined up for and against its authenticity. St. Foix, for one, did not
doubt its authenticity, but believed this version was a later
revision by Mozart himself around 1779 or 1780. Still others took
the course that Mozart supplied the "rough and kernel" of the
work and someone else finished it. Rudolf Gerber published
another edition in April 1934, placing no doubts on his
authenticity and briefly discussed the Finale's epilogue theme
similarity to the Gavotte in Les Petits Riens (first reported A. Heuss
in 1907) as well as the first movement's thematic relation to K211.
In 1932 Yehudi Menuhin recorded the Concerto with Cadenzas by
George Enesco.
Einstein kept the Concerto in the main part of K3 (renumbering it
K271i--not because the date changed but because he had
renumbered other works from 271b to 271h), believing Mozart
wrote out a hasty sketch of a Violin Concerto, but stating the
original form of the work of 1777 could not be clearly
reconstructed. Many scholars felt the Violin required too much
playing in the high register. Others remained uncomfortable with
the pizzicato playing in the slow movement, and double stopping
in tenths of the Violin. Einstein maintained these were
embellishments added in the 19th Century. Friedrich Blume came
out strongly in favor of authenticity, writing "not one passage
allows of any room for doubt in regard to themes, harmony,
rhythm, construction and orchestration". He stated there were
analogies in the Violin movements of Mozart's Divertimenti and
Serenades, and the entire Concerto should not be questioned
because of some peculiarities of Violin technique. Blume attached
Einstein's hasty sketch theory and criticized Einstein on other
ideas on the Concerto.
In 1963 Carl Bär published a paper that firmly believed in Mozart's
authorship of the piece. Citing the quotation in Joachim von
Schiedenhofen's diary of July 25, 1777, that at Gusset's Mozart
works were rehearsed consisting of a Symphony, a Violin
Concerto--played by young Mozart--and a Flute Concerto, Bär
believed K271a was composed for this occasion. Bär also believed
the Violin Concerto Leopold Mozart referred to in a letter of
September 18, 1777, that "Herr Kolb" played was also K271a.
Leopold again refers to "the Concerto you wrote for Kolb" on
August 3, 1778, and identifies this as referring to K271a. As
Leopold stated in a letter of April 13, 1778, that Count Czernin--
who had been in Salzburg since April 1775--had never heard Kolb
play the Violin, Bär rules out any of the 5 Violin Concertos of 1775
as being the "Kolb Concerto".
It is not all that sure who Kolb was. Franz Xavier Kolb (1731-1782)
was first thought to be the Violinist. However Bär believes it is
more likely to be one of his sons--Joachim (born 1752) or Johann
Andreas Kolb, 5 years older. Bär leans toward Johann Andreas.
"Herr Kolb", being an amateur, could not have had a large
repertoire and played Mozart's Concerto (which Bär hypothesizes
Mozart gave him just prior to leaving Salzburg). Bär believed the
Concerto was thus composed between June 16--the performance
of the second Lodron Nachtmusik K287/271H--and Nannerl's
Name Day, July 26, 1777. Bär also believed the dating on the
manuscript helped show its authenticity. The Italian heading
"Salisburgo li 16 di Luglio 1777" is similar to numerous
autographs of the time, and in a time period that whoever placed
the heading there could not know a Violin Concerto had probably
been written.
However Ernest Hess believed the large number of compositional
errors, unMozartian phrases, instrumentation weaknesses,
meaningless sequences, such as Mozart had parodied in his
"Musical Joke", certainly spoke against Mozart's authorship.
K6 kept the Concerto in the main part of the catalogue, mostly
copying the K3 remarks section, but eluded to Hess' doubts on its
authenticity.
Christoph-Hellmut Mahling in 1978 briefly raised the question if
the Concerto could not be the work of another master that Mozart
copied for his own use. He concludes that after all considerations
are in, that there are more questions open than answered. "One
thing is however rather clear: The riddle of the Violin Concerto
K271i is yet to be solved". In 1980 the NMA (edited by Mahling)
placed the Concerto in Works of Doubtful Authenticity. All the
Cadenzas mentioned above are printed in the Appendix of NMA.
Manfred Hermann Schmid [Mozart Studien 1999] on basic of
formal and technical aspects of the Concerto expressed more
than doubt on the Concerto: "I find in the entire Concerto K271i
no music which I in earnest would put in a claim for Mozart".
Schmid thought the composition appears to belong to the 1780's,
but with different techniques and forms than Mozart used.
Mahling in the 2001 Mozart-Jahrbuch again published some
considerations on the Violin Concerto K271a. In reviewing much of
what had been published earlier he gave updated information and
opinions. In considering if the work was an arrangement, who
could it be? Comparing the Concerto with Concertos of Baillot,
Mahling found the violin solos are structured entirely different.
Mahling found the Violin Concerto K271a to be much closer in
style to the Violin Concertos of Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766 - 1831),
and gives an example of his Violon Concerto Nr. 1 in G-major
from 1783-84. [Kreutzer was a French composer and violinist. He
was professor of Violin at the Paris Conservatory from its founding
in 1795 until 1826 and was one of the authors of the violin
method taught there. Between 1783 and 1810 he wrote 19 Violin
Concertos. Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" for Violin and Piano
Op.47 is dedicated to him.] Mahling believes the frequent high
postions of the solo violin in K271a show the French influence of
the Concertos of Baillot and Kreutzer and correspond to the
exercises of the teachings at the Paris Conservatoire. However
these high notes were frequently "unmotivted" with nothing
leading to their appearance and seemed disconnected and
unnecessary to the piece. Mahling found much in the Concerto
that was very unMozartian, but more customary to the French
composition school a little later. The noted unusual use of
pizzicato in the second movement is found in the beginning of a
Symphonie Concertante for 2 Violins in d-minor (Op.38 from
1816) of Baillot. Also the tempo indication "Allegro Maestoso" for
the 1st movement--found later in Mozart's Piano Concertos, but
in none of this Violin Concertos--is frequently found in Concertos
from the French region. And the "majestic beginning" of the
Concerto, with its punctuated notes, according to Mahling is
characteristic of the French Overture form. If this Concerto is an
"arrangement", Mahling thinks the best possibilites would be
Baillot or Kruetzer, and the probable origin time about 1830.
So Mahling concludes that we have many questions on the
Concerto:
---From the form of the solo Violin part could we accept a Mozart
Concerto of a later dating?
---Or had Mozart arranged a Violin concerto of another
composer?
---Or just the opposite, could another have arranged an
autograph model of Mozart's? Thus Mozart provided the
"substance" and it is now presented in a different garment?
---Or did the Concerto originate from a later time from an
unknown author and was only thought to be by Mozart, or falsely
attributed to him?
---Or in the end is it simply a matter of a "forgery'?
Kevin Bazzana in his CD notes to the Richard Kapp recording of
this Concerto believes he has a clue for the provenance of the
Concerto. Kapp stated that during the recording sessions the
members of the Czech Philharmonie Chamber Orchestra laughed
when they began playing the piece, for the theme of the Rondo
quotes a Bohemian Christmas carol. Thus the Concerto could have
been the work of a Czech composer. Perhaps someone familiar
with Bohemian music of that period can nail down this tune, and
we can add this to the puzzle of the Violin Concerto K271a.
I have numerous recordings of the Concerto, and all use the
longer version found in the Fuchs Berlin copy of the Concerto.
Jean-Jacques Kantorow uses the Cadenzas found in this copy,
while all others use either their own or Cadenzas of recent
composers.
dennis
Subject: Music for Expectant Mothers
From: Tel Asiado
To: All
Date Posted: 05:49:44 06/18/04 ()
Email Address: webmaster@inspiredpen.4t.com
Message:
Dear fellow Mozart lovers,
[Note:I'm sharing this article which I've primarily written for RITRO.com (Health and Living Section) dated June 15, 2004. Agnes and Daisy think that some people here might be interested. Best regards, Tel]
Music for Expectant Mothers
(June 15, 2004 9:00 AM) By Tel Asiado
One of the most important sounds to a foetus is that of its mother's voice, according to Dr. Alfred Tomatis, French physician and psychologist, who pioneered groundwork for the multidisciplinary science called Audio-Psycho-Phonology (APP). He revolutionized our understanding of the role our ears play and explained ‘why the way we listen’ has a profound impact on almost all aspects of our day-to-day lives. Tomatis documented the sounds most beneficial to the foetuses and revealed what music would ease kicking within the mother’s womb.
The Tomatis listening method has been shown to be especially successful for expectant mothers. It explains that the foetus reacts strongly to its mother’s emotions and the music that she sings or listens to. A study was done at the Vesoul Hospital in France where researchers reported that pregnant women who participated in four weeks during the eight month of pregnancy spent less time in the hospital and had fewer complications. Further result showed that 60 percent of the Tomatis patients needed no medication, as against 46 percent of the conventionally prepared and 50 percent of the unprepared mothers. Women using the Tomatis method expressed less worry about giving birth.
It has been well researched and documented that the initial purpose of the ear is to grow the brain of the unborn child. After birth, the function of the ear is to charge the neo cortex of the brain and the entire nervous system. The food digested by the body provides its nourishment and fuel. Sound waves “digested” by the ear are what fuel the brain, and therefore, sound is literally a nutrient.
The ears of a growing baby in the womb begin to function when it is 18 to 24 weeks old. After the 26th week of pregnancy, a foetus can hear a mother’s heartbeat, circulation, and a range of low frequency sounds, such as her rhythmic breathing and the gurgling of her stomach. The unborn baby can also hear the mother’s voice. The higher frequencies of the mother’s voice is said to literally nourish the foetus. A uterine dialogue is established where the foetus waits for the sound of its mother’s voice, content when the unborn child hears it, and listens for the sound of her voice once again. This is how the listening process begins that is carried into childhood. It is also the start of the emotional and psychological bond between mother and infant.
The low and repetitive sounds tend to ‘discharge’ the brain, causing weakness and fatigue, while the higher sounds such as the mother’s voice that the baby hears in the womb, tend to stimulate and charge the brain. They are soothing and feel nurturing to the foetus.
If she is continually distressed or is subjected to loud discordant sounds, her rhythmic breathing becomes harmful to the development of her child, physically, mentally and spiritually. Such disharmony can affect her baby's hormonal responses and the neurological impulses of the nervous system. In reaction, the foetus will have a raised heart rate and will start kicking against her womb in a violent fashion.
It has been found that the music of Wolfgang Mozart in particular has helped lower a baby's heart rate and have alleviated the force of the baby's kicks. Some research has also shown that foetuses in the last trimester of pregnancy can hear and understand simple syllables. Why Mozart in particular? Tomatis himself posed the same question. So have I, and a lot of other Mozart and classical music lovers. Well, although Mozart shares affinities with other composers of his period, Tomatis asserts: “Wolfgang Mozart has an effect, an impact, which the others do not have … he has a liberating, curative, and I would even say, healing power. His efficacy exceeds by far what we observe among his predecessors, his contemporaries, or his successors.”
Moms-to-be, consider also making up simple lullabies or rhymes which you can hum to welcome the embryo growing within you. To paraphrase Dr. Tomatis, let your unborn baby draw a feeling of security from this permanent dialogue through the music that guarantees a harmonious blossoming.
Key References:
Cynthia Blanche/Antonia Beattie The Power of Music Lansdowne Sydney, 2000
Don Campbell The Mozart Effect Hodder & Stoughton A/NZ, 1997
Featured article by Irene H. Zundel Sound as a Nutrient in Utero
http://www.tomatis.com
http://www.tomatis.com.au
http://www.greenepa.net
Suggested CDs:
Mozart for Mothers-To-Be
More Mozart for Mothers-To-Be
Ultrasound-Music for the Unborn Child
Tune your Brain: Pregnancy and Childbirth
(Note: The use of music during pregnancy, delivery, infancy, and even for young children constitutes one of the fastest growing fields of music therapy. As a result of studies in relation to the Tomatis Method, hospitals and maternity clinics have started to make music therapy available. This article focuses on the effect of music for the expectant mother. Tel Asiado, RITRO Staff writer.)
Subject: Mozart's Viotti Additions K470a and Lost Andante K470
From: dennis
To: All
Date Posted: 04:08:49 06/18/04 ()
Email Address:
Message:
MOZART'S ADDITIONS TO VIOTTI'S VIIOLIN CONCERTO #16
K470a AND LOST ANDANTE K470
Mozart's additions to Viotti's Violin Concerto #16 in e-minor are
on a single autograph sheet (written on both sides), with the
heading "Concerto" and "2 Horns in E/Timpani in E".
J.A. André in the introductory remarks of his manuscript
catalogue of 1833 noted the following next to the incipit of the
1st movement parts: "For lack of space or lack of music paper
Mozart had for many accessory parts and by Opera full scores
often also for the entirely not essential wind instruments wrote
out an 'accessory full score'. Thus was found among his
manuscripts also such a one of 2 Trumpets and Timpani to a
Concerto in E, which begins with an 'Adagio non troppo'. As this
Concerto is entirely unknown to me, I place for its possible re-
discovery the beginning measures of the Trumpets and Timpani-
full score here".
Köchel's Catalogue of 1865 did not place, or mention, André's
"unknown Concerto", nor did K2 of 1905. In 1936 Alfred Einstein
solved the riddle of these parts, reporting they were additions to
the outer movements of Giovanni Battista Viotti's Violin Concerto
in e-minor that Mozart presumably made in the beginning of
1785 for a performer in one of his concerts. Mozart wished to
"glitter up" the outer movements; the middle movement was
already "Romantic" sounding. [Rather ironically, even though
Einstein did not bring up the fact, André had published Viotti's
Violin Concerto #16 in parts in 1821, and in 1833 did not
recognize the additions to a Concerto he had already published.]
Einstein believed--confirmed by St. Foix--the work was reworked
for the same concert event in the Mehlrube for which he had
written the Andante K470. [Also at the end of the autograph--not
identified in any edition of Köchel--is the remark "You can write in
directly the Trumpets and Drums", thus showing a copyist must
have brought about the parts very quickly for a performance from
Mozart's written copy.]
K470 is a (lost) Andante to a Violin Concerto. Mozart entered the
incipit in his work catalogue under April 1, 1785. Nothing else is
known of the work. Otto Jahn and Köchel believed it was perhaps
written for the virtuoso Janiewicz [Anton Janitsch 1753 - 1812],
who at that time was in Vienna. Hermann Abert had thought
Janiewicz could also mean Jarnovich [?Giovanni Giornovichi 1735 -
1804]. Einstein added Leopold Mozart's Salzburg student, Heinrich
Marchard [1769 - after 1812], who was in Vienna at the time with
his teacher.
Einstein in K3 thought K470 was most likely written to replace the
original slow movement of the Violin Concerto K218, probably
performed in Vienna, as in his work catalogue Mozart wrote "An
Andante for the Violin to a Concerto", thus the piece was not
intended to be a free standing piece. By the time of K3a (1947)
Einstein eliminated Jarnovich from consideration as K470's
performer, as he had arrived in Vienna in 1786. Einstein also
followed St. Foix in now expressing the opinion K470 was meant
as a replacement for the middle movement of Viotti's Violin
Concerto in e-minor #16 (K470a).
K6 kept Mozart's additions to Viotti's Violin Concerto at K470a,
but placed doubts that K470 could be intended for this Concerto
from tonal grounds. K6 thought Einstein's original opinion it was a
replacement for K218 was correct. Unfortunately this does not
solve much of the problem why or for who K470 was written.
Heinrich Marchard's only documented appearances in Vienna are
in March of 1785 (March 2 and 14). Easter Sunday in 1785 was on
March 27.
In 1973 the Viotti side of the picture finally came to be heard.
Chapell White in his article "Toward a more accurate Chronology of
Viotti's Violin Concertos" wrote the Concerto was probably written
for the Theatre de Monsieur in Paris in 1789-90, but possibly for
Versailles around 1784-86. Its first edition was in Paris 1789-90.
White points out that to accept the 1785 dating of Mozart's
additions it would have to be assumed Violin Concerto #16
travelled from Paris to Vienna in manuscript, an assumption
difficult to support. White stated Viotti would not risk the chance
of piracy of such an important work, and certainly the young
Marchard (16 years old at the time) would have been an unlikely
candidate for such a favor. There is also no evidence Viotti was
well known in Vienna in the mid 1780's.
Once the connection between the Mozart additions for the Viotti
Violin Concerto and K470 is removed, a much later dating comes
into consideration. As White pointed out Mozart might have
prepared them for any one of a variety of occasions as late as
1790 or 1791. White concluded the Violin Concerto #16 was
written by Viotti in 1789 or 1790, for Viotti or one of his star
pupils to perform in Viotti's own theater which opened in January
1789. Viotti's Concertos were also played during intermissions at
the opera house in Paris.
Boris Schwarz was however of the opinion the Violin Concerto #16
came to Mozart from Johann Friedrich Eck (1766 - 1810). The 20
year old violinist was in Vienna in March 1786 and Schwarz
believed Eck may have brought the Concerto with him from Paris.
Eck had become a student of Viotti in 1785. Mozart then reworked
the Violin Concerto for a planned concert by Eck and Mozart,
which never materialized.
In 1995 Manfred Hermann Schmid took up the Mozart additions to
the Violin Concerto #16. He stated the handwriting of the
autograph belonged to the time of 1787-1791. The paper type
can not be determined with final certainty, but one used from the
end of 1789 until 1791 comes into question.
From all the above I think it safe to say Mozart's additions to the
Violin Concerto in e-minor of Viotti date from 1789 to 1791, or as
Schmid writes "around 1790".
Musically Mozart placed no high demands on his new players. The
additions are restricted to doubling; the Trumpets strengthening
the Horns in the forte. However Schmid believes Mozart's
encounter with Viotti's Violin Concerto #16 had an influence on his
composition style. Mozart used slow introductions prior to 1789,
but not as Viotti did in this Violin Concerto. All three slow
introductions Mozart used after his presumed work on Violin
Concerto #16 have slow introductions that return again toward the
finish of the work--String Quintet K593, Overtures to Cosi and
Zauberflöte--exactly as Viotti's introduction returns later in the
movement.
Unfortunately I do not know of a CD recording of Viotti's Concerto
in e-minor that uses Mozart's additions. Two old LPs used these
additions, but have not been transfered to CD, as far as I know.
dennis