Mozart – Peter Gay (1999)
To prepare for an upcoming trip to Vienna, I’ve begun to read of music. I picked up a Penguin Lives biography of Wolfgang Mozart at the local library.
This is actually not a review of Peter Gay’s Mozart, which is a very nice, short, well-organized Mozart biography. Instead, this account is my realization that, setting aside his musical legacy, Mozart was the rarest of birds — he successfully emerged as a fully-functioning adult from a life as a child prodigy raised by a controlling parent.
Earlier this year, Amanda Ripley reviewed Off the Charts, The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies, by Ann Hulbert, for the NY Times Book Review. I recall being struck at the time by the statement:
Child prodigies are exotic creatures, each unique and inexplicable. But they have a couple of things in common, as Ann Hulbert’s meticulous new book, “Off the Charts,” makes clear: First, most wunderkinds eventually experience some kind of schism with a devoted and sometimes domineering parent. “After all, no matter how richly collaborative a bond children forge with grown-up guides, some version of divorce is inevitable,” Hulbert writes. “It’s what modern experts would call developmentally appropriate.” Second, most prodigies grow up to be thoroughly unremarkable on paper. They do not, by and large, sustain their genius into adulthood.
We are all familiar with the outlines of the achingly short life of Joannes Christostomos Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart. He was born in Salzburg in 1756 to a musical family. His father Leopold Mozart was well-educated, and a fine violinist in the employ of the prince-archbishop of Salzburg. “Wolferl” was the prodigy of all prodigies – he composed piano pieces at age five, he wrote violin sonatas at seven, and he wrote his first symphony at nine.
His father nurtured and educated – and capitalized — Wolferl from the start. Father and son toured Munich when Mozart was five. There was a family grand tour across western Europe for three years, from 1763 to 1766. Mozart was an endearing hit, and Leopold was showered with gifts and money by the aristocracy. Wolferl came to crave the attention, and we are told that at six he jumped into the Hapsburg empress’s lap and kissed her. At eight, in Paris, Wolfgang stood by the queen, repeatedly kissed her hands, and had her feed him tidbits. For all his life Mozart loved dressing smartly, spending lavishly, and working hard for the attention of others.
As Mozart grew older, his father grew even more controlling. Leopold was especially suspicious of girlfriends and potential lovers who might interfere in the commercial and personal bond of father and son.
At age 25, Mozart somehow summoned the strength to leave his father in Salzburg and move to Vienna. The correspondence with his father at the time was devastating. Leopold threw every psychological weapon he could at his son – castigating him as ungrateful, and blaming his negligence as the cause of Mozart’s mother’s death while on tour in Paris.
In Vienna, finally independent, Mozart began to seriously court Constanze Weber and eventually they were married. Leopold fulminated against the relationship, writing to Mozart that Constanze’s mother was a witch intent on trapping Mozart into marrying Constanze, and that Constanze herself was no better than a slut.
I have not read Hulbert’s book, but I recognize her point about the crash endings of prodigies. Mozart was, we must all concede, the prodigy of prodigies. His father was the stereotype of stage moms. Add in the ingredients of international acclaim and money as a magical youth, and it is miraculous that Mozart artistically thrived until his death in 1791 at age 36 of rheumatic fever.
Mozart remained respectful of his father. He stood up for himself in his letters to his father, but always asked for his father’s blessing and understanding. Leopold could not move on from Mozart’s decision to move to Vienna and marry. Leopold died in 1787 in Salzburg, and true to his judgmental nature his will favored Mozart’s older sister.
Mozart wasn’t particularly intellectual. He never acknowledged the contemporaneous movement to revolution in France. His one social allegiance was to the order of Masons. He spent wildly and irresponsibly, and was reduced to humiliating requests for loans from friends and benefactors for much of his time in Vienna.
And yet he embraced his natural ability. While many of us are cynical of the abilities that come to us without much effort, Mozart worked to develop his gift and composed on a prolific scale – from string quartets, to symphonies, to his most beloved, the operas. These compositions, though seemingly easy for Mozart to compose, became increasingly sophisticated and complex. It would have been easy for the prodigy to go off the rails as an adult – to drink, partying, and bankruptcy – but he always stayed true to what he seemed to know was his destiny.
Bob Fall 