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Bronze Bust of Composer and Brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Brief History of Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—christened Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart—was born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756. His father, Leopold Mozart, was a famous musician and composer in his own right. In his twenty-fourth year, Leopold received an appointment as violinist in the orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, finally rising to the position of chapel master. He composed with fertility, and produced a famous violin method. But, as Leopold himself realized, his greatest work was not his own music, but—his son, Wolfgang. Much has been written about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s phenomenal precociousness. At the age of three, he already sat in front of the harpsichord attempting to find harmonic successions of thirds; whenever he succeeded, his shrill voice rang out joyfully. When Wolfgang was four, his father began to teach him the elements of harpsichord and, playfully, the rules of composition. Wolfgang did not need to learn. He began producing minuets and other small pieces for harpsichord, and several sonatas for harpsichord and violin. He produced with such ease that by his sixth year he had produced an imposing quantity of minuets, sonatas, and even a concerto. His sensitive ear could recognize that the violin of his father’s friend was tuned an eighth of a note lower than he himself tuned his own instrument; and it could rebel so violently against a raucous sound that at the blast of a trumpet he swooned with pain. Music, obviously, came as naturally to him as breathing. Leopold Mozart, recognizing the extraordinary gifts of his two children (for Maria Anna, five years Wolfgang’s senior, was also strongly talented) decided to exhibit his children before all Europe. When Wolfgang was six years old, therefore, an extensive concert tour brought him to the foremost concert halls and royal courts of Europe. Wherever he performed, the sweet charm of his personality and his incredible genius conquered the hearts of music lovers. Francis I of Wien lovingly referred to him as “ein kleine Hexenmeister” (“a little master-wizard”). In Frankfurt, Mozart gave something of a one-man circus show: “He will play,” ran the announcement in the Frankfurt newspaper, “a concerto for the violin, and will accompany symphonies on the clavier, the manuel or keyboard being covered with a cloth, with as much facility as if he could see the keys; he will instantly name all the notes played at a distance, whether singly or in chords as on the clavier or any other instrument, bell, glass or clock. He will, finally, both on the harpsichord and the organ, improvise as long as may be desired and in any key.” “I was only fourteen years old,” wrote Goethe many years later to Eckermann about this Frankfurt performance, “but I see, as if I were still there, the little man with his child’s sword and his curly hair. . . . A phenomenon like that of Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.” In Paris, Wolfgang became the darling of Versailles. He was, as Grimm wrote “so extraordinary a phenomenon that one finds it difficult to believe it unless one has seen him with one’s own eyes and heard him with one’s own ears.” The Paris visit was marked by the appearance of Mozart’s first published work, four sonatas for the harpsichord. From Paris, the Mozarts came to London, where Wolfgang won the heart of Johann Christian Bach, chapel master. In London, Wolfgang gave several sensational performances at the Vauxhall Gardens which were the subject of great wonder. The Mozarts were back in Salzburg in 1766, after an absence of four years. The tour had been a greater success artistically than materially. True, Mozart was given many gifts by royalty, but the principal goal towards which Leopold aspired had been unachieved—the acquisition of a permanent, lucrative post by Wolfgang in one of the principal European courts. One year later, the Mozarts were once again on tour. They had come to Wien where Wolfgang was commissioned to compose his first opera. Intrigues, created by envious composers (who realized their inferiority), prevented this first opera receiving a performance. In Wien, however, another charming theatrical work of Mozart, Bastien und Bastienne, an opéra-bouffe, was performed at the home of a friend, Dr. Messner. Towards the close of 1769, the Mozarts made their first journey to Italia, a journey crowned with glory. In Mantua, they attended a concert of the Philharmonic orchestra which performed a few of Wolfgang’s compositions in his honour. In Milano, they received a commission for Wolfgang to compose an opera series for the following year. Bologna brought Mozart into contact with the great Martini, who welcomed the young genius with open arms of admiration and respect. In Roma, there took place that phenomenal proof of Mozart’s genius which has frequently been quoted. Yount Mozart attended a performance of the celebrated Miserere of Allegri which could be heard only in Roma during Holy Week performed by the papal choir. By papal decree it was forbidden to sing the work elsewhere, and its only existing copy was guarded slavishly by the papal choir. Any attempt to copy the song or reproduce it in any form was punishable by excommunication. Mozart, however, had heard the work only once when, returning home, he reproduced it in its entirety upon paper. (I have heard the piece; it is long and extremely complex, with double-orchestra, organ, and conflicting choral parts.) No one has ever been able to even dream of duplicating this feat, even on a much smaller scale. This incomparable feat soon became the subject for awed whispers in Roma; it was not long before the Pope himself heard of this amazing achievement. The Pope summoned Mozart, but instead of punishing the young genius with excommunication, he showered praise upon him and gave him handsome gifts. A few months later, the Pope bestowed upon Mozart the Cross of the Order of the Golden Spur. The following autumn, the Mozarts were back in Italia for Wolfgang to fulfil his commission for Milano and bring to completion his opera seria, Mitradate, re di Ponte . "Before the first rehearsal," Herr Leopold Mozart wrote to his wife, "there was no lack of people to run down the music and pronounce it beforehand in satirical language to be something poor and childish, alleging that so young a boy, and Deutsch in the bargain, could not possibly write an Italiano opera and that, although they acknowledged him to be a great executant, he could not understand or feel the chiaroscuro required in the theatre. All these people have been reduced to silence since the evening of the first rehearsal with small orchestra, and say not a word." At the performance of Mitridate on Christmas day of 1770, the work was a phenomenal success. One of the soprano arias, contrary to all precedent, was encored. Cheers greeted the diminutive composer as he reached the stage. The newspapers commented upon that "rarest musical grace" and that "studied beauty" which seemed to be Wolfgang's intuitive idiom. The next few years of Mozart's life were drab. Except for two brief intermissions, he remained in Salzburg whose limited intellectual world chafed him considerably. Moreover, his musical labour at the Court of the Archbishop was an endless humiliation. He was the principal composer and virtuoso at the Court, but his salary was so meagre and his work so unappreciated that each day was for him crowded with trials. His fellow musicians at the Court were dissolute scoundrels, whose musical tastes were vulgar and whose interests centred upon gambling and drink. "Tell me," Wolfgang wrote at this time,"how could a decent fellow possibly live in such company?" It was, therefore, with a yearning heart that Wolfgang dreamt of escaping from Salzburg. A new extensive tour was, therefore, planned for Mozart in 1777, and since Herr Leopold was refused by the Archbishop a leave-of-absence, Wolfgang Mozart left in the company of his mother to conquer the music world anew. But the music world was this time not so easily conquered by Mozart. He was now twenty-one years old—a child prodigy no longer. The music world had in the past lavished its adoration upon a little pug-nosed child who could achieve miraculous musical feats. Now that the child had entered man's estate, he had lost his great appeal. München and Mannheim turned a deaf ear to his pleas for a permanent post at court; even random commissions were not forthcoming. These disappointments, however, did not smother Wolfgang's high spirits. Now a man, he found consolation from his disappointments in frequent love affairs. In Augsburg, there was his cousin, Basle, his first genuine love. "Basle," he wrote to his father,"seems to have been made for me, and I for her—for both of us have that little bit of badness in us." In Mannheim, where he was a household guest of a musical family called Cannabich, he in turn courted Rosa Cannabich and then Aloysia Weber, a singer, daughter of a copyist. He thought seriously of marrying Aloysia; only the heated and embittered letters of his father convinced him that it was wiser to delay marriage until he had procured his desired post. The road, therefore, next brought him to Paris, where in the Summer of 1778 Mozart's mother passed away. In Paris, too, Mozart met disappointment. There were those who were acutely jealous of his phenomenal genius; the others thought of him only as a one-time prodigy who had outgrown his talent. Because of these people, it was impossible for him to receive the appreciation he deserved. Small commissions fell to him, but they were so slight and of such negligible importance that they failed to support him adequately. Even Grimm, once so idolatrous, now lost interest in Wolfgang, complaining in a long letter to Herr Leopold Mozart, that Wolfgang was "too confident, too little a man of action, too much ready to succumb to his own illusions, too litte au courant with the ways that lead to success." It was not long before Mozart, convinced that no important post was open for him, decided to return to Mannheim and marry Aloysia Weber. To his bewilderment and humiliation, he learned upon his arrival that Aloysia had forgotten him so completely during his absence that she did not even recognize him when he entered. Disappointment and disillusionment now completely overwhelmed him. He returned to Salzburg (a town he detested with increasing strength each time he returned to it) for a brief and sombre period. In 1780, a commission from München for an opera seria brought him escape. This commission resulted in the first of Mozart's great opera, Idomeneo. Idomeneo, upon its first performance on 29 January, 1781, was a rousing success. Ramm, the oboist, and Lange, the horn-player "were half-crazy with delight,"and the latter exclaimed: "I must own that I have never yet heard any music which made such a deep impression upon me!" The audience expressed its enthusiasm in no uncertain responses. This success inspired Mozart to sever all connections with Salzburg and his employer, the Archbishop, and to settle permanently in Wein. Shortly after he made Wein his permanent home, he was commissioned by Joseph II to compose a Singspiel. Die Entfüauthrung auf dem Serail duplicated in Wein the success that Idomeneo enjoyed in München. Gluck, the foremost composer of operas at the time, had the work especially performed for him, his praise being lavish. Joseph II honoured Mozart with rewards. And Prince Kaunitz, after hearing the opera, openly expressed the opinion that a genius like Wolfgang Mozart could appear only once. On 4 August 1782 Mozart was married to Constanze Weber, youngest sister of his one-time beloved Aloysia. The ceremony was a simple one, the only ones present being the bride's mother and youngest sister, two witnesses, and a friend of the family. "The moment we were made one," Mozart wrote to his father,"my wife and I began to weep, which touched everyone, even the priest. ...We are married now; we are man and wife! And we love each other enormously. We feel that we are made for one another." It was shortly after his marriage that Mozart met and became a close friend of Josef Haydn. Haydn recognised Mozart's genius, and until the end of his life exerted his every effort to bring recognition and fame to the younger composer who, he sincerely felt, was without an equal in all music. On 1 May 1786, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro was introduced in Wein. "I can still see Mozart," wrote Michael Kelly, a singer, in his Reminiscences "dressed in his red fur hat trimmed with gold, standing on the stage with the orchestra, at the first rehearsal, beating time for the music....The players on the stage and in the orchestra were electrified. Intoxicated with pleasure, they cried again and again, and each time louder than the preceding one: 'Bravo, maestro! Long live the great Mozart'...It seemed as if the storm of applause would never cease....Had Mozart written nothing but this piece of music it alone would, in my humble opinion, have stamped him as the greatest composer of all time. Never before was there a greater triumph than Mozart and his Figaro!" Despite this emphatic success, Mozart knew at this time a period of great trial and depression. His child, Raimund, had died three months after birth, inspiring in the composer a fit of melancholy which was not easily dissipated. Moreover, at this time, Mozart knew appalling poverty. Repeatedly, he wrote pitiful letters to publishers, to friends, to distant acquaintances for small loans to relieve his trying circumstances. Finally, his wife Constanze was ill, her sickness brought on by undernourishment. Yet, in spite of these trying years, Mozart's pen knew no recess from the production of imperishable masterpieces. In October of 1787 he produced for Prag Don Giovanni, which more than one critic has designated as the greatest opera (including me). Don Giovanni was greeted with thunderous cheers; but to the impoverished composer it meant only one hundred meagre florins. One year after Don Giovanni, Mozart composed his three final symphonies—numbers 39 (in G-minor), 40 (in E-flat major), and 41 (in C-major, the Jupiter)—all in the incredible span of two months. In 1790, came Così fan tutte , followed closely by Die Zauberflöte. And between the composition of these monumental works, Mozart was composing a prolific library of concerti for solo instruments and his masterpieces for string quartet, along with hosts of other works. Mozart's last work was composed under mysterious circumstances. In 1791 a stranger, masked and dressed in grey, accosted Mozart and commissioned him to compose a requiem. The stranger was representing a wealthy nobleman who frequently asked great composers to produce works for him which he later presented under his own name. But to Mozart, ill and morbid as he was at this time, it appeared that this stranger was a messenger from the other world sent to warn the composer that the time had come for him to compose his own requiem. Through the sleepless, delirious nights, the messenger from the other world haunted Mozart's thoughts. Feverishly he worked upon his requiem, refusing both rest and food so that he might finish his work before it was too late. "Willingly would I follow your advice," he wrote to a friend who tried to persuade him to take a holiday,"but how can I do it?...I know by my feelings that my hour has come. It is striking even now! I am in the region of death." He was found at his desk unconcious. He was taken to bed, and the physician who had been summoned soon announced that Mozart was seeing his last days. Mozart had already known that he was dying. To his pupil, Süßmayer, he explained precisely how the Requiem was to be brought to completion. Shortly before his last breath left him, he attempted to sing parts of his last great work. On 5 December 1791, he said farewell to his family and turned his face to the wall; shortly afterwards he was dead. Mozart's remains were thrown into a pauper's grave in the churchyard of St. Mark. One week later, when Constanze returned with flowers to Mozart's body, she could not find the grave. Because Mozart had died like a pauper, his grave had been left unmarked, his body unidentified. Thus passed probably the greatest genius the world has ever known. Mozart was short and slim, and though his head was slightly too large for the body its well-proportioned features gave him an attractive appearance. His face had a softness that was almost effeminate, his cheeks always being sickly pallid. His eyes, piercing in their intensity, were eloquently expressive. His hair, of which he was considerably proud, was a rich shock. Well-poised, meticulously well dressed (he frequently sported laces and jewelry) and possessed of charming manners he made a deep impression upon these with whom he came into contact. Though moody by temperment and introspective, he was considerably fond of the society of pleasant people. He adored dancing, and it was with great difficulty that Constanze could keep him from frequenting places of questionable reputation. His recreation consisted of bowling and playing billiards. "He was generally cheeful and in good humour," Constanze Mozart has recorded,"rarely melancholy, though sometimes pensive. His speaking voice was gentle, except while directing music when he became loud and energetic— would even stamp with his feet, and might be heard at a considerable distance." Commenting upon Mozart's method of composition, Robert Pitrou wrote: "With him, both stages—the birth of ideas and their elaboration—were probably unconcious. His mind was constantly creating, without ever a break. When he came to the third stage—to committing to paper—he used to give his ideas at one stroke the very form he was aiming at... When at his desk, he always seems...to have been copying music already fully written down in his mind. We even know, from his letters, that his mind could turn to other music the while. Sending a prelude and fugue to his sister on 20 April 1792 [error of date is copied direct from quote], he wrote: 'Forgive the untidy arrangement. I had composed the fugue first, and while writing it out, I was thinking out the prelude.'" Mozart himself has written: "When I am in the right mood, ideas seem to teem within me. Those I like I retain. Then there are scraps which might go to the making of many a good dish. When I start composing I draw upon the accumulation in my brain." Commenting succinctly on Mozart's principal operas, Eric Blom has written: "With Idomeneo mastery may well be said to have been reached...Fine work Mozart certainly did put into Idomeneo, and in spite of the influnce of Piccinni and of certain conventions (mainly choral) of French grand opera, he was becoming an independant musical personality. His treatment of accompanied recitative shows a very sensitive readiness to apply expressive touches...In Die Entfüauthrung auf dem Serail Mozart was at last wholly in his element, not because of any special liking for the Deutsch Singspiel...but chiefly because by 1782 he was a fully matured master of his craft and had learnt a good deal about life....Indeed one would not have a note different...for it never ceases to be delicious as it is apt to its type and subject....It is a structure and a collection of tunes of such fascinating grace that one would like to call back every phrase of it to hug it over and over again....And then came Le nozze di Figaro...the perfect opéra-bouffe.... Beaumarchais'[s] exposure of a refined but pernicious civilization is here made the pretext for music as sunnily civilized [sic] as the world ought to have if the dreamers of Mozart's age had been right....These qualities [Le nozze di] Figaro has to a great degree never again attained in music, and it has moreover a profound humanity, a sympathetic penetration into the hearts of men and women—especially women...[Le nozze di] Figaro is Italian[o] comic opera in its final stages of perfection.... With all its overwhelming perfection, [Le nozze di] Figaro still shows an almost disconcerting readiness to use the current idiom of the time....But the next opera, the greatest of all...Don Giovanni, makes a tremendous advance in achieving the originality already, so to speak, at the fountainhead of inspiration....It is impossible to conceive that any notion as here set down by Mozart could have come from the pen of any other composer, then or later. What is more, not a single number in Don Giovanni can be imagined to occur in any other opera by Mozart himself. Everything is in character, everything colored [sic] by the particular mood into which this great tragi-comic subject cast him....After Don Giovanni we are magically transported into yet another world: that of Così fan tutte. Well, scarcely a world at all; only a show of marionettes....Once again Mozart achieved the miraculous feat of writing a score which, consistent in style from start to finish, could not by any conceivable chance lend a single one of its number to any other works of his. The whole perfume and flavor [sic] of the music is new and unique. Artifice is the keynote of it.... "What Mozart wanted was not declamation but spontaneous emotional expression, not grandly ordered drama but the variety of life....That is why he was not in the least disturbed by the hair-raising inconsistencies, the pantomime absurdities of The Magic flute [Die Zauberflöte?] ....Here was a great deal of nonsense, but it was good theatre, it was alive, and there was a multiformity of setting, of situation, of character such as he had never before had occasion to handle...The variety of The Magic flute [Die Zauberflöte?] score ought to be bewildering; somehow it is only astonishing in a favorable [sic] sense....The music itself is much more diversified than that of any opera of Mozart's....the flashy Italian[a] arias of the Queen of the Night [Königin der Nacht?] next to Sarstro's solemn utterances in Mozart's 'masonic' manner, the popular ditties of Popageno side by side with the profound humanity of Pamina's tear-compelling G-minor lament and the wonderful dramatic truth of her brief mad scene...all this and more is by some marvel of genius fashioned into a single gem of many facts—and of inestimable value." Edvard Grieg, the famous composer, has written an illuminating essay on Mozart which is not widely known. In it, he has discussed Mozart's final symphonies in the following manner: "We note at once the great step from Haydn's to Mozart's treatment of this highest of instrumental forms, and our thoughts are involuntarily transferred to the young Beethoven who, without any specially noteworthy break, rises from where Mozart left off to those proud summits which none but he was destined to reach. In the introduction of the E-flat major symphony, just before the first allegro, we come upon harmonic combinations of unprecedented boldness. They are introduced in so surprising a way that they will always preserve the impression of novelty....In the G-minor symphony, Mozart shows himself to us in all his grace and sincerity of feeling. It is worth noting what astonishing effects he gets here by the use of chromatic progressions. In the Jupiter symphony [Symphonie Nr.1 C major KV. 551] we are astounded, above all, by the playful ease with which the greatest problems of art are treated. No one who is not initiated suspects in the finale, amid the humurous tone gambols, what an amazing contrapunal knowledge and superiority Mozart manifests. And then this ocean of euphony! Mozart's sense of euphony was, indeed, so absolute that it is impossible, in all his works, to find a single bar wherein it is sacrificed to other considerations." Mozart was the greatest composer who ever lived. There is no music happier, more complex, and perfect than his anywhere to be found. If you do not believe me, (click here) to listen to Mozart's music, the music of Heaven.
MOZART
AND HIS MASONIC MUSIC The period of history which
encompassed the Baroque, the Rococco, and the It was a period of great
contributions in the arts. To give some examples, in its It was a period which gave us the
sonata, the suite, the rondeau (rondo), the It was also a period of fertile
growth in Masonic philosophy and ritual. And That music falls into three broad
categories--music he wrote specifically for As for the music Mozart wrote for
use in lodge, the most obvious question to The Blue Lodge of Freemasonry (the
original and The Fellow Craft Degree is
important in the story of Mozart's Masonic music To fully appreciate the music, it
is helpful to know a little about the The Fellow Craft Degree
represents, in terms of the stonemason's craft, the The ritual of the Fellow Craft
Degree takes classical education as one of its The instruction in the ritual
takes the form of the It symbolizes more than mere
instruction, however. The journey is the journey Even in this short passage, you
can see the elements of the Enlightenment and In the introduction to his book
Mozart and Masonry Paul Nettl writes, It is this journey, this secret,
which Mozart Wolfgang Mozart was apparently
sponsored in his petition to join Masonry by But Jacques Chailley, in The Magic
Flute Unveiled: Esoteric Leopold Mozart, it was announced
in Wolfgang's Lodge on March 28, 1785, had Mozart's Masonic Music is rich and
varied, but any listing is subject to Lied: An die Freude, K.53 (setting of a Masonic text) Psalm 129: De Profundis Clamavi
for mixed choir and orchestra K.93 (composed Lied: O heiliges Band der
Freudschaft for tenor and Piano K.148 (composed in Graduale ad Festum B.M.V.: "Sancta
Maria, mater Die for mixed choir and Incidental Music: Thamos Konig in
Agypten, K.345 (incidental music for a Canonic Adagio for 2 bassett Horns
and Bassoon, K.410 (composed in 1784, Adagio for 2 Clarinets and 3
Bassett Horns, K.411 (probably intended as a Cantata: "Dir, Seele des Weltalls,"
K.429 (composed for a public Masonic Gesellenreise: "Die ihr einem
neuen Grade," K.468 (composed for his father's Cantata: Die Maurerfreude "Sehen
wie dem starren Forscherauge," K.471 [According to the records of the
Lodge, Mozart wrote the music for two Maurerissche Trauermusik (Masonic
Funeral Music) K.477 (written for the Piano Concerto in Eb Major, K.482
(written for and performed at a concert Song: Zerfliesset Heut, Geliebte
Bruder," K.483 (written to Song: "Ihr unsre neuen Leiter,"
K.484 (written to welcome the newly elected Symphony #39 in Eb, K.543 (written
as a celebration of the Craft and the joy Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, K.546
(not originally written for the Masonic Adagio and Rondo for Flute, Oboe,
Viola, Cello, and Celesta, K.617 (written Motet: Ave Verum Corpus, K.618
(originally written Cantata: "Die ihr des
unermesslichen Weltalls Schopfer ehrt," K.619 (during Cantata: "Kleine Freimaurerkantate"
(little Masonic cantata) K.623 (written Chorus: "Lasst uns mit geschlungen
Handen" K.623b (written as part of the Opera: "Die Zauberflote" (The Magic Flute) K.620 Mozart died at fifty-five minutes
past midnight, on December 5, 1791. The
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