Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson

Author:Paul Johnson [Johnson, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-11-14T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

A GOOD LIFE FULLY LIVED

The death of Leopold Mozart on May 28, 1787, aged sixty-eight, opened the last phase of his son’s life. It was both a relief and a shock. From the age of three, when the young boy had first begun to pick out tunes on the clavier, to well past his twenty-ninth birthday—over a quarter of a century—father and son had enjoyed the closest relationship in musical history. The fact that they exchanged long, detailed, and factual letters for most of this time, dealing mainly with Wolfgang’s professional career and creative life, is of immense value and fascination. After the married couple returned to Vienna in October 1783, the correspondence was never the same. Letters were fewer, though we know they were exchanged, but only one by Mozart (April 4, 1787) has survived, and by the time Wolfgang sent it, he already knew his father was stricken with what proved his fatal illness. It is somber:

I have now made a habit of being prepared in all affairs of life for the worst. As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity (you know what I mean) of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that—young as I am—I may not live to see another day. Yet no one of all my acquaintances could say that in company I am morose or disgruntled. For this blessing I daily thank my Creator.

By contrast, in 1786 and 1787 until his death, Leopold wrote constantly to his daughter, and seventy-two letters have survived, the last one a month before he died. We do not have the text of his last letter to his son, though we know it contained some characteristic practical but gloomy advice about a rumored plan Wolfgang had to go to England (“he ought to have at least 2000 gulden in his pocket before undertaking such an expedition”). Leopold had been bitter about his son’s marriage and had felt they were no longer close, in the old way, but there had been no breach. He had sacrificed his own life to his son’s career, but he never had any doubt that it had been worth it. Mozart had justified all his expectations except in one way: worldly success, and that had certainly not been for want of effort, on his part and on his son’s. Leopold knew he had led a good, Christian existence, in himself and through his family. His daughter had been a wonderful consolation to him in his age, as his letters show, and the visits he paid to Mozart in Vienna, with all the bustle of performing and composing and the operatic first nights, had been a delight.

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