Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words Part 12

(Paris, July 18, 1778, to his father.)

234. "I am unconscious of any guilt for which I might fear your reproaches. I have committed no error (meaning by error any act unbecoming to a Christian and an honest man). I am antic.i.p.ating the pleasantest and happiest days, but only in company with you and my dearest sister. I swear to you on my honor that I can not endure Salzburg and its citizens (I speak of the natives). Their speech and mode of life are utterly intolerable."

(Munich, January 8, 1779, to his father, who was urging his return from Paris to take the post of chapelmaster in Salzburg.

The musicians of Salzburg were notorious because of their loose lives.)

235. "From the way in which my last letter was received I observe to my sorrow that (just as if I were an arch scoundrel or an a.s.s, or both at once) you trust the t.i.ttle-tattle and scribblings of other people more than you do me. But I a.s.sure you that this does not give me the least concern. The people may write the eyes out of their heads, and you may applaud them as much as you please, it will not cause me to change a hair's breadth; I shall remain the same honest fellow that I have always been."

(Vienna, September 5, 1781, to his father, who was still listening to the slander mongers. Mozart could not lightly forget the fact that it was due to these gentlemen that he had been forced to leave the house of the widow Weber with whose daughter Constanze he was in love.)

236. "You have been deceived in your son if you could believe him capable of doing a mean thing....You know that I could not have acted otherwise without outraging my conscience and my honor....I beg pardon for my too hasty trust in your paternal love. Through this frank confession you have a new proof of my love of truth and detestation of a lie."

(Vienna, August 7, 1782, to his father, whose consent to his son's marriage did not arrive till the day after.)

237. "Dearest and best of fathers:--I beg of you, for the sake of all that is good in the world, give your consent to my marriage with my dear Constanze. Do not think that it is alone because of my desire to get married; I could well wait. But I see that it is absolutely essential to my honor, the honor of my sweetheart, to my health and frame of mind. My heart is ill at ease, my mind disturbed;--then how shall I do any sensible thinking or work?

Why is this? Most people think we are already married; this enrages the mother and the poor girl and I are tormented almost to death. All this can be easily relieved. Believe me it is possible to live as cheaply in expensive Vienna as anywhere else; it all depends on the housekeeping and the orderliness which is never to be found in a young man especially if he be in love.

Whoever gets a wife such as I am going to have can count himself fortunate. We shall live simply and quietly, and yet be happy.

Do not worry; for should I (which G.o.d forefend!) get ill today, especially if I were married, I wager that the first of the n.o.bility would come to my help....I await your consent with longing, best of fathers, I await it with confidence, my honor and fame depend upon it."

(Vienna, July 27, 1782.)

238. "Meanwhile my striving is to secure a small certainty; then with the help of the contingencies, it will be easy to live here; and then to marry. I beg of you, dearest and best of fathers, listen to me! I have preferred my request, now listen to my reasons. The calls of nature are as strong in me, perhaps stronger, than in many a hulking fellow. I can not possibly live like the majority of our young men. In the first place I have too much religion, in the second too much love for my fellow man and too great a sense of honor ever to betray a girl...."

(Vienna, December 18, 1781. [The whole of this letter deserves to be read by those who, misled by the reports, still deemed trustworthy when Jahn published the first edition of his great biography, believed that Mozart was a man of bad morals.

Unfortunately Mozart's candor in presenting his case to his father can scarcely be adjusted to the requirements of a book designed for general circulation. Let it suffice that in his confession to his father Mozart puts himself on the ground of the loftiest s.e.xual purity, and stakes life and death on the truthfulness of his statements. H.E.K.])

239. "You surely can not be angry because I want to get married?

I think and believe that you will recognize best my piety and honorable intentions in the circ.u.mstance. O, I could easily write a long answer to your last letter, and offer many objections; but my maxim is that it is not worth while to discuss matters that do not affect me. I can't help it,--it's my nature. I am really ashamed to defend myself when I find myself falsely accused; I always think, the truth will out some day."

(Vienna, January 9, 1782, to his father. In the same letter he continues: "I can not be happy and contented without my dear Constanze, and without your satisfied acquiescence, I could only be half happy. Therefore, make me wholly happy.")

240. "As I have thought and said a thousand times I would gladly leave everything in your hands with the greatest pleasure, but since, so to speak, it is useless to you but to my advantage, I deem it my duty to remember my wife and children."

(June 16, 1787, to his sister, concerning his inheritance from his father who had died on May 28.)

241. "Isn't it true that you are daily becoming more convinced of the truth of my corrective sermons? Is not the amus.e.m.e.nt of a fickle and capricious love far as the heavens from the blessedness which true, sensible love brings with it? Do you not often thank me in your heart for my instruction? You will soon make me vain! But joking aside, you do owe me a modic.u.m of grat.i.tude if you have made yourself worthy of Fraulein N., for I certainly did not play the smallest role at your conversion."

(Prague, November 4, 1787, to a wealthy young friend, name unknown.)

242. "Pray believe anything you please about me but nothing ill.

There are persons who believe it is impossible to love a poor girl without harboring wicked intentions; and the beautiful word mistress is so lovely!--I am a Mozart, but a young and well meaning Mozart. Among many faults I have this that I think that the friends who know me, know me. Hence many words are not necessary. If they do not know me where shall I find words enough? It is bad enough that words and letters are necessary."

(Mannheim, February 22, 1778, to his father, who had rebuked him for falling in love with Aloysia Weber, who afterward became his sister-in-law.)

RELIGION

Mozart was of a deeply religious nature, reared in Salzburg where his father was a member of the archiepiscopal chapel. Throughout his life he remained a faithful son of the church, for whose servants, however, he had little sympathy.

The one man whom Mozart hated from the bottom of his soul was Archbishop Hieronymus of Salzburg who sought to put all possible obstacles in the way of the youthful genius, and finally by the most infamous of acts covered himself everlastingly with infamy.

Though Mozart frequently speaks angrily and bitterly of the priests he always differentiates between religion, the church and their servants. Like Beethoven, Mozart stood toward G.o.d in the relations.h.i.+p of a child full of trust in his father.

His reliance on Providence was so utter that his words sometimes sound almost fatalistic. His father harbored some rationalistic ideas which were even more p.r.o.nounced in Mozart, so that he formed his own opinion concerning ecclesiastical ceremonies and occasionally disregarded them. His cheery temperament made it impossible that his religious life should be as profound as that of Beethoven.

243. "I hope that with the help of G.o.d, Miss Martha will get well again. If not, you should not grieve too deeply, for G.o.d's will is always the best. G.o.d will know whether it is better to be in this world or the other."

(Bologna, September 29, 1770, to his mother and sister in Salzburg. The young woman died soon after.)

244. "Tell papa to put aside his fears; I live, with G.o.d ever before me. I recognize His omnipotence, I fear His anger; I acknowledge His love, too, His compa.s.sion and mercy towards all His creatures, He will never desert those who serve Him. If matters go according to His will they go according to mine; consequently nothing can go wrong,--I must be satisfied and happy."

(Augsburg, October 25, 1777, to his father, who was showering him with exhortations on the tour which he made with his mother through South Germany.)

245. "Let come what will, nothing can go ill so long as it is the will of G.o.d; and that it may so go is my daily prayer."

(Mannheim, December 6, 1777, to his father. Mozart was waiting with some impatience to learn if he was to receive an appointment from Elector Karl Theodore. It did not come.)

246. "I know myself;--I know that I have so much religion that I shall never be able to do a thing which I would not be willing openly to do before the whole world; only the thought of meeting persons on my journeys whose ideas are radically different from mine (and those of all honest people) frightens me. Aside from that they may do what they please. I haven't the heart to travel with them, I would not have a single pleasant hour, I would not know what to say to them; in a word I do not trust them. Friends who have no religion are not stable."

(Mannheim, February 2, 1778, to his father. For the reasons mentioned in the letter Mozart gave up his plan to travel to Paris with the musicians Wendling and Ramen. In truth, perhaps, his love affair with Aloysia Weber may have had something to do with his resolve.)

247. "I prayed to G.o.d for His mercy that all might go well, to His greater glory, and the symphony began....Immediately after the symphony full of joy I went into the Palais Royal, ate an iced cream, prayed the rosary as I had promised to do, and went home. I am always best contented at home and always will be, or with a good, true, honest German."

(Paris, July 3, 1778, to his father. The symphony in question is no longer in existence, although Mozart wanted to write it down again at a later date.)

248. "I must tell you my mother, my dear mother, is no more.--G.o.d has called her to Himself; He wanted her, I see that clearly, and I must submit to G.o.d's will. He gave her to me, and it was His to take her away. My friend, I am comforted, not but now, but long ago. By a singular grace of G.o.d I endured all with steadfastness and composure. When her illness grew dangerous I prayed G.o.d for two things only,--a happy hour of death for my mother, and strength and courage for myself. G.o.d heard me in His loving kindness, heard my prayer and bestowed the two mercies in largest measure."

(Paris, July 3, 1778, to his good friend Bullinger, in Salzburg, who was commissioned gently to bear the intelligence to Mozart's father. At the same time Mozart, with considerate deception, wrote to his father about his mother's illness without mentioning her death.)

249. "I believe, and nothing shall ever persuade me differently, that no doctor, no man, no accident, can either give life to man or take it away; it rests with G.o.d alone. Those are only the instruments which He generally uses, though not always; we see men sink down and fall over dead. When the time is come no remedies can avail,--they accelerate death rather than r.e.t.a.r.d it....I do not say, therefore, that my mother will and must die, that all hope is gone; she may recover and again be well and sound,--but only if it is G.o.d's will."

(Paris, July 3, 1778, to his father, from whom he is concealing the fact that his mother is dead. He is seeking to prepare him for the intelligence which he has already commissioned Bullinger to convey to the family.)

250. "Under those melancholy circ.u.mstances I comforted myself with three things, viz.: my complete and trustful submission to the will of G.o.d, then the realization of her easy and beautiful death, combined with the thought of the happiness which was to come to her in a moment,--how much happier she now is than we, so that we might even have wished to make the journey with her. Out of this wish and desire there was developed my third comfort, namely, that she is not lost to us forever, that we shall see her again, that we shall be together more joyous and happy than ever we were in this world. It is only the time that is unknown, and that fact does not frighten me. When it is G.o.d's will, it shall be mine. Only the divine, the most sacred will be done; let us then pray a devout 'Our Father' for her soul and proceed to other matters; everything has its time."

(Paris, July 9, 1778, to his father, informing him of his mother's death.)

251. "Be without concern touching my soul's welfare, best of fathers! I am an erring young man, like so many others, but I can say to my own comfort, that I wish all were as little erring as I. You, perhaps, believe things about me which are not true. My chief fault is that I do not always appear to act as I ought. It is not true that I boasted that I eat fish every fast-day; but I did say that I was indifferent on the subject and did not consider it a sin, for in my case fasting means breaking off, eating less than usual. I hear ma.s.s every Sunday and holy day, and when it is possible on week days also,--you know that, my father."

(Vienna, June 13, 1781--another attempt at justification against slander.)

252. "Moreover take the a.s.surance that I certainly am religious, and if I should ever have the misfortune (which G.o.d will forefend) to go astray, I shall acquit you, best of fathers, from all blame. I alone would be the scoundrel; to you I owe all my spiritual and temporal welfare and salvation."

(Vienna, June 13, 1781.)