Sarah Bolton - Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

After their return to Salzburg, finding the new archbishop even less cordial than the old – the former had allowed Wolfgang the munificent salary of five dollars and a fourth yearly! – it was deemed wise to try to find a new field for employment. The father, now sixty years of age, must earn a pittance for the family by giving music-lessons, while the mother accompanied the son to Paris. The separation was a hard one for the devoted father, who could not say good-by to his idolized son, and poor Nannerl wept the whole day long. Mozart, now twenty-one, and famous, well repaid this affection by his pure character. He wrote: "I have God always before me. Whatever is according to his will is also according to mine; therefore I cannot fail to be happy and contented."

Stopping for a time at Mannheim, he attempted to gain the position of tutor to the elector's children, but was disappointed. Here he fell in love with Aloysia Weber, a pretty girl of fifteen, whose father, a prompter at the National Theatre, earned only two hundred dollars yearly for the support of his wife and six children. The girl had a fine voice; and Mozart, blinded by love, asked no higher joy than to write operas in which she might be the star. The good old father, who had spent all his life in helping his son to win fame, was nearly heart-broken when he learned of this foolish affection, and wrote him tenderly but firmly: "Off with you to Paris; get the great folks on your side; aut Cæsar, aut nihil . From Paris, the name and fame of a man of great talent goes through the whole world."

The young man, carrying out his childish motto, "God first, and then papa," reluctantly started for Paris. Here he did not meet with great success, for scores of applicants waited for every position. His loving mother soon died, perhaps from over economy in her cold, dark lodgings; and the young musician took his lonely way back to Salzburg, begging his father's consent to his stopping at Mannheim to see the Webers. Finding that Aloysia had gone upon the stage at Munich, he hastened to see her. She had been offered a good salary. Meantime Mozart had won no new laurels at Paris. He was small in stature, and poor; and the girl who wept at his departure a few months previously professed now scarcely to have seen his face before. The young lover, cut to the heart, yet proud, seated himself at the piano, and played,

"I leave the girl gladly who cares not for me,"

and then hastened away to Salzburg. Aloysia married a comedian, and lived a most unhappy life, gaining some fame from singing the music which Mozart wrote for her.

He remained at home for a year and a half, till called to Munich to write the opera "Idomeneo," and later to Vienna. Here, unfortunately, he met the Webers again, and, their father having died, he boarded in their house, and gave lessons to Constance, a younger sister of Aloysia. She was a plain, good-hearted girl, without much energy, but with a great appreciation of her gifted teacher. The result came naturally; he fell in love with the penniless girl, and, despite the distress of his aged father at his choice, married her when he was twenty-six and she eighteen.

Henceforward there was no hope of any thing save the direst poverty. To marry without love is a grave mistake; to marry simply for love is sometimes a mistake equally grave. He could of course do nothing now for his aged father or sister. Unsteady employment, a rapidly-increasing family, and a wife ill most of the time, made the struggle for existence ten times harder than before his marriage. Once when he had prepared to visit his father for the first time after the wedding, and had waited months for the necessary funds, he was arrested for a debt of fifteen dollars, just as he was stepping into the carriage.

The Emperor Joseph said to him one day, "Why did you not marry a rich wife?" With dignity Mozart at once replied, "Sire, I trust that my genius will always enable me to support the woman I love"; but unfortunately it did not. He wrote after his marriage: "The moment we were made one, my wife as well as myself began to weep, which touched every one, even the priest, and they all cried when they witnessed how our hearts were moved." How little they dreamed that they should weep more seriously when hunger stared their six children in the face!

From the time of his marriage till his death, nine years, says Rev. Mr. Haweis, "his life can be compared to nothing but a torch burning out rapidly in the wind." It was a period of incessant, astonishing labor. He dedicated six quartets to his dear friend Joseph Haydn, who said, "Mozart is the greatest composer who has ever lived"; wrote "Figaro" when he was twenty-nine, which had the greatest popularity, "Don Giovanni" at thirty-one, and the "Flauto Magico" gratis, for the benefit of the theatre director, who was in want. The two latter creations were hailed with delight. Goethe wrote to Schiller later of "Don Giovanni," "That piece stands entirely alone; and Mozart's death has rendered all hope of any thing like it idle."

Whenever he appeared at the theatre, he was called upon the stage from all parts of the house; yet all this time he could not earn enough to live. He received only a hundred dollars from his "Don Giovanni," and less for the others. He gave lessons every hour he could spare, concerts in the open air, borrowed from his friends, scrimped himself, to send money to his sick wife at Baden, pawned his silver plate to make one more unsuccessful journey to win the aid of indifferent princes, and fainted often at his tasks after midnight. Still he wrote to "the best and dearest wife of my heart," "If I only had a letter from you, all would be right," and promised her to work harder than ever to earn money.

When Constance was at home with him, if he left her in the morning before she awakened, he would leave a note for her with the words, "Good-morning, my darling wife. I shall be at home at – o'clock precisely." Once when she had been ill for eight months, and Mozart was composing beside her as she slept, suddenly a noisy messenger entered. Alarmed lest his wife should be disturbed, he rose hastily, when the penknife in his hand fell, and buried itself in his foot. Without a word escaping his lips, he left the room, a surgeon was called, and, though lame for some time, the wife was not told of the accident.

His compositions found few purchasers, for the people generally could not comprehend them. Publishers' shops were closed to him, unless he would write in the popular style. "Then I can make no more by my pen," he said bitterly, "and I had better starve and go to destruction at once." So poor had his family become, that, with no fuel in the house, he and his wife were found by a friend, waltzing to keep warm.

About this time a sepulchral-looking man called to ask that a "Requiem" be written on the death of the wife of an Austrian nobleman, who was to be considered the author, and thus his intense grief be shown, though manifested through a lie. Mozart consulted with his wife, as was his custom, and, as she indorsed it, he accepted the commission for fifty dollars. Overworked, harassed by debts which he could not pay, hurt at the jealousies and intrigues of several musicians, disappointed at the reception of his new opera at Prague, his hopeful nature forsook him, and he told Constance that the "Requiem" would be written for himself.

In the midst of this wretchedness their sixth child was born. The poor wife forgot her own sorrows, and prevailed upon him to give up work for a time; but the active brain could not rest, and he wrote as he lay on his sick-bed. On the day before he died, Dec. 4, 1791, at two o'clock, he persisted in having a portion of the "Requiem" sung by the friends who stood about his bed, and, joining with them in the alto, burst into tears, saying, "Did I not say that I was writing the 'Requiem' for myself?" Soon after he said, "Constance, oh that I could only hear my 'Flauto Magico!'" and a friend playing it, he was cheered.