Constanze Mozart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Constanze Mozart (born Constanze Weber) (5 January 1762; Zell im Wiesental, Germany – 6 March 1842; Salzburg), a first cousin of the composer Carl Maria von Weber, was the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. She came from a family filled with musical talents. All of the Weber girls were gifted in vocal areas. Aloysia Weber especially created many characters in Mozart's operas.

Mozart and Constanze Weber met in 1777 in Mannheim. However, Mozart was at first more interested in her sister, Aloysia. When Mozart met the family again in Vienna in 1781, Aloysia showed no interest in Mozart anymore and married Lange, an actor, though it is rumored that she regretted this decision years later. Mozart lived with the Weber family for a time, though he left due to rumors about their relationship.

Mozart and Weber married on August 4, 1782. They had six children in about 9 years:

• Raimund Leopold Mozart (1783)
• Carl Thomas Mozart (1784)
• Johann Leopold Mozart (1786)
• Theresia Mozart (1787)
• Anna Mozart (1789)
• Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791).

Only two of the children, Karl Thomas and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (who eventually changed his name to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), survived past childhood. As a result of her frequent pregnancies, Constanze is said to have been weak and often confined to her bed.

After Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's death in 1791, Constanze's business skills came into fruition. Friends of Mozart helped perform in concerts to raise money for his widow. The city of Prague no doubt participated a great deal in helping raise money. Eventually she sold the remaining autographs of Mozart's work (including the Requiem completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr) in 1800, to the publisher Johann Anton André.

In 1809, Constanze married Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, a Danish diplomat and writer. From 1810 to 1820 they lived in Copenhagen, and subsequently travelled throughout Europe, especially Germany and Italy. They settled in Salzburg in 1824. Both worked on a biography of Mozart; Constanze eventually published it in 1828, two years after her second husband's death.

[edit] Fraudulent photograph

A cardboard copy of an alleged daguerreotype of a family group, supposedly taken in Altötting in Bavaria in 1840, was rumored to include the 78-year-old Constanze Mozart. Mozart scholars have known about the photograph for decades, however, and its authenticity has effectively been disproven, because the picture was certainly taken with a short exposure that for technical reasons was not yet possible in 1840.

[edit] Literature

• Heinz Gärtner: Constanze Mozart: after the Requiem. Portland: Amadeus Press (1991) ISBN 0-931340-39-X
• Francis Carr: Mozart & Constanze. London: Murray. (1983) ISBN 0-7195-4091-7
• Jane Glover: "Mozart's Women".

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Constanze Mozart

• Website about Constanze Mozart