Constanze Mozart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Constanze Mozart
Constanze Mozart

Constanze Mozart (born Constanze Weber) (5 January 1762; Zell im Wiesental, Germany – 6 March 1842; Salzburg), was a soprano singer of the Classical era, the mother of two surviving children, and the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Contents

[edit] Life

Constanze was born into a musically-talented family. Her father was Fridolin Weber, who worked as a "bass, prompter and copyist".[1] He was the half-brother of Franz Anton Weber, the father of Carl Maria von Weber. All of the Weber girls were gifted in vocal areas and Constanze's sisters Aloysia and Josepha both played an important role in Mozart's later life as performers of his works. During most of Constanze's upbringing, the family lived in Mannheim, an important musical center of the time.

The 21-year-old Mozart met and befriended the Webers when he visited Mannheim (1777) on a job-hunting tour that ultimately took him to Paris. He fell in love, not with the 15-year-old Constanze, but with her older sister Aloysia.[2]

While Mozart was in Paris, Aloysia obtained a professional position as a singer in Munich, and the family accompanied her there. Aloysia rejected Mozart when he passed through Munich on his way back to Salzburg.[3]

The Weber family moved to Vienna in 1779, again following Aloysia as she pursued her singing career.[4] Mozart moved to Vienna himself in 1781. By this time, Aloysia had married the actor Joseph Lange, Fridolin had died, and the girls' mother Cäcilia Weber had set up business in taking in boarders, in order to make ends meet. The house where the Webers lived (on the second floor) was at Am Peter 11, and bore a name (as houses often did at the time): Zum Augen Gottes ("God's Eye").[5]

On first arriving in Vienna (16 March 1781),[6] Mozart stayed at the house of the Teutonic Order, along with the other staff and servants of his employer, Archbishop Colloredo. On the 1st or 2nd of May, Mozart "was obliged to leave" these lodgings,[7] and he chose to become a boarder in the Weber household. According to Deutsch, "he originally intended to stay there only a week."[8]

After a while, it became apparent to Mrs. Weber that Mozart was paying court to Constanze, now 19, and in the interest of propriety, she requested that he live elsewhere.[9] Mozart moved out on 5 September to a third-floor room in the Graben.

The courtship continued, not entirely smoothly. Surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke off their relationship in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constance had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlor game.)[10] Mozart also faced a very difficult task in persuading his father Leopold to give permission to the marriage.[11]

The marriage finally took place on August 4, 1782. The Mozarts had six children over a period of about nine years:

Only two of the children, Karl Thomas and Franz Xaver Wolfgang, survived past childhood. As a result of her frequent pregnancies, Constanze is said to have been weak and often confined to her bed.

Mozart died in 1791, leaving debts instead of an estate, placing Constanze and her children in a difficult position. At this point Constanze's business skills came into fruition: she obtained a pension from the Emperor, organized profitable memorial concerts, and embarked on a campaign to publish her husband's works. These efforts succeeded, eventually making Constanze financially secure, even well-off.

Toward the end of 1797, Constanze met Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, a Danish diplomat and writer who was, initially, her tenant.[12] The two began living together in September 1798,[13] and were married in 1809. 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.

During Constanze's last years in Salzburg, she had the company of her two surviving sisters, Aloysia and Sophie, also widows, who moved to Salzburg and lived out their lives there.[14]

[edit] Influences on Mozart's music

Constanze was a trained musician and played a role in her husband's career. Two instances can be given:

The extraordinary writing for soprano solo in the Mass in C Minor (for example, in the "Christe eleison" section of the Kyrie movement, or the aria "Et incarnatus est") was intended for Constanze, who sang in the 1783 premiere of this work in Salzburg. Maynard Solomon in his Mozart biography speculatively describes the work as a love offering.

During the period of the couple's courtship, Mozart began making visits to Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who let him examine his extensive collection of manuscripts of work by Bach and Handel. Mozart was excited by this material, and prepared a number of compositions in Baroque style himself. An important impetus was Constanze, who apparently fell in love at this time with Baroque counterpoint. This is known from a letter Mozart wrote to his sister Nannerl, 20 April 1782. The letter was accompanied by a manuscript copy of the composer's Fantasy and Fugue, K. 394.

I composed the fugue first and wrote it down while I was thinking out the prelude. I only hope that you will be able to read it, for it is written so very small; and I hope further that you will like it. Another time I shall send you something better for the clavier. My dear Constanze is really the cause of this fugue's coming into the world. Baron van Swieten, to whom I go every Sunday, gave me all the works of Händel and Sebastian Bach to take home with me (after I had played them to him). When Constanze heard the fugues, she absolutely fell in love with them. Now she will listen to nothing but fugues, and particularly (in this kind of composition) the works of Händel and Bach. Well, as she has often heard me play fugues out of my head, she asked me if I had ever written any down, and when I said I had not, she scolded me roundly for not recording some of my compositions in this most artistically beautiful of all musical forms and never ceased to entreat me until I wrote down a fugue for her.[15]

The experience of writing in Baroque style had an important influence on Mozart's later work, in the C Minor Mass as well as in later secular works, such as the last movement of the 41st Symphony or the opera The Magic Flute.

[edit] Treatment by biographers

According to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Constanze was treated harshly and unfairly by a number of her biographers: "Early 20th-century scholarship severely criticized her as unintelligent, unmusical and even unfaithful, and as a neglectful and unworthy wife to Mozart. Such assessments (still current) were based on no good evidence, were tainted with anti-feminism and were probably wrong on all counts."[16] Complaints about unfairness to Constanze also appear in several recent Mozart biographies: Braunbehrens (1990), Solomon (1995), and Halliwell (1998).[17]

[edit] Photograph

1840 photo allegedly showing Constanze Mozart at the very left
1840 photo allegedly showing Constanze Mozart at the very left

Some scholars, including the editors of the Grove Dictionary, judge that a surviving photographic image from the mid 19th century includes the 78-year-old Constanze Mozart. The picture was supposedly taken in Altötting in Bavaria in 1840. Not all Mozart scholars endorse this view, however. For instance, it is claimed that the picture was taken with a short exposure that, for technical reasons, was not yet possible in 1840.[18] Selby (1999) states that Constanze could not have traveled to visit Maximillian Keller during the period when the photograph was taken, as she suffered from crippling arthritis at the time.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Grove, article "Mozart", section 4
  2. ^ Solomon 1995
  3. ^ Solomon 1995
  4. ^ Solomon 1995
  5. ^ Solomon 1995, 253
  6. ^ Deutsch 1965, 193
  7. ^ Deutsch 1965, 196
  8. ^ Deutsch 1965, 196
  9. ^ Solomon 1995, 255
  10. ^ Solomon 1995, 259
  11. ^ Solomon 1995, 258
  12. ^ Grove Dictionary
  13. ^ Deutsch 1965, 485-486
  14. ^ Solomon 1995, 502
  15. ^ Text of letter taken from http://www.schillerinstitut.dk/bach.html
  16. ^ Grove, article "Mozart", section 4
  17. ^ The earlier biographers accused of unfairness variously include Alfred Einstein, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and Arthur Schurig .
  18. ^ Vivien Schweitzer, "Mozart Experts Claim Picture of Constanze is a Hoax, in Playbill, 12 July 2006. Retrieved 5 January 2007.

[edit] References

  • Braunbehrens, Volkmar (1986) Mozart in Vienna: 1781-1791, Timothy Bell Trans, HarperPerennial. ISBN 0-06-0974052
  • Davenport, Marcia (1932) Mozart, The Chautauqua Press.
  • Carr, Francis (1983) Mozart & Constanze. London: Murray. (1983) ISBN 0-7195-4091-7
  • Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965) Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  • Gärtner, Heinz (1991) Constanze Mozart: after the Requiem. Portland: Amadeus Press (1991) ISBN 0-931340-39-X
  • Glover, Jane (n.d.) "Mozart's Women".
  • Halliwell, Ruth (1998) The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Selby, Agnes (November 1999). Constanze, Mozart's Beloved. Wahroonga: Turton & Armstrong Pty. Ltd.. ISBN 0908031718. 
  • Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. On-line edition, copyright 2007 by Oxford University Press.
  • Solomon, Maynard (1995) Mozart: A Life, Harper Collins.

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: