Leopold Mozart

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (November 14, 1719 – May 28, 1787) was a composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. He is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook "Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule".

Life

Childhood and student years

He was born in Augsburg, Germany, son of Johann Georg Mozart (1679-1736), a bookbinder, and his second wife Anna Maria Sulzer (1696-1766). [Solomon 1995, 21] From an early age he sang as a choirboy. He attended a local Jesuit school, the St. Salvator Gymnasium, where he studied logic, science, theology, graduating "magna cum laude" in 1735. He then moved on to a more advanced school, the St. Salvator Lyceum. [Solomon 1995, 22-23]

While a student in Augsburg, he appeared in student theatrical productions as an actor and singer, [Solomon 1995] and became a skilled violinist and organist. [Grove (cited below), section 1] He also developed an interest, which he retained, in microscopes and telescopes. [Records of the high-quality English instruments, made by Dollond of London, that he owned in later life appear in the public announcement of his estate sale, 15 September 1787, published in Deutsch 1965, 296-297.] Although his parents had planned a career for Leopold as a Catholic priest, this apparently was not Leopold's own wish. An old school friend told Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777, "Ah he [Leopold] was a great fellow. My father thought the world of him. And how he hoodwinked the clerics about becoming a priest!" [Solomon 1995, 23]

He withdrew from the St. Salvator Lyceum after less than a year. Following a year's delay, he moved to Salzburg to resume his education, enrolling in November 1737 at the Benedictine University to study philosophy and jurisprudence. [Solomon 1995, 22-23] At the time Salzburg was the capital of an independent state (the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg), now part of Austria. Except for periods of travel, Leopold spent the rest of his life there.

Leopold received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in 1738. [Grove, section 1] However, in September 1739 he was expelled from the university for poor attendance, having "hardly attended Natural Science more than once or twice" [From his expulsion record, quoted in Solomon 1995, 23]

Early career as musician

In 1740, he began his career as a professional musician, becoming violinist and valet to one of the university's canons, Johann Baptist, Count of Thurn-Valsassina and Taxis, in 1740. This was also the year of his first musical publication, the six Trio Sonatas, Opus 1. [Solomon 1995, 23] These were entitled "Sonate sei da chiesa e da camera"; Leopold did the work of copper engraving himself. [Grove, section 1] He continued to compose, producing a series of German Passion [In music a Passion tells the story of the last days of Jesus, as in J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion] cantatas. [Grove, section 1] .

In 1747 he married Anna Maria Pertl, who bore him seven children, although only two of them survived: Maria Anna Wallburga Ignatia (called "Nannerl") and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [Wolfgang was christened "Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart"; for discussion of his christening name and later versions of his name, see Mozart's name.]

In 1743 Leopold Mozart was appointed to a position (fourth violinist) in the musical establishment of Leopold Anton Freiherr von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. [Grove, section 1] His duties included composition and the teaching of violin (later, piano) to the choirboys of the Salzburg cathedral. He was promoted to second violinist in 1758 and in 1763 to deputy Kapellmeister. [Leopold is sometimes described as having had the post of "court composer" at Salzburg. The Grove Dictionary, addressing this, says "the title 'Hofkomponist' [court composer] , used to describe Mozart in a 1757 report on Salzburg published in F.W. Marpurg's "Historisch-kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik", had no official sanction."] He rose no further; others were repeatedly promoted over him to the head position of Kapellmeister. [Solomon 1995, 28]

The question of whether Leopold was successful as a composer (either in terms of artistic success or fame) is debated. The Grove Dictionary says that as of 1756, "Mozart was already well-known. His works circulated widely in German-speaking Europe." However, biographer Maynard Solomon, asserts that he "failed to make his mark as a composer," [Solomon 1995, 32] , and Alfred Einstein "judged him to be an undistinguished composer" [Characterization from Solomon 1995, 33] . For discussion of Leopold's musical works, see below.

Scholars agree, however, that Leopold's was successful as a pedagogue. In 1755, he wrote his "Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule", a comprehensive treatise on violin playing. This work was published in 1756 (the year of Wolfgang's birth), and went through two further German editions (1769, 1787), as well as being translated into Dutch (1766) and French (1770). [Solomon 1995, 32] Today, the work is consulted by musicians interested in 18th century performance practice; see Historically informed performance. This work made a reputation in Europe for Leopold, and his name begins to appears around this time in music dictionaries and other works of musical pedagogy. [Solomon 1995, 32]

As teacher of Nannerl and Wolfgang

Leopold discovered that his two children were musically gifted in about 1759, when he began with keyboard lessons for the seven-year-old Nannerl. The toddler Wolfgang immediately began imitating his sister, at first picking out thirds on the keyboard [From Nannerl's reminiscences, composed 1792 and printed in Deutsch 1965] and then making rapid progress under Leopold's instruction. By 1762, the children were ready to work as concert performers, and Leopold began taking the family on extensive concert tours, performing for both aristocracy and public, throughout central and western Europe. This tour included Munich, Vienna, Presburg, Paris and the Hague together with a lenghty stay in London. [CathEncy|wstitle=Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]

The discovery of his children's talent is considered to have been a life-transforming event for Leopold. He once referred to his son as the "miracle which God let be born in Salzburg" [Grove, section 1] . Of Leopold's attitude, the Grove Dictionary says:

:"The recognition of this 'miracle' must have struck Leopold with the force of a divine revelation and he felt his responsibility to be not merely a father's and teacher's but a missionary's as well." [Grove, section 1]

By "missionary", the Grove refers to the family's concert tours.

Scholars differ on whether the tours made substantial profits. To be sure, often the children performed before large audiences and took in large sums, but the expenses of travel were also very high, and no money at all was made during the various times that Leopold and the children suffered serious illnesses. Mozart biographer Maynard Solomon (1995) takes the view that the tours were lucrative and produced long-term profits for Leopold; Ruth Halliwell (1998) states to the contrary that their income generally only covered their travel and living expenses.

Since the instruction took much of his time, and the touring kept him away from Salzburg for long periods, Leopold cut down his activities in other areas. Nannerl later claimed that he "entirely gave up both violin instruction and composition in order to direct that time not claimed in service to the prince to the education of his two children." [Grove, section 1] After 1762, his compositional efforts seem to have been limited to revising his earlier work; and after 1771 he composed not at all. [Sources: Wolfgang Plath and Cliff Eisen, cited in Solomon 1997, 33]

The touring continued into the early 1770s. The last three trips were to Italy, with only Leopold accompanying Wolfgang. The failure of Leopold to advance above his Vice-Kapellmeister position at Salzburg is attributed by the Grove [Grove, section 1] to the great amount of time that the journeys kept him away from Salzburg (the longest journey was about three and a half years). After the final return from Italy in 1773, Leopold was repeatedly passed over for the Kapellmeister post.

Family life in Salzburg

Although Leopold is portrayed (notably by Halliwell 1998) as generally quite worried about money, the Mozart family by 1773 evidently felt prosperous enough to upgrade their living quarters. They left the home in the Getreidegasse where the children had been born and moved to rooms in the "Tanzmeisterhaus" ("Dancing-Master's House"), which had been the home of the recently-deceased dancing master Franz Karl Gottlieb Speckner. As tenants of Speckner's cousin and heir Maria Anna Raab, the Mozarts had eight rooms, including the quite large room that Speckner had used for dancing lessons. This the Mozarts used for teaching, for domestic concerts, for storing keyboard instruments sold by Leopold, and for "Bölzlschiessen", a form of recreation in which family and their guests shot airguns at humorously-designed paper targets. [Source for this paragraph: Halliwell (1998, 202)]

Starting around this time, a major preoccupation of Leopold was the lengthy and frustrating struggle to find a professional position for his son. Leopold was widowed in 1777 when Maria Anna died in Paris while accompanying Wolfgang on a job-hunting tour.

Relations with his offspring as adults

Leopold Mozart is a controversial figure among his biographers, with the largest disagreements arising concerning his role as the parent of adult children. Mozart biographer Maynard Solomon has taken a particularly harsh view of Leopold, treating him as tyrannical, mendacious, and possessive; Ruth Halliwell adopts a far more sympathetic view, portraying his correspondence as a sensible effort to guide the life of a grossly irresponsible Wolfgang.

Relations with Wolfgang

Wolfgang left home for good in 1781, when instead of returning from a stay in Vienna with his employer Archbishop Colloredo he stayed in the city to pursue a freelance career. This effort was to a fair degree successful; Wolfgang achieve great fame and was for a time quite prosperous (though poor planning later changed this status). The move almost certainly aided Wolfgang's musical development; the great majority of his most celebrated works were composed in Vienna.

As indicated by Mozart's return letters (which alone survive), Leopold was strongly opposed to the Vienna move, wanting Wolfgang to return to Salzburg. A fairly harsh family quarrel resulted. Leopold was also strongly opposed to Wolfgang's marriage to Constanze Weber in 1782, and gave his permission late, reluctantly, and under duress. [Halliwell (1998, 383) suggests that Constanze had already moved in with Wolfgang before marriage, a potential disastrous situation given the mores of the time.] Biographers differ on the extent that Constanze was later snubbed by Leopold, if at all, during her visit with Wolfgang (July-October 1783) to Salzburg; the Grove Dictionary calls the visit "not entirely happy". [Grove, "Mozart", section 4]

In 1785 Leopold visited Wolfgang and Constanze in Vienna, at a time when his son's career success was at its peak. He witnessed first hand his son's success as a performer, and on February 12 heard Joseph Haydn's widely-quoted words of praise, upon hearing the string quartets Wolfgang dedicated to him, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name: He has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition." [Letter from Leopold Mozart to his daughter Maria Anna from February 16, 1785. In the original: "Ich sage ihnen vor gott, als ein ehrlicher Mann, ihr Sohn ist der größte Componist, den ich von Person und den Nahmen nach kenne: er hat geschmack, und über das die größte Compositionswissenschaft." For more details of the occasion, see Haydn and Mozart] The visit was the last time that Leopold saw his son, though they continued to correspond, and Wolfgang sometimes sent copies of his piano concertos and string quartets for Leopold and Nannerl to perform with friends. [Halliwell, ch. 24]

During late 1786 and early 1787, Leopold's health gradually failed. He had become seriously ill by April 4. On this day, Wolfgang wrote to him in alarm at the news, though he did not travel to Salzburg to see him. When Leopold died on 28 May, [Braunbehrens 1990, 290-291] Wolfgang was unable to attend the funeral, the travel time to Salzburg being too long. [Braunbehrens (1990, 445) notes: "mail from Salzburg took at least three days. Leopold Mozart was already buried by the time his son learned of his death. Mozart could not have arrived in Salzburg for at least six or seven days."]

Little information is available on how Wolfgang took Leopolds' death, but a postscript he included in a letter to his friend Gottfried von Janequin suggests that, despite the quarrels and partial estrangement, his father's death was a blow to him: "I inform you that on returning home today I received the sad news of my most beloved father's death. You can imagine the state I am in." [Braunbehrens 1990 291-292.]

Relations with Nannerl

Between 1781 and 1784, Leopold lived in Salzburg with Nannerl (now in her early thirties) and their servants. Nannerl had a number of suitors, of whom the most important was Franz Armand d'Ippold, with whom she was evidently in love. In the end she did not marry him, and the reason for this is unknown. One possibility, frequently entertained by biographers, [See, for instance, Solomon 1995. Other biographers who assert similar views are cited in Halliwell (1998, 365-366).] is that the marriage was blocked by Leopold, who liked having Nannerl at home as the lady of the house. However, Halliwell [Halliwell (1998, 366)] observes that no written evidence on this point survives and insists that we simply do not know why Nannerl married so late.

Nannerl finally did marry in August 1784, at age 33. She moved to the home of her new husband, Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg, in the small rural town of St. Gilgen, roughly six hours journey east of Salzburg. [Halliwell, 476]

During his remaining years, Leopold spent a fair amount of his time trying to help Nannerl at a distance, as her new marriage situation, involving five apparently ill-educated stepchildren, was apparently not easy. According to Halliwell, Nannerl depended on Leopold in many ways: he did "shopping [and] the engagement of servants. ... He relayed news from Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna to divert her, did his best to organize the maintenance of her fortepiano, paid for Wolfgang's music to be copied and arranged for her to receive it; collected musicians together when she had visited him so that she could play it with most of the parts; .. tried to look after her health; and encouraged her to stand up to her husband when he was being unreasonable." [Halliwell 544; verb tenses changed] Following Leopold's death in 1787, Nannerl had to do without this support, and Halliwell asserts that "there is every reason to believe that Leopold's death was devastating" to her. [Halliwell, 544]

As grandfather

In July 1785, Nannerl came to Salzburg to give birth to her first child, a son. The infant stayed behind with Leopold when Nannerl went home, and with the assistance of his servants, Leopold raised the child, keeping him in his home until his death in May 1787. He frequently sent letters to Nannerl (at least one per week) that usually began with the sentence "Little Leopold is healthy" and offered a full report on the child. [Braunbehrens 1990, 290-291] Leopold apparently found raising his grandson, called "Leopoldl" ("Little Leopold") a happy experience. Halliwell relates one repeated episode:

:"(As a toddler) [Leopoldl] was developing a will of his own, had to be cajoled into doing what Leopold wanted--Leopold's strategem for persuading him to go to bed was to pretend to climb into Leopoldl's bed, whereupon Leopoldl would gleefuly try to push him away and get in himself." [Halliwell, 535]

Maynard Solomon suggests that in keeping his grandson in his home, Leopold may have hoped to train yet another musical prodigy. Halliwell notes a different possibility, that conditions for child-rearing in the Berchtold household were distinctly suboptimal. For further details of this episode, see Maria Anna Mozart.

Final illness and death

In his old age Leopold's health declined, particularly during his final year, 1787. He had become seriously ill by April 4, the day Wolfgang wrote him in alarm at the news. He declined slowly, then died suddenly on 28 May. [Braunbehrens 1990, 290-291]

Assessment

The assessment of Leopold Mozart as a person and as a father brings forth serious disagreement among scholars. The Grove Dictionary article, by Cliff Eisen, denounces "his misrepresentation at the hands of later biographers":

:"A man of broad cultural achievement ... Leopold Mozart may have been haughty, difficult to please and at times intractable, ... but there is no compelling evidence that Mozart was excessively manipulative, intolerant, autocratic or jealous of his son’s talent. On the contrary, a careful reading in context of the family letters reveals a father who cared deeply for his son but who was frequently frustrated in his greatest ambition: to secure for Wolfgang a worldly position appropriate to his genius." [Grove, "Mozart", section 1]

A harsher view is taken by Maynard Solomon, who portrays Leopold as a man who loved his children but was unwilling to give them their independence when they reached adulthood, resulting in considerable hardship for them.

Musical works

:"See "Leopold Mozart's music is inevitably overshadowed by the work of his son Wolfgang, and in any case the father willingly sacrificed his own career to promote his son's. But Leopold's "Cassation in G for Orchestra and Toys" (Toy Symphony), once attributed to Joseph Haydn, remains popular, and a number of symphonies, a trumpet concerto, and other works also survive. He was much concerned with a naturalistic feel to his compositions, his "Jagdsinfonie" (or "Sinfonia da Caccia" for four horns and strings) calls for dogs and shotguns, and his "Bauernhochzeit" (Peasant Wedding) includes bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, whoops and whistles (ad. lib.), and pistol shots.

His oeuvre was extensive, but it has only been until recently that scholars have begun to assess the scope or the quality of it; much is lost and it is not known how representative the surviving works are of his overall output. Cliff Eisen, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on Leopold Mozart's symphonies, finds in a Symphony in G major examples of his "sensitivity to orchestral colour" and a work that "compares favourably with those of virtually any of Mozart’s immediate contemporaries." [Cliff Eisen, "About this Recording" Catalogue No.: 8.570499 Naxos.com]

Some of his work was erroneously attributed to Wolfgang and some pieces attributed to Leopold were subsequently shown to be the work of Wolfgang. Much of what survives is light music but some more significant work survives including his "Sacrament Litany in D" (1762) and three fortepiano sonatas, all published in his lifetime.

Notes

References

*Braunbehrens, Volkmar (1990) "Mozart in Vienna". New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
*"Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", article "Mozart". The article is written by Cliff Eisen. Copyright 2007 by Oxford University Press.
*Halliwell, Ruth (1998) "The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context", Oxford University Press.
*Solomon, Maynard (1995) "Mozart: A Life". Harper Collins.

External links

* [http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol2no3/nancy1.html A French Edition of Leopold Mozart's Violinschule]
*IckingArchive|idx=L.Mozart|name=Leopold Mozart