Gaps in the Mozart Correspondence
The study of Mozart is a truly international affair and it sometimes yields great surprises. Some 2 years ago I began friendly correspondence with a Japanese enthusiast (Mr Fujisawa) who began a remarkable analysis of Mozart family letters (the texts of which had only recently been translated in to Japanese for the first time). He decided to focus on a neglected area – that of Mozart letters known to have existed but now missing (either destroyed or somehow lost).
Gaps in correspondence are of course common in biographical study but definite trends started to emerge as Fujisawa slowly filled in the picture – trends that beg an explanation and which are entirely consistent with the view that many letters between the Mozart’s and with others have been systematically destroyed. I would like to focus on this subject briefly here since it has a real bearing on the more controversial areas of Mozart’s life and career.
Firstly, here are some remarkable (and little known) facts –
1.The number of surviving letters addressed to Mozart himself in his entire Vienna period (i.e. during the period when he lived there, from 1781 till 1791) is precisely nil - zero. In fact, with the exception of a single letter from a theatre impresario in London (Robert May O’Reilly from 1790) not a single letter survives from his father Leopold (who died in 1787), from Constanze (during her various absences in Baden, for example), from friends such as Michael Puchberg, or indeed from any other person.
2.Every letter written by Mozart to his father in Salzburg between July 1784 and the time of Leopold’s death in May of 1787 are also (remarkably) missing (with the single exception of one dated 4th April 1787).
3.The Mozart family in Vienna changed their home address no less than 11 times (the last time in 1790) though, again, lost letters are as great a problem between 1790 and the time of Mozart’s death as for all other periods of his life in that city.
4.In a letter to Benedict Schack written 34 years after Mozart’s death (16th February 1825) Constanze (now busy with her second husband in writing a biography of Mozart) says she and her second husband (Nissen) had received around 400 old letters from Mozart’s sister Nannerl but none of them dated after the year 1781.
5.Despite claims that Constanze had no access to now missing letters it is quite clear that the truth was the opposite. For example, in the Nissen biography (made with full approval and oversight by Constanze) letters by Mozart dated 4th April 1787, 16th June 1787 and 2nd August 1788 are all quoted.
Many other lines of evidence strongly suggest a great deal of correspondence existed but was destroyed by Constanze Mozart at the time when she and her second husband were preparing a biography of the composer. In letters which have survived we also find many examples where names have been altered, deletions made and other ‘edits’ made of the text. There is, in short, undeniable evidence that the surviving Mozart correspondence has been tampered with and, in many cases, either been destroyed or altered. These activities strongly indicate that certain chapters in Mozart’s life and career were to be suppressed, hidden or otherwise fabricated. And she, Constanze Mozart, was in charge of his image.
So a statistical analysis of gaps in the correspondence is extremely valuable. It provides at least a chance to see where this ‘censorship’ seems to have been focused.
Another remarkable fact is that certain correspondence from a time prior to arrival in Vienna has also been singled out for special attention by such ‘censorship’. This is specifically the time when Mozart visited Paris from Mannheim, and the same time when he was forced to leave the city at short notice. It's also the time when, it seems, his entire career was in danger of being discredited. We also see a sudden decrease in surviving letters between Leopold in Salzburg and Wolfgang from around April 1778.
But of course, in October 1778 Mozart quits Paris in circumstances that are highly suggestive of irregularity in his ‘Paris’ symphony. It’s at this same time that Mozart’s father writes (having received a now lost letter from his son) saying –
‘I still do not know why Baron Grimm has COMPELLED you to leave (Paris) in such a shameful way – it would have been a good thing for you to stay some days longer...’
Now, from Paris Mozart gets to Strasbourg. He is not yet married. He is courting one of the Weber daughters. And at this very time we have details of a letter from Fridolin to Mozart with information that has a bearing on this strange silence in correspondence. She wrote to him (in a letter dated only ‘October 1778’) that a strange rumour has swept the city of Mannheim that he, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was ‘a dead person’. That letter has not survived but a letter to his father on this point has. He writes -
‘The people in Mannheim prayed for my soul – the pitiable daughter (Aloisia) even went to the Capchin church every day to pray for me. A laughing stock ? Not at all. I cannot help being deeply impressed to know of it’
(Mozart to Leopold from Strasbourg, 15th October 1778. quoting a letter received from Fridolin Weber).
Surely, the evidence indicates that at this time in Mannheim Mozart’s name had been discredited. News had travelled fast to Mannheim of his explusion from Paris. That is why a rumour began that Mozart was ‘dead’. And this ties in exactly with what we know of the fiasco in Paris.
The suppression and even destruction of correspondence between Mozart's sister and himself, and between his father and himself during his whole Vienna period strongly indicates (to me at least) that Nannerl Mozart and Leopold Mozart were now channels for supply of new music on which Mozart’s Vienna reputation could be preserved – that music beginning with the remarkable string of piano concertos on which his Vienna career was really created.
And, of course, Nannerl (marginalised by history but recoreded as being a formidable keyboard player herself) seems to have been involved in furnishing these new piano concertos TO Mozart from Salzburg, having received them herself from elsewhere. From a source known to Leopold but one that would always remain unknown.
Such correspondence could hardly be allowed to survive and it explains how such correspondence disappeared.
Salzburg was now a vital conduit for Mozart receiving new works. The details must of course be ‘censored’. We see this most clearly from 1784, the very time when Mozart’s thematic catalogue begins in Vienna – the same time when surviving letters to Leopold and to Nannerl drop to virtually nothing. And, sure enough, when we start to examine the earliest versions of the piano concertos it's to Salzburg that we must turn
and to manuscripts written (often) in the hand of none other than Nannerl and Leopold Mozart themselves.
RN
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