The life, death & life of Wolfgang Mozart

[Agnes Selby]

Originally posted by Frank H:

Originally posted by Droell:
We have only one problem: Someone who looks exactly like Mozart comes to Vienna & marries Mozart's widow.

Regrettably, disproving my idea will take work.

“Someone who looks exactly like Mozart comes to Vienna & marries Mozart's widow.”

Herein lies a remarkable assertion. Mr.Roell clearly claims to know EXACTLY what Mozart looked like, and what Nissen looked like – both of which are claims that no one else, as far as I know, has ever made. I can only assume that Mr. Roell has received super-natural help in this.

Mr. Roell bases his assertion on comparing two portraits. As far as I can see, these two portraits do not prove his assertion.

Both Mozart and Nissen lived in a pre-photography era, when all we have to go on are various paintings and drawings of variable quality. When we consider the wide variation in appearance of Mozart in his portraits, the folly of claiming “exact” likeness from any such evidence is obvious.

Incidentally, such variations in appearance in portraits are typical of those of all people of the time – just think of those of Beethoven – so please don’t let anyone suggest that this is all down to a conspiracy to mislead people over Mozart’s appearance.

Variations in portrait appearance are partly due to the fact that many artists, even those who made their living as portraitists, were actually not very good at capturing the exact likenesses of their subjects’ faces. This usually didn’t matter too much, so long as they managed to make their sitters look more attractive than they actually were.

It’s quite possible that Mozart and Nissen were similar in physical type. The evidence suggests that the Mozart marriage was by and large a happy one, and that Wolfgang and Constanze were very much in love. The fact that she would have chosen as a second husband, someone with a strong physical resemblance to Wolfgang is no surprise at all.

Incidentally, regardless of the standard of portraiture, it is of course possible to point out strong resemblances between different people. That is because, so long as we don't insist on EXACT likeness, most people closely resemble many others. I am sure that anyone could find many people in the world bearing a strong resemblance to Mr. Roell. And I am sure that those determined to “prove” that Mr. Roell was actually someone else, and that this has been covered up by the CIA, FBI, Al Qaeda, Opus Dei, McDonald’s, the Freemasons, etc.etc., will find evidence to support their theories.

Of course, such theories will be couched in ways which make them, "regrettably" either impossible to disprove, or else take up so much time and effort to do so that no one with any sense would bother to.

[Incidentally, it is actually impossible to absolutely disprove anything apart from mathematical formulations, a fact of which conspiracy theorists take full advantage]

Frank

[This message has been edited by Frank H (edited 03-15-2006).]

[This message has been edited by Frank H (edited 03-15-2006).]

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I think Mr. Droell is having us all on.
The name Droell could easily be taken as droll. According to the dictionary, droll is an adjective meaning "amusingly queer".

Surely Mr. Droell does not propose his theory which comes from his imagination to fit the facts of historical truths. Besides, Nissen does not look a bit like Mozart unless Mozart underwent a nose operation and a fattening and artificial growth regime to make his slim little figure fit Nissen's considerably larger frame. Cosmetic surgery could also have been on the agenda to remove Mozart's pockmarked facial skin.

A good book for you to read, Mr. Droell, is a transalation from Danish, "Twice Perfectly Happy" which will give you a good biography of Nissen's life, his family and much of his correspondence. It is, to the best of my knowledge, available on Amazon.

Other than that I would recommend you visit
the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen where I found valuable data for my book "Constanze Mozart's Beloved". Good luck.

Agnes Selby.

[Droell]

Originally posted by Agnes Selby:
I think Mr. Droell is having us all on.
The name Droell could easily be taken as droll. According to the dictionary, droll is an adjective meaning "amusingly queer".

Hello Peter & Chris,

Agnes Selby is a published author. She should know better. I didn't know that name callling was permitted on this board. This is the second time I have been subjected to this. I strongly protest.

[Droell]

Originally posted by erk:
My dear mr Droell! The basic rules of scientific historical investigation goes like this: If you have new theories, new claims or assumptions about historical events or people, the burden of proof lies with you. In other words you have to prove everybody else wrong. We don't have to prove you wrong.

Now you annoy me. Proof-proof-proof is what people demand when they want to get rid of the questioner, rather than answer his questions or hear his arguments. In my proper profession, we get that a lot. Proof does not come at this stage. We are still assembling a trail of evidence, of suggestions, of clues. We are still trying to determine where the trail will lead us, if anywhere. "Proof" - which, by the way, is never accepted by the demanding party - comes much later.

Mr Nissen started his career as "first secretary" and then "chargé d'affaires" - not ambassador. In other words a rather ordinary civil servant carrer.

You are the one who now seems confused. When I first heard of Mr. Nissen I understood him to be ambassador, then I heard he was first secretary, which was said to be about the same thing. Now I read http://www.answers.com/topic/diplomatic-rankhere</a> that the whole thing is murky anyway. Which I take to mean that the original impression I got, that he was generally in charge of Danish affairs in Austria, was probably correct. There has to be some justification for the portrait, which is first-class work by a top-rate artist. Which means it wasn't cheap.

Retiring from the diplomatic career it would be perfectly normal to be assigned some retirement position in the royal administration. Being a censor would mean little work and a handsome pay.

Accepted.

And by the way, it was not a particular rich uncle. He was a priest, but that is a piece of information that I have deliberately kept secret because I am not sure you can handle it

I presume the priest was Lutheran & married. I presume he became a priest of his own free will, and not because he was the youngest of the brood & was "given" to the Church in his infancy. If this is true, the rest would not be important. Presuming he was not in the Danish foreign service, he would not have been part of any conspiracy.

[Droell]

Originally posted by Frank H:

Both Mozart and Nissen lived in a pre-photography era, when all we have to go on are various paintings and drawings of variable quality. When we consider the wide variation in appearance of Mozart in his portraits, the folly of claiming “exact” likeness from any such evidence is obvious.
Frank

Seems that Frank needs some quick lessons on art & optics.

The word, "camera" originally meant small room. Camera obscura would therefore mean a small dark room. In the Renaissance, artistic perspective was very likely discovered in small dark rooms with a small round hold in the center of the ceiling, above which was a mirror set at a 45 degree angle. Upon the floor of this room was projected a panorama of the world outside it. This was known to Leonardo, who did not invent it. It is known to us as a pinhole camera.

By the 16th or 17th century, this had been reduced to a sort of mirror/optical thing an artist could set up in his studio to rapidly, and accurately sketch the subject in front of him. This accounts for the extreme realism of artists like Rembrandt & Vermeer. The final development of this contraption was known as a camera lucida. I presume they were expensive, but I expect that every serious artist had one.

And while it's true that artists would fudge things (leave out warts & small-pox scars, typically), their clients held them to very high standards.

And they were expected to work fast. Which is no big deal, as artists have traditionally trained themselves for speed, especially in the broad sketching-out. People do not like sitting for portraits, not now, not then. I would expect most artists could get the essentials down in an hour. In life drawing classes, students often get only five minutes. They can get an impressive amount done in that time.

With the rise of the moneyed classes, there came a demand for miniatures. Portraits so small they could fit in a brooch. And though they were popular, they virtually drove artists blind. Brushes were reduced, some of them to a single hair. From this demand for miniatures came photography.

The first photographs, solarizations, date from the 1790's, and were mostly of leaves. Unfortunately, because fixer was unknown, all of these ultimately faded to black & are now lost. Daguerre invented his process in the 1820's, but as it involved an unhealthy amount of mercury, it was never going to be popular. The Englishman, Talbot invented the postive/negative process in the 1830's, and about that time someone else (Herschell, I think) invented fixer & by 1850 the world of hand-drawn miniatures became the world of early wet plates, and eventually tin-types.

By the end of the 19th century, the pre-cubist Picasso & the Douanier could pass off quite horrible portraits as works of art. Quite horrible, that is, to the likes of Jacques-Louis David. Earlier standards were quite high.

*************************************

And no, we don't know what Mozart looks like, because the only surviving portraits are of him as a child, or in a family setting. If there were any others - and if Leopold had anything to do with it, there would have been lots - they are all lost. This is another one of many problems we have with Mozart, all of which point to early manipulation of his life & times. Which tends to implicate Nissen & Constanze, as they were the first to seriously study him.



[This message has been edited by Droell (edited 03-16-2006).]

[Agnes Selby]

Originally posted by Droell:
Hello Peter & Chris,

Agnes Selby is a published author. She should know better. I didn't know that name callling was permitted on this board. This is the second time I have been subjected to this. I strongly protest.

-----
Mr. Droell,

According to the Macquarie Dictionary
first Published by Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia in 1985 and reprinted
8 times since:

queer = strange from a conventional point of view.

amusing = funny.

Which of the two words do you find objectionable?

Agnes Selby.
--------------------

[HaydnFan]

Originally posted by Frank H:
[B] And I am sure that those determined to “prove” that Mr. Roell was actually someone else, and that this has been covered up by the CIA, FBI, Al Qaeda, Opus Dei, McDonald’s, the Freemasons, etc.etc., B]

Don't forget Wal-Mart!

[HaydnFan]

Thank you for the history of art there Droell but it has absolutely nothing to do with What Frank was saying...and Frank is very correct in what he says. (I have studied art history). You are correct as also Droell but I don't see how what you said discounts what Frank stated about portraiture not being exact.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Droell:
Hello Peter & Chris,

Agnes Selby is a published author. She should know better. I didn't know that name callling was permitted on this board. This is the second time I have been subjected to this. I strongly protest.

I see nothing offensive in Agnes's comments. You are willfully misinterpreting her meaning as you are historical facts! You would do better to take the advice offered by these informed members to whom I am grateful for sharing their knowledge.

------------------
'Man know thyself'

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 03-16-2006).]

[erk]

Originally posted by Droell:

Originally posted by erk:
My dear mr Droell! The basic rules of scientific historical investigation goes like this: If you have new theories, new claims or assumptions about historical events or people, the burden of proof lies with you. In other words you have to prove everybody else wrong. We don't have to prove you wrong.

Now you annoy me. Proof-proof-proof is what people demand when they want to get rid of the questioner, rather than answer his questions or hear his arguments. In my proper profession, we get that a lot. Proof does not come at this stage. We are still assembling a trail of evidence, of suggestions, of clues. We are still trying to determine where the trail will lead us, if anywhere. "Proof" - which, by the way, is never accepted by the demanding party - comes much later.

Mr Nissen started his career as "first secretary" and then "chargé d'affaires" - not ambassador. In other words a rather ordinary civil servant carrer.

You are the one who now seems confused. When I first heard of Mr. Nissen I understood him to be ambassador, then I heard he was first secretary, which was said to be about the same thing. Now I read http://www.answers.com/topic/diplomatic-rankhere</a> that the whole thing is murky anyway. Which I take to mean that the original impression I got, that he was generally in charge of Danish affairs in Austria, was probably correct. There has to be some justification for the portrait, which is first-class work by a top-rate artist. Which means it wasn't cheap.

Retiring from the diplomatic career it would be perfectly normal to be assigned some retirement position in the royal administration. Being a censor would mean little work and a handsome pay.

Accepted.

And by the way, it was not a particular rich uncle. He was a priest, but that is a piece of information that I have deliberately kept secret because I am not sure you can handle it

I presume the priest was Lutheran & married. I presume he became a priest of his own free will, and not because he was the youngest of the brood & was "given" to the Church in his infancy. If this is true, the rest would not be important. Presuming he was not in the Danish foreign service, he would not have been part of any conspiracy.

Now let's get this straight. "Proof-proof-proof" is exactly what we need here. You have a few clues, no evidence and a lot of suggestions, so I have the right to ask questions. Suppose I launched the theory that Elvis was still alive and George Bush was an alien? Would you not expect some kind of evidence that positively points in that direction?

Your investigation of the diplomatic terms seems to have confused you a bit. You say it's "murky". It is not. It just doesn't fit in your theory. There's a perfectly ordinary career ladder from first secretary to charge d'affaire to ambassador. Nothing strange here. And your claim taht the first class portrait indicate anything about Nissen's importance is plain nonsense. He probably paid for it himself.


Your comments about the priest: I'm lost here. I simply don't understand what you're getting at here.

All in all I think you are lost in some pseudo-scientific waste of everybody's time.

[Hofrat]

Dear Erk;

I believe that Droell's comment on the priest stems from the tradition at that time. If there were 3 sons, the eldest received the titles and the land, the 2nd went into the army or the navy, and the 3rd went into the priesthood.


Hofrat

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Droell:

Proof takes time. Proof takes work. Proof of Einstein's theory took decades.

Dear Droell;

When Einstein proposed his general theory of relativity in 1915, his contesters challenged and demanded proof. Einstein immediately suggested a way to prove it. In 1919, after waiting 4 years for a solar eclipse, Einstein proved it. In 1921, he received the Nobel Prize for it.

Four years are not a decade, but in 1915 it was pretty darn quick!! Today, with the Internet, you need your proof ready in advance!


Hofrat

[Frank H]

Originally posted by Droell:
Seems that Frank needs some quick lessons on art & optics.

*************************************

And no, we don't know what Mozart looks like, because the only surviving portraits are of him as a child, or in a family setting. If there were any others - and if Leopold had anything to do with it, there would have been lots - they are all lost. This is another one of many problems we have with Mozart, all of which point to early manipulation of his life & times. Which tends to implicate Nissen & Constanze, as they were the first to seriously study him.

(edited 03-16-2006).]

On the other hand, you need lessons on logic, and scientific and historical method. Oh, and on good manners - especially that of reading carefully and understanding posts to which you are replying.

I am perfectly aware of the use of "Camera Obscura" and the like. I may have considerably less intelligence and education than your accomplished self, but I am not a total ignoramus.

As HaydnFan pointed out, the actual methods available in the pre-photography era are not relevant to my argument. My point is that, whatever technique was used, portraits of individuals at that time often tended to vary widely. [Not everyone could afford top-notch portraitists, and even some of these were known to be "economical with the truth" in their portraiture].

This was certainly the case with Mozart's portraits. As I predicted, this is immediately used by yourself to suggest skullduggery on the part of Constanze and Nissen. But why not interpret the widespread variation in portraiture of other prominent figures of the time similarly? For instance, Beethoven. [Actually this has been used by "Afrocentrists" to claim that Beethoven was actually black, and that this fact has been covered up by a white supremacist conspiracy! They then counter any criticism by saying "prove Beethoven wasn't black". As this can't be done, because any evidence that he wasn't can be attributed to the machinations of the conspiracy, they then claim to have "proved" that he was black.]

I reiterate my point. I am sure that, using similar "arguments" to yourself, anyone who wanted to could "prove" that you, Mr. David Roell, were actually someone else.

I assume however that you are who you say you are.

Frank

[This message has been edited by Frank H (edited 03-16-2006).]

[Frank H]

Originally posted by Frank H:
“Someone who looks exactly like Mozart comes to Vienna & marries Mozart's widow.”

Herein lies a remarkable assertion. Mr.Roell clearly claims to know EXACTLY what Mozart looked like, and what Nissen looked like – both of which are claims that no one else, as far as I know, has ever made. I can only assume that Mr. Roell has received super-natural help in this.

To be totally pedantic, of course by "no one else", I mean no one else apart from Mozart's contemporaries.

Of course, those who met Mozart often would have known what he looked like. It is strange then that none of those commented on the supposedly exact similarity in appearance between Mozart and Nissen.

However I am pretty certain that Mr. Roell would then counter along the lines of "Who said they didn't? All we know is that no written evidence has survived."

Using this sort of "argument", we could of course, "support" any sort of theory we wanted. Did Mozart ever claim to be Christ reincarnate? All we know is that no written evidence has survived that he did. Therefore, he probably did! The illogicality of this sort of reasoning should be obvious.

As for my claim that it is actually impossible to absolutely disprove anything apart from mathematical formulations, let me show what I mean. Suppose I wish to believe that the Moon is made of green cheese. I could "explain" the evidence that shows that it isn't, as the result of the machinations of a conspiracy to prevent the public from knowing this interesting fact. No one can prove to me that that isn't the case, as any evidence supposedly showing that such a conspiracy does not exist, could itself be part of the conspiracy's actions. Even in the unlikely fact of my being able to visit the Moon, my assertion could not be disproved. If I find that the Moon I visit doesn't appear to be made of green cheese, I can always explain this as the result of my being brainwashed, or being hoodwinked into thinking I have visited the Moon, when I have actually never left the Earth - there are all sorts of ways I might suggest that this could be done.

This is a facetious example, but in fact most conspiracy type theories "work" in this sort of way.

[I made an exception for mathematical formulations, but I'm not entirely sure that even they are totally exempt. I suspect that someone firmly wedded to the idea that 1 + 1 does NOT = 2, would find some way of dismissing any proof to the contrary!]

Frank


[This message has been edited by Frank H (edited 03-16-2006).]

[erk]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
Dear Erk;

I believe that Droell's comment on the priest stems from the tradition at that time. If there were 3 sons, the eldest received the titles and the land, the 2nd went into the army or the navy, and the 3rd went into the priesthood.


Hofrat

Ok, now I get it... Thanks!

[Hofrat]

Dear Frank;

I am sorry to say, but 1 + 1 = 10 in binary, of course.


Hofrat