Leopold Mozart
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Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (November 14, 1719 – May 28, 1787) was a German composer, violinist, and music theorist.<ref>Grove</ref> He is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756).
Life and careerEdit
Childhood and youthEdit
He was born in Augsburg, son of Johann Georg Mozart, a bookbinder, and his second wife Anna Maria Sulzer.Template:Sfn From an early age he sang as a choirboy. He attended a local Jesuit school, Template:Ill, where he studied logic, science, and theology, graduating magna cum laude in 1735. He studied then at the St. Salvator Lyzeum.<ref name="Solomon 1995, 22-23">Template:Harvnb</ref>
While a student in Augsburg, he appeared in student theater productions as an actor and singer,<ref name=Solomon1995>Template:Harvnb</ref> and became a skilled violinist and organist.<ref name=Grove-1>Template:Harvnb</ref> He also developed an interest, which he retained, in microscopes and telescopes.Template:Refn 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!"<ref name="Solomon 1995, 23">Template:Harvnb</ref>
He withdrew from the St. Salvator Lyzeum 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 (now University of Salzburg) to study philosophy and jurisprudence.<ref name="Solomon 1995, 22-23" /> At the time Salzburg was the capital of an independent state within the Holy Roman Empire (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.<ref name=Grove-1 /> However, in September 1739, he was expelled from the university for poor attendance, having "hardly attended Natural Science more than once or twice".<ref>From his expulsion record, quoted in Template:Harvnb</ref>
Early music careerEdit
In 1740, Mozart 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. This was also the year of his first musical publication, the six Trio Sonatas, Opus 1.<ref name="Solomon 1995, 23" /> These were titled Sonate sei da chiesa e da camera; Leopold did the work of copper engraving himself.<ref name=Grove-1 /> He continued to compose, producing a series of German Passion cantatas.<ref name=Grove-1 />Template:Refn
In 1747, he married Anna Maria Pertl, who bore him seven children, although only two of them survived past infancy:<ref>[1], Genealogical database by Daniel de Rauglaudre. (retrieved January 27, 2025)</ref>
- Johann Leopold Joachim (August 18, 1748 – February 2, 1749)<ref>Mozart Day by Day: 1748 Template:Webarchive, Mozarteum</ref><ref name=DbD1749>Mozart Day by Day: 1749 Template:Webarchive, Mozarteum</ref>
- Maria Anna Cordula (June 18, 1749 – June 24, 1749)<ref name=DbD1749 />
- Maria Anna Nepomucena Walpurgis (May 13, 1750 – July 29, 1750)<ref>Mozart Day by Day: 1750 Template:Webarchive, Mozarteum</ref>
- Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia, "Nannerl" (July 30, 1751 – October 29, 1829)
- Johann Karl Amadeus (November 4, 1752 – February 2, 1753)<ref>Mozart Day by Day: 1752 Template:Webarchive, Mozarteum</ref><ref>Mozart Day by Day: 1753 Template:Webarchive, Mozarteum</ref>
- Maria Crescentia Francisca de Paula (May 9, 1754 – June 27, 1754)<ref>Mozart Day by Day: 1754 Template:Webarchive, Mozarteum</ref>
- Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Theophilus (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791)
In 1743, Leopold Mozart was appointed to a position (fourth violinist) in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.<ref name=Grove-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.Template:Refn He rose no further; others were repeatedly promoted over him to the head position of Kapellmeister.Template:Sfn
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",<ref name="Solomon 1995, 32">Template:Harvnb</ref> and Alfred Einstein "judged him to be an undistinguished composer".Template:Sfn
Scholars agree, however, that Leopold 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).<ref name="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 appear around this time in music dictionaries and other works of musical pedagogy.<ref name="Solomon 1995, 32" />
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As teacher of Nannerl and WolfgangEdit
Mozart discovered that his two children were child prodigies 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 keyboardTemplate:Refn 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, Pressburg (Bratislava), Paris and the Hague together with a lengthy stay in London;<ref>Template:CathEncy</ref> see Mozart family Grand Tour.
The discovery of his children's talent is considered to have been a life-transforming event for Mozart. He once referred to his son as the "miracle which God let be born in Salzburg".<ref name=Grove-1 /> Of Leopold's attitude, the Grove Dictionary says:
By "missionary", the Grove Dictionary 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 Mozart and the children suffered serious illnesses. Mozart biographer Maynard Template:Harvnb takes the view that the tours were lucrative and produced long-term profits for Leopold; Ruth Template:Harvnb states to the contrary that their income generally only covered their travel and living expenses.Template:Citation needed
Since the instruction took much of his time, and the touring kept him away from Salzburg for long periods, Mozart 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".<ref name=Grove-1 /> After 1762, his compositional efforts seem to have been limited to revising his earlier work, and by 1771 he had ceased composing altogether.<ref>Sources: Wolfgang Plath and Cliff Eisen, cited in Template:Harvnb</ref>
The touring continued into the early 1770s. The last three trips were to Italy, with only the father accompanying Wolfgang. Leopold Mozart's failure to advance above his Vice-Kapellmeister position at Salzburg is attributed by the Grove Dictionary<ref name=Grove-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.Template:Citation needed
Family life in SalzburgEdit
Although Mozart is portrayed (notably by Halliwell 1998) as generally quite worried about money, the Mozart family evidently by 1773 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 Spöckner. As tenants of Spöckner's cousin and heir Maria Anna Raab, the Mozarts had eight rooms, including the quite large room that Spöckner 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.Template:Sfn
Starting around this time, a major preoccupation was the lengthy and frustrating struggle to find a professional position for his son. His wife died in 1778 in Paris while accompanying Wolfgang on a job-hunting tour.Template:Citation needed
Relations with his children in their adulthoodEdit
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.Template:Sfn
Relations with NannerlEdit
Wolfgang left home permanently in 1781 (see below), and from this time until 1784, his father lived in Salzburg with just Nannerl (now in her early thirties) and their servants. Nannerl had a number of suitors,<ref>See Template:Harvnb</ref> 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,<ref>See, for instance, Template:Harvnb. Other biographers who assert similar views are cited in Template:Harvnb.</ref> is that the marriage was blocked by Leopold, who liked having Nannerl at home as the lady of the house. However, HalliwellTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
During his remaining years, Mozart 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 him 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."<ref>Template:Harvnb; verb tenses changed</ref> 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."Template:Sfn
Raising Nannerl's childEdit
In July 1785, Nannerl came to Salzburg to give birth to her first child, a son. The infant stayed with his grandfather when she returned home, and with the assistance of his servants, he raised the child. He frequently sent letters to Nannerl (at least one per week) that usually began with the sentence "Leopoldl is healthy", ("Leopoldl" is "Little Leopold") and offered a full report on the child.Template:Sfn Leopoldl stayed until his grandfather's death in May 1787.Template:Citation needed He apparently found raising his grandson a happy experience. Halliwell relates one repeated episode:
Maynard Solomon suggests that in keeping his grandson in his home, Mozart 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.Template:Citation needed
Relations with WolfgangEdit
Wolfgang left home for good in 1781, when instead of returning from a stay in Vienna with his employer Archbishop Colloredo he remained in the city to pursue a freelance career. This effort was to a fair degree successful; Wolfgang achieved 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
As indicated by Mozart's return letters (which alone survive), his father was strongly opposed to the Vienna move, wanting Wolfgang to return to Salzburg. A fairly harsh family quarrel resulted. He was also strongly opposed to Wolfgang's marriage to Constanze Weber in 1782, and gave his permission late, reluctantly, and under duress.Template:Refn 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".Template:Sfn
In 1785, he 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."Template:Refn 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.Template:Sfn
Later in 1785, when Leopold Mozart took in Nannerl's child, Wolfgang was not informed.Template:Sfn However, in the following year Wolfgang found this out from a mutual acquaintance in Vienna. At this time, Wolfgang wrote to Leopold to ask if he would be willing to take care of his own two children while he and Constanze went on concert tour. Leopold turned him down, probably with harsh words. His letter to Wolfgang does not survive, but his summary to Nannerl of it does (November 17, 1786):
For interpretations of this letter, see Template:Harvnb, which takes a viewpoint sympathetic to Leopold, and Template:Harvnb, which takes a viewpoint sympathetic to Wolfgang.
Starting around the time he wrote this letter and continuing through the first part of 1787, his health was failing. 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 Mozart died on 28 May (see below), Wolfgang was unable to attend the funeral, the travel time to Salzburg being too long.<ref>Template:Harvnb, 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."</ref>
Little information is available on how Wolfgang took his father's death, but a postscript he included in a letter to his friend Gottfried von Jacquin 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."Template:Sfn
CompositionsEdit
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 his Cassation in G for Orchestra and Toys (Toy Symphony), (also variously attributed to Joseph Haydn, Michael Haydn, and Austrian Benedictine monk Template:Ill) remains popular, and a number of symphonies, a trumpet concerto, and other works also survive.
A contemporary report described what he had composed prior to 1757:<ref>Title: Nachricht von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der Musik Sr. Hochfürstl. Gnaden des Erzbischoffs zu Salzburg, "Report on the present state of music [at the court of] his Princely Grace the Archbishop of Salzburg'; Template:Harvnb</ref>
Leopold Mozart was much concerned with a naturalistic feel to his compositions, his Jagdsinfonie (or Sinfonia da Caccia for four horns and strings) calls for shotguns, and his Bauernhochzeit (Peasant Wedding) includes bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, whoops and whistles (ad. lib.), and pistol shots. Template:Ill (musical sleigh ride) calls for bells and whips in addition to a rich orchestra.
His oeuvre was extensive, but only recently have scholars 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".<ref>Cliff Eisen, "About this Recording" Catalogue No.: 8.570499 Naxos.com</ref>
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 there is some more substantial work including his Sacramental Litany in D major (1762) and three fortepiano sonatas, all published in his lifetime.
AssessmentEdit
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":
Other scholars have taken a harsher view. Solomon portrays Mozart as a man who loved his children but was unwilling to grant them their independence when they reached adulthood, resulting in considerable hardship for them. Daniel Steptoe makes a similar assessment, and particularly faults Leopold for having blamed Wolfgang for his mother's early death – not just immediately following the death in 1778 ("a crushing reply to a young man grieving for his mother"), but even later on in 1780.<ref>See Template:Harvnb.</ref>
Robert Spaethling, who translated Mozart's letters, typically takes a position strongly sympathetic to Wolfgang in his struggles with his father; he describes Wolfgang's resignation of his Salzburg position and marriage to Constanze as a two-act "drama of liberation from Salzburg, specially Wolfgang's liberation from Leopold Mozart".<ref>See Template:Harvnb.</ref>
ReferencesEdit
NotesEdit
CitationsEdit
SourcesEdit
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External linksEdit
- Leopold Mozart, a biographical sketch at the site of the Mozart Project
- A French Edition of Leopold Mozart's Violinschule
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- Digitalized exemplar of the French edition at Biblioteca Nacional de España
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