The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart begins with the “miracle of January 24, 1761.” This is Jan Swafford’s apt phrase, found in his new biography, Mozart: The Reign of Love, for what happened one night in Salzburg when a four-year-old boy sat down at the harpsichord in his parents’ house and began to play. His sister Nannerl, age nine, had been practicing a scherzo, and he was taken with its lively rhythms. When she finished, he wanted to give it a try. Their father, Leopold, a composer, violinist, and music pedagogue, was astounded by what happened next: the boy immediately caught the gist of the piece. Within half an hour, despite being unable to read music and having had no previous harpsichord instruction, he had learned it by heart.
Swafford, a composer and veteran biographer, capably guides classical music enthusiasts through Mozart’s life from its miraculous first act to its denouement. Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756. The achievements of his early years defy comprehension. At five he composed his first piece, a minuet, and more quickly followed. These earliest works were transcribed into notation (and lightly edited) by Leopold, but, Swafford emphasizes, the elder Mozart did little more than tidy up loose ends, ensuring that what was characteristic in his son’s art was preserved intact. Leopold led Wolfgang through a series of composition exercises, after which the boy’s “wild imagination” took over, filling in gaps and making the most unusual of connections.
In 1762, Leopold took Wolfgang and Nannerl to Vienna. So polished was her playing, so impressive were his pieces and improvisations, that they caused a sensation. A lucrative sensation: the money Leopold received during this relatively short visit exceeded his yearly salary as a musician in the court orchestra of the archbishop of Salzburg, the openhanded Sigismund von Schrattenbach. This doesn’t begin to take into account the gifts showered on the children. The next ten years were dominated by tours, the longest of which, lasting some three and a half years and including visits to the music capitals of Europe—Paris, London, Amsterdam, and others—came to be known as the “grand tour.” The engineer of these vast productions was Leopold. As he wrote of a later tour of Italy, he planned for it as a general plans for a military campaign, going so far as to refer to his son as “my little soldier.”
Read Full Article »