(Argh, I can't believe I was logged out again, why does this keep happening?)
If you're in the market for super cute: you might know this story already, as it's one of the more famous relating to Mozart the wonder child, but when he was six and his father Leopold went on a tour through Europe with little Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl, one of their earliest concerts outside of Salzburg took place in Vienna. Word of mouth got to MT incredibly fast, and the two Mozart children were invited to play for her and her children (twelve at the time tout suite. Young W. showed off, playing blindly, among other things, and charmed the empress by jumping on her lap and kissing her, as father Leopold reports in his letter home to Salzburg in Rokoko German: "Der Wolferl ist der Kayserin auf den Schooß gesprungen, sie um den Halß bekommen, und rechtschaffen abgeküsst." ("Our Wolferl jumped on the Empress' lap, flung his arms around her neck and kissed the hell out of her.") So far, so historical since we have Leopold's letter. In the first biography written after Mozart's death, decades later, the story goes a little bit further, about the Mozart children playing with the arch dukes and arch duchesses, Wolferl falling down and little Maria Antonia, the future Marie Antoinette, who was exactly his age (they're only two months apart), helping him up again, wereupon he says: "Du bist lieb, dich werd ich heiraten!" (You're a dear, I'm going to marry you!"
(This might or might not be true as well; Peter Shaffer uses it in Amadeus when he lets Joseph mention to the courtiers - when adult Mozart first shows up at his court and promptly infuriates Salieri by improving on his greeting march - that they've met before, when Joseph was a teen and Mozart was a Wunderkind.)
Now, MT gave the Mozarts a hundred gold ducats for this event, which was more than Leopold earned at his job as leader of the orchestra for the Prince Bishop of Salzburg in a year, to give you some relation. That the kids were presented at court and a success also meant they were booked out in Vienna afterwards, and only left because young Wolfgang got sick. That tour took three years, all in all, and they covered most German states as well as France, most Italian states and England. Young Goethe, a teen at the time, and his sister Cornelia (ditto) saw the Mozarts playing in Frankfurt, for example. There was one notable exception - no concerts in Berlin (or Sanssouci, for that matter). Why not? At a guess, because Fritz was famously thrifty. At any rate, I doubt little Mozart could have charmed him... and there's the sad fact Fritz managed to miss out all the geniuses of the age (other than the Bach encounter) because of his anti-German hangups.
(Seriously, Fritz: founded an academy in Berlin modelled on the Academie Francaise, wanted to be like Louis XIV, managed to miss utterly Louis encouraged the writers, scientists and philosophers of his own realm, apparantly. When the Prussian academy invited Lessing, one of the most important writers of German literature pre Goethe and definitely the best one of Prussia, Fritz was so displeased that he changed the rules to "no German writers" and got Lessing excluded again. German mathematicians just about made the cut, but he paid Euler so badly that when Catherine made a higher offer, Euler moved to Russia like lightning. And when the academy wanted to invite Wieland (second best of the pre-Goethe generation) for a guest lecture at least, Fritz made it known they weren't supposed to offer what French writers got, whereupon Wieland said "Fuck you, I'm staying in Rome". (Until he was invited by Fritz' niece the new duchess of Weimar to teach her kid Carl August.) It only got worse with time; Fritz notoriously complained about German literature being not literature and singled out young Goethe's drama "Götz von Berlichingen" as especially bad (that was when his niece co-founded a journal about German literature and contributed essays, in German) and chided the rest of the young poets for not using French models. (Reaction from young German writers: French drama is boring, Shakespeare is the man!) Meanwhile, the German literary scene exploded with creativity - seriously, this was the golden age - so by the time Madame de Stael wrote "De L'Allemagne", ten years or so after Fritz died, French writers literary toured to the German states to meet them. It's a bit like the Elizabethan age if Elizabeth had insisted on speaking only Latin and reading and watching only medieval morality plays.
The only one who managed to have a vaguely honest converstion with Fritz about this was Gottsched, who only was a so so writer himself but a great reformer of the theatre, and who told Fritz that the nobility cutting itself off from the people by literally speaking another language only (instead of additionally) was no good, and couldn't produce more culture, and Fritz replying: "There is some truth in that, for I haven't read a German book since I was a boy, but now I'm 43, and I don't have the time to learn again."
Re: War of the Roses, Rokoko Edition
If you're in the market for super cute: you might know this story already, as it's one of the more famous relating to Mozart the wonder child, but when he was six and his father Leopold went on a tour through Europe with little Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl, one of their earliest concerts outside of Salzburg took place in Vienna. Word of mouth got to MT incredibly fast, and the two Mozart children were invited to play for her and her children (twelve at the time tout suite. Young W. showed off, playing blindly, among other things, and charmed the empress by jumping on her lap and kissing her, as father Leopold reports in his letter home to Salzburg in Rokoko German: "Der Wolferl ist der Kayserin auf den Schooß gesprungen, sie um den Halß bekommen, und rechtschaffen abgeküsst." ("Our Wolferl jumped on the Empress' lap, flung his arms around her neck and kissed the hell out of her.") So far, so historical since we have Leopold's letter. In the first biography written after Mozart's death, decades later, the story goes a little bit further, about the Mozart children playing with the arch dukes and arch duchesses, Wolferl falling down and little Maria Antonia, the future Marie Antoinette, who was exactly his age (they're only two months apart), helping him up again, wereupon he says: "Du bist lieb, dich werd ich heiraten!" (You're a dear, I'm going to marry you!"
(This might or might not be true as well; Peter Shaffer uses it in Amadeus when he lets Joseph mention to the courtiers - when adult Mozart first shows up at his court and promptly infuriates Salieri by improving on his greeting march - that they've met before, when Joseph was a teen and Mozart was a Wunderkind.)
Now, MT gave the Mozarts a hundred gold ducats for this event, which was more than Leopold earned at his job as leader of the orchestra for the Prince Bishop of Salzburg in a year, to give you some relation. That the kids were presented at court and a success also meant they were booked out in Vienna afterwards, and only left because young Wolfgang got sick. That tour took three years, all in all, and they covered most German states as well as France, most Italian states and England. Young Goethe, a teen at the time, and his sister Cornelia (ditto) saw the Mozarts playing in Frankfurt, for example. There was one notable exception - no concerts in Berlin (or Sanssouci, for that matter). Why not? At a guess, because Fritz was famously thrifty. At any rate, I doubt little Mozart could have charmed him... and there's the sad fact Fritz managed to miss out all the geniuses of the age (other than the Bach encounter) because of his anti-German hangups.
(Seriously, Fritz: founded an academy in Berlin modelled on the Academie Francaise, wanted to be like Louis XIV, managed to miss utterly Louis encouraged the writers, scientists and philosophers of his own realm, apparantly. When the Prussian academy invited Lessing, one of the most important writers of German literature pre Goethe and definitely the best one of Prussia, Fritz was so displeased that he changed the rules to "no German writers" and got Lessing excluded again. German mathematicians just about made the cut, but he paid Euler so badly that when Catherine made a higher offer, Euler moved to Russia like lightning. And when the academy wanted to invite Wieland (second best of the pre-Goethe generation) for a guest lecture at least, Fritz made it known they weren't supposed to offer what French writers got, whereupon Wieland said "Fuck you, I'm staying in Rome". (Until he was invited by Fritz' niece the new duchess of Weimar to teach her kid Carl August.) It only got worse with time; Fritz notoriously complained about German literature being not literature and singled out young Goethe's drama "Götz von Berlichingen" as especially bad (that was when his niece co-founded a journal about German literature and contributed essays, in German) and chided the rest of the young poets for not using French models. (Reaction from young German writers: French drama is boring, Shakespeare is the man!) Meanwhile, the German literary scene exploded with creativity - seriously, this was the golden age - so by the time Madame de Stael wrote "De L'Allemagne", ten years or so after Fritz died, French writers literary toured to the German states to meet them. It's a bit like the Elizabethan age if Elizabeth had insisted on speaking only Latin and reading and watching only medieval morality plays.
The only one who managed to have a vaguely honest converstion with Fritz about this was Gottsched, who only was a so so writer himself but a great reformer of the theatre, and who told Fritz that the nobility cutting itself off from the people by literally speaking another language only (instead of additionally) was no good, and couldn't produce more culture, and Fritz replying: "There is some truth in that, for I haven't read a German book since I was a boy, but now I'm 43, and I don't have the time to learn again."