Frederick the Great, discussion post 14

[cahn]

Check out the opera clips at Rheinsberg!

(both the real-life place, which selenak found out hosts a festival for young opera singers! and the community rheinsberg)

Also! our fandom has been producing lovely fic at a rapid clip (okay, well, selenak has):

Sibling dysfunction: Promises to Keep and My Brother Narcissus

Sibling dysfunction PLUS sibling M/M love triangle: The moon flies face to face with me

VOLTAIRE! Between the hour and the age

Comments

Leopold Mozart

[cahn]

Oh, huh, that is very interesting about Leopold! I had sort of made the assumption from knowing how strict he was about everything else that he was strict about that as well.

Heh, this reminded me of that time the NYT ran this editorial where WA MOZART, OF ALL PEOPLE, was held up as an example of genius -- to argue, get this, why we shouldn't tiger-parent kids. WA MOZART THE ULTIMATE TIGER-PARENTED CHILD. It was only one line in the article, but it was definitely the line that infuriated me the most (although the entire article was infuriating). My history may be awful, but even I knew that!

Re: Leopold Mozart

[selenak]

That does sound like an infuriating article, and yes, WA Mozart of all the people was the ultimate tiger-parented child. Though I would take exception to your entry saying Leopold forced his kids to play instruments as soon as possible. He didn't. Cause and effect are a bit reversed there. Having read Michael Lemster's "Die Mozarts: Geschichte einer Familie" in December, and having it here with me right now I'm relatively confident of my Leopold facts in this regard, and they were these: Leopold himself was the first of his family to take to music, and to have a good education. He was the son of an Augsburg bookbinder and attended the Jesuit school in Augsburg until his father died (when Leopold was 15), and he had to work for his living. The Jesuit education, which included music, left Leopold not just with the (radical for his time, where you followed the footsteps of your father, professionally) decision to become a professional musician, but also with a far better education than most Austrian middle class people had at the time (remember, it wasn't until Joseph's reforms that a) attending school was made obligatory for kids, and b) the language changed from Latin to German), a love for books (he remained an avid reader through his life) and it left him with educational principles.

Now, in Salzburg, where was we know he ended up and got a job in the Salzburg Prince Bishop's orchestra, schools for normal citizens like the one he had attended in Augsburg weren't a thing yet. Leopold taught both his children himself as a result, not just in music but also in everything else, because he wanted them both to have the best education he could give them (and he didn't have money for a house teacher). This for a daughter was highly unusual. Now, you can blame Leopold for neglecting Nannerl as a musician once she hit puberty, absolutely, but not before that, and he was very unusual for his time and class. We don't know when exactly he started; the "Notenbuch für Nannerl Mozart" was written by him when she was eight. We do know that young Wolferl was intrigued enough by all the musical goings on to get involved, to imitate, and then, famously, at age four stun Leopold by writing down a composition, changing all their lives forever. That Leopold noticed his younger kid wasn't just imitating big sister almost immediately was not somthing that would have happened with most fathers in the era, because most fathers did not spend this amount of time with their two young children. Mothers did for poorer families, and of course governesses for the richer ones. But not fathers. His response - to intensify the the music lessons and then to take them on the road, first with and then without his wife - similarly made for a very atypical childhood for the era. You simply did not spend this much amount of time with your children.

Mind you: compared with present day parents, of course Leopold was not just micromanaging but also authoritarian (and we're talking childhood and puberty, not the later clashes once Wolfgang is an adult and has his own ideas about how his career should go). But as an 18th century dad, he was very open minded. (He also was the ultimate stage dad. This was not mutually exclusive.)

Writes Lemster: (Leopold)'s idea of a family wasn't so much that of a state with a clear above and below, but of a friendship based on the principle of reason and voluntarily cooperation. His lament in letters for his wife speaks volumes: "A family has been torn apart which did not live as parents and children but as friends with each other." Leopold never intended to break his children preventively in order to prepare them for their future roles as subject or wife, as had been the educational principle of many of his contemporaries.
His thinking had not just been formed by his Jesuit education but his reading of the French and German writers of the enlightenment like Rosseau, Gottsched or the today nearly forgotten pedagogic writings by Fénelon. He put such books into the hands of his children as well and thus provided them with an educational horizon which surpassed that of most musicians of the era. For the Grand Tour through Western Europe, he chose a road through the Picardie and Cambrai where the Mozart family admires Fénelon's tomb monument.

The other side was that Leopold really did think he had a mission from God.

This mission was: God has accomplished a miracle in my son, the miracle of a talent which never existed before. I owe it to God and humanity to promote this miracle. And I owe it to God and humanity to bring this talent to its highest fruition.
This sounds like good advertisement to sceptical observers, and undoubtedly Leopold was a gifted ad man. In addition to his ability as a musical pedagogue, this was his other surpassing talent. Wolferl's musical and Leopold's pedagoic and promoting talents had to join together to create the "miracle" Mozart. But any promotion works best if the advertiser believes his own message. And Leopold did believe. For nearly twenty years, he gave all he had in the service of this message. And he gave his family who supported him - in the case of his wife till her miserable death in a foreign city she hated.

Going on tour with your musically gifted kid wasn't unprecedented - Gertrud Schmeling/Elisabeth Mara's father did this as well, remember - but for someone as naturally cautious as Leopold to risk his livelihood (as a musician for the Prince Bishop - this wasn't yet Colloredo, the one with whom an adult Wolfgang would clash, but still, the predecessor could have done the same thing and told Leopold that either he stayed at home in Salzburg or that he was fired) by taking his entire family (his wife didn't stay at home until the later journeys) on the road for years was. And yes, they got paid by the princes they played for, and got presents. (For example, on that famous occasion when they played for MT and little Wolferl prosposed to young Marie Antoinette, they got what Leopold earned in Salzburg in a year, plus the two children got discarded robes from the little archdukes and archduchesses). But as opposed to modern concert tours they had to pay all travel expenses and the rent for wherever they were staying themselves, not to mention pay the doctors for when a family member got sick. Leopold didn't earn a fortune via his kid(s), which is what modern day stage parents are (not unjustly) frequently accused of. It evened out, more or less. (For example, Wolferl got sick after that glorious appearance in Vienna. Leopold paid 50 ducats for the doctor, which was half the salary the Mozarts had received gone again.) (All in all, the first "Grand Tour" cost Leopold 20 000 Gulden. The ill fated last tour, the one Wolfgang and his mother did alone, to Paris, where Maria Anna Mozart died, still cost 700 Gulden; Leopold had to take credit in Salzburg to finanze it and was years later still paying interest. When he responds so badly to Wolfgang moving in with the Webers and suggesting to go on tour with Aloysia - the first Weber sister he fell in love with, years before Constanze -, that is one big reason why.)

Re: Leopold Mozart

[cahn]

That is all fascinating, thank you! Of course my primary exposure to Leopold is through Amadeus, so I'd definitely gotten the authoritarian vibe without the other stuff, which definitely paints a much more complete (and sympathetic) picture. (And of course I may be projecting a bit; I certainly did start my kids on music lessons very early, and in one case was/am rather cramming it down her throat a bit (the other one seems to enjoy it quite a bit more), though neither of them is anything like a Mozart :) Nowadays this is a little tiger-parenty, but of course I should know better by now than to attribute the same attitudes to people hundreds of years ago :) )

I read (in a not-particularly-reliable source) that Nannerl was considered a top musician of her day before she hit puberty; is this true?

Re: Leopold Mozart

[selenak]

Well, the Leopold of Amadeus wasn't invented out of the blue - it's true that he reacted badly to Wolfgang asserting his independence, that he was unfair to the Weber family in general and Constanze in particular (especially ironic since after Wolfgang's death Constanze turnedo out to be the other advertising genius in the family after Leopold), that he grew bitter about losing that intense closeness which had existed between him and his son. And, see below, that after Nannerl became 15, he was 18th century style patriarchal to his daughter (which isn't FW style patriarchal, but it's still an illustration of Virginia Woolf's Shakespare's Sister argument). But that's not all he was, and when Shaffer lets Salieri say early in the movie that as a boy, he envied Mozart such a father, this would have probably been a sentiment shared by a great many children of the time, even those not musically gifted and in need of encouragement and teaching.


I read (in a not-particularly-reliable source) that Nannerl was considered a top musician of her day before she hit puberty; is this true?

She was. Writes Lemster: In her first 15 years, so until the end of the Grand Tour through middle and Western Europe 1766, Nannerl gets the same education and treatment as her younger brother. (...) At first as equally treated as an 18th century girl could be, Nannerl has to find out after the return of the Grand Tour ( which had lasted from 1763 - 1766), that she and her mother - as if it were self evident - had to step back now. No longer is it mentioned that Nannerl should display her enormous skill as a pianist in public, though she had been able to collect a following: acquaintances of the family remember her virtuousity and ask about her. At first, the women object to having to stay at home now when the men go on tour again. For example, they want to join in 1770 on the tour to Italy, but Leopold tries to dissuade them from such wishes by badmouthing the country due to its heat and by pointing out the travel expenses. As a comforting band-aid, he'll bring back expensive presents for them.

Nannerl's rsistence soon fades, and she obeys the paternal dispositions, allows herself to be lectured and commanded. Behind this obedience, we lose more and more a sense of her personality. In the big arguments about Wolfgang's independence eight years later, she'll be, if not Leopold's partisan, at least Leopold's echo. Wolfgang's suggestion that she should leave with her unofficial fiance for Vienna as well and thus force Leopld by creating facts to move there, too, is rebuffed by her. A certain enstrangement between them gets tangible, though their correspondance remains friendly and, especially on Wolfgang's side, joking.
As joking as Nannerl's letters or that what she hastily scribles beneath the longer letters from their parents. What we have of Nannerl is thoroughly immesersed in the Mozart family style: worried, full of devotional addresses, very emotional and vulgar. Like her 1777 letter to Wolfgang, currently in Munich:

So kiss Mama's hands and you you scoundrel! and villain! I give a hearty kiss to you. And I remain Mama's obedient daughter and your sister living in hope - Marie Anne.
Miss Pimpes - their dog still lives in hope and stands and sits all half hours in front of the door and believes you two will arrive at any moment. Still, she is healthy, likes to eat, drink, sleep, shit and piss.

Why only such short letters, though? She was smart. She could coin a phrase. As far as we know, she loved her family as intensely as all the Mozarts loved each other. Was she overburdened with housework - since in her mother's absense and after her death, she was expected to run the household -and simply did not have the time to write down all that was running through her mind? (...)

Thus Nannerl presents herself: similar to her father in her caution and care. Despite her great musical talent, she's limited for most of her life to the role of supporter of her brother's success. A life typical for the era, not much different than in the bookbinding workshop of her grandfather. She will never rebell. The affectionate Nannerl will never develop into a fighting Maria Anna, as opposed to the child Wolferl turning into an independent Wolfgang. Her father rejects a love match for her. She accepts it and later will marry for support with a successor to her maternal grandfather as head of the St. Wolfgang community. She lives with him for a few years in her mother's birth house in St. Gilgen and then as his widow returns to Salzburg.

Like I said: a real life illustration of Virgina Woolf's thesis re: the real reason for the lack of female Shakespeares (and Mozarts!) in art as of 1921. I mean, we don't know, of course, whether Nannerl could have made it as an adult pianist, had her father continued to support her in this instead of expecting her to run his household for him. But she never got the chance to find out.

Re: Leopold Mozart

[selenak]

Also, guess what had its premiere today?

Re: Leopold Mozart

[cahn]

:D

It's called a Singspiel? I thought those were when some of the lines are spoken. Or does recitatif count?

Re: Leopold Mozart

[selenak]

*shrugs* Singspiel is as Singspiel does. I learned at school that spoken lines make the difference, too, but then I've seen stagings of Figaro where there is spoken dialogue instead of recitative (like the one in English I linked in my journal last year). Also, I suspect it may have been called a Singspiel on the poster because that's what Joseph wanted to encourage (which is also why it's called the Deutsches Nationaltheater and not the Hofburg Theatre as it will be called again post Joseph). Note that the poster also says that the book to the new Singspiel will be available both in Italian and German. Which is definitely a part of the Josephinian cultural reforms - the idea being that you want the people to understand what's going on on stage. (And the tacit assumption not everyone in the audience speaks enough Italian for this.) As long as the intended audience for an opera is strictly the nobility, you''d expect them - in Vienna at least, where half of them are Italian, or partly so - to be fluent.