Antonietta, page 9
You must buy a walking stick, dear friend. It is the latest fashion here. It seems that Madame la Comtesse de Lillebonne turned her ankle one day while out walking her little lapdog, a Maltese terrier, on a leash; perhaps she slipped in its tiny little poop. The doctor who examined her ankle said she must carry a cane wherever she went, and at once it was à la mode for all the ladies to hobble with a walking stick to church to confess, to their friends’ houses to tell lies, and when taking their pet dogs out to watch them lift their legs. Some of the sticks are topped with silver, some with ivory, some even with gold. Be up to date, mademoiselle!
Why do you never write to me?
I send you 10,000 musical caresses.
Wolfgang
TO MARIA ANNA THEKLA MOZART, “Bäsle,” Augsburg.
Paris, May 24, 1778
Mademoiselle ma très chère Mademoiselle de la Mademoiselle:
I have no time to write, so I will write. If I have no time to write, why do I write? Because I do not write in time, nor do I time my writing. Why then do I have no time to not write? Because I write this time.
Now that that is clear, I will tell you a story. Once upon a time to write, there was a fiddle. There was also a clavier, but that doesn’t prevent there having been a fiddle, does it? Now this clavier was most attractive, for it had inlays of layings-in. The fiddle was beautiful, too, with f-holes that looked like a-holes. Do you know what the fiddle said to the clavier? Of course you do not know, otherwise I would not need to tell you. Do you think I should start over again? Once upon a no time to not write, there was a…oh, but you know that already. As I was saying about what the fiddle was saying, it said to the clavier: “On my SOL, I LA you with all my heart.” The clavier said: “DO you want to FA MI?” The fiddle said: “I DO.” The clavier said: “Let’s C, I’ll give you a key so you can B-sharp and can get into my flat to FA MI.” The fiddle said: “Will you bare your bars and B-flat on your back?” The clavier said: “Will you let me unbutton your clefs?” The fiddle said, “E! It makes me treble just to think about it.” The clavier said: “We’ll FA SOL much that we’ll have to take a measure of rest.”…I don’t think we’d better finish this story. It might end with a coda fartissimo.
And so, Mademoiselle de la Mademoiselle, it is time to retire. It is time, not to write, but to end writing in time for the violin to violate the violent clavier. Good night, my beloved spouse-like mouse, please shut your eyes so as not to watch the indecent acts the fiddle and the clavier will now perform.
Adieu, ma cherry,
Monsieur le Mozieur
Salzburg, May 28, 1778
Mon très cher fils!
Your mother writes me that you are a good boy, that you are working hard on the symphony for the Concert Spirituel, that you run all over the city to give lessons, and that I have been unkind to you in my letters. Ah, my Woferl, if you only knew how much I love you! I have submerged my whole being in your welfare. I do not feel that I fabricated you, as you suggested in one of your letters. Far from it. You are a miracle given to us by God, and looking out for your welfare has simply been this poor sinner’s way of thanking Him.
To call myself a “poor” sinner is accurate. Why have you not given me an accounting of your earnings? You must have collected from at least three cycles of twelve lessons with each of your pupils—I reckon you should have had therefrom thirty louis d’or, at three per cycle for two pupils, and four for the other. Where has the money gone? It is clear that I have seen none of it. You should have everything you compose engraved and sold; this requires finding a printer and actively soliciting subscriptions. I have repeatedly given you lists of wealthy patrons to cultivate. You write to me about staying up late for word games but not about getting up early to compose the opera and ballet about which you wrote me. And why do you not answer me about the offer of a post at Versailles?
But enough reproach, my beloved little cub! Your sister Nannerl and I have other worries, among them your Mamma’s health. She writes so often of headaches, feverishness, and the coughing up of phlegm. Has she some of the black powder that has helped her in the past? Should she be bled? While you are staying up late in the houses of your pretty young pupils, she is alone, with only a candle for company. Nannerl and I feel that you are neglecting her. You have a careless temperament, Wolfgang, with you everything is a merry game. You live each day as if it were a joke. Baron Grimm has written me with the opinion that you are “too good-hearted, too little concerned with the means by which one may become successful. Here in Paris, to make your way, you must be shrewd, enterprising, bold.” I beg you, Wolfgang, settle your feet on the ground, try for once to be a son to your Mamma and Papa, who love you without reserve.
I kiss you a million times, and Nannerl blows in your ear to tickle you, and Bimperl licks your hand.
MZT
Paris, June 1, 1778
Mon très cher Père!
In yours of May 28 you asked both patiently and impatiently, I thought, both lovingly and—excuse me—fretfully, about my progress in what you once called this “city of twinkling lights.” The lights, such as there are, have begun to seem dim to me.
I am making good headway on my symphony, which will be performed at the Concert Spirituel on the eighteenth day of this month, when I will presumably collect three louis d’or. However, both the opera and the ballet have been disappointments. The libretto for the former was never finished—and I am honestly relieved, because this vile French tongue is so unsuitable for opera. As to the ballet, it turned out that Monsieur Noverre only wanted an overture and a few dances, and I was paid nothing—it was “for friendship”! Monsieur le Duc de Guines, though most cordial to me, has yet to pay me for the concerto I wrote for him and his daughter. Nor have I been paid for the concerto I wrote for Wendling and his colleagues. Nor has the Dutch naval officer seen fit to pay me for two of the three cycles of twelve lessons I have given to his “genius” of a wife. Guines owes me for two cycles. It seems that the banks in Paris glue their stupid clients’ money to the walls of their vaults.
My accounting, therefore, amounts to this: I have received nine louis d’or from teaching the imbecile girl, three from the Hollander, and three from Guines for Héloïse’s lessons. This makes fifteen altogether, of which Mamma and I have had to pay out nearly twelve for lodging and food.
You ask about the post of court organist at Versailles. Every one of our friends whom we trust—Grimm, Wendling, Raaff, Ramm—and also Madame d’Épinay, Madame la Duchesse de Guines, and Madame la Comtesse de Tessé, all of whom I consulted—all of these advised against accepting the appointment. They say that the intrigues and rivalries among the court musicians are enough to bring on suicide, and that the worst fate of all is to become a darling of their majesties, who are dangerously fickle.
The one bright light in all this, which shines with constancy, has been my work with Héloïse de Guines. Papa, this young woman is a phenomenon! Each day, after an hour of technical drill on each of the clavier and violin, we play our wild game of improvisation, she first on the clavier and I on Antonietta, then we exchange instruments. We start with a theme from one of my compositions and break away into variations, answering each other’s ideas and weaving in and out around each other’s sudden fancies and turns and jumps. More and more people come each day to listen and cheer us on, and now the room is packed each day.
Papa, I come to the point. She and I should go on tour to all the capitals and great cities. Here at last is a sure way to make a fortune! Lahoussaye thinks we should go first to London, where he says there would be a huge subscription for such a novelty—and what is more, he says he will rent Antonietta to us for the tour at only one louis d’or a week. Then: Venice, Verona, Milan, Florence, Rome! Please write at once to our dear friend Lugiati and ask what the highest terms for such recitals might be in those cities. Then, fond Papa, our home ground: Salzburg, Vienna, Mannheim, Augsburg! In Salzburg you would see and hear this little wonder.
I have yet to discuss this with Héloïse herself, but I have spoken about it “behind the screen” with her mother, who is most enthusiastic about making the tour with us. Imagine the sensation! A beautiful young woman who is a daughter of nobility on the musical stage with the brilliant young Amadé Marzipan! I guarantee you that Antonietta in my hands, in conversation with either a harpsichord or a clavier under the hands of Mademoiselle Héloïse—or vice versa—will have all Europe throwing bouquets to us on stage. Picture Héloïse at the keyboard: there she sits, straight as a skilled equestrienne, her eyes flashing first toward the violin in my hands, then toward her listeners, a peculiar little smile tightening her lips as the notes from the keyboard under her hands respond to Antonietta and tease Antonietta and lead Antonietta on and then give in to Antonietta! I wish you could hear the gasps and storms of applause and the kisses we both get from the crowd in the Guineses’ room each day!
Mamma will write to you about this. She hates the boredom and expense and bad air of Paris, and I think she believes that the tour would be wonderful for her health. You, too, could perhaps join us after Salzburg! Please begin making arrangements for that part of the tour at once.
You must conclude, Papa, must you not, that you have a dutiful and loving son, whose name is
Wolfgang Amadeus Musik
Salzburg, June 8, 1778
My dear son!
For two nights I have not slept, and I am now so weak that I can hardly move my pen across the paper. I don’t know when I will recover from the astonishment and horror with which I read your letter of the 1st. Do you mean to murder your own father? I have for many years undergone frightful hardships for your sake. Do you remember when I was seeing you off to Munich, and I had a fever and had been vomiting for three days, yet I packed your bag and was up at four o’clock in the morning to see you off, and myself lifted the heavy valise, full of copies of your music, onto the carriage, and thereby strained my back, so that I was flat in bed for a month? What form does your gratitude to me take? You stab me with a rapier—you strangle me—you shoot me with a pistol ball—you starve me to death.
It is always the same story—your soft heart that gives in to any appeal, your need to believe every word of flattery, your “kindness” to others which is really a form of vanity, your faith in mountebanks and deceivers, so that you are led into worthless and impractical projects of every sort and allow yourself to pursue daydreams and actually seek out ways of throwing money away rather than saving it for your honest mother and father in their old age. I have tried over and over again to teach you to be suspicious of your own warm and generous nature, which makes you feel that you are a member of the nobility, you are a patron, you have it in your power to support the talents of others.
And who are those others? Please read what I will now write with great care and think about it. Who are those others?
Wolfgang, do you remember your harebrained idea of giving new life to the German Singspiel in Munich by writing music for the little singer Mademoiselle Kaiser, the bastard daughter by a count out of a cook, who, you, said, was so pretty on the stage that you wept to hear her crescendos and decrescendos and her slow, true, and clear trills?
Very well. Off to Augsburg, where you have your usual flirtation, this time as the maestro of my brother’s crude little daughter Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, with whom, I understand from your mother, you still exchange preposterous love letters.
In Mannheim you come under the sheltering wing of Herr Cannabich, and at once you spread your sheltering wing over his tender daughter Rosa, and you announce that you have painted an immortal musical portrait of her in the adagio movement of a sonata!
What follows? Still in Mannheim, you are kindly taken into the home of the distinguished Councilor Serrarius, and suddenly his mincing daughter Thérèse-Pierron is the queen of your heart, and you dedicate a sonata to her!
And next, still in Mannheim (how restless your poor heart is!), you come under the influence of the reprobate Herr Wendling, who promptly insinuates you into the Weber family. At once the Webers are the most saintly, the most Christian, and incidentally the poorest family on earth, except they are rich in having two lovely daughters and your patronage. You fasten on the elder of the two, Aloysia, whose voice, you write, is as clear and sparkling as a mountain brook, and you actually propose going with her to Italy and sponsoring her there as a prima donna, who will sing operas you have not yet written and never will.
Now we come to the climax, dear son. You now propose in all seriousness to be the patron of those who are patronizing you. You wish to take the prodigious Mademoiselle de Guines all over the world so that she and a clavier can converse in public with you and that violin, which I think has turned you into a cuckoo bird. What ever makes you think that Monsieur le Duc de Guines will allow you to go traipsing off to city after city à trois with his wife and daughter? The applause at that woman’s coffee parties must have made you—and possibly Madame la Duchesse—quite daft.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, my beloved son, you are a composer! Sadly, you are obliged to support your great gifts—and, if possible, your aging mother and father—in various forms of musical prostitution. This does not mean that you have to become involved in actual prostitution! Come to your senses. Save yourself! Spare my life, my dear son. You have very nearly killed me.
MZT
By the way, Bimperl has a new trick. I stand her on the table during supper, and she scratches first at the loaf of bread and then at the bread knife! What can I do but cut her a slice?
TO MARIA ANNA THEKLA MOZART, Augsburg.
Paris, June 12, 1778
Ma très chère Cousine-Queen:
I am told that your father is brother to my father who is father to a cousin of one whose father is uncle of one whose father’s brother is father of one whose uncle is father of one who shits on all fathers who dip their pens in shit to write their letters. In other words, dear Coz, I have just received a letter from your uncle, your father’s brother, my father. Why do I tell you this? Why not? Why do I shit on your nose? Why not? Why do I use the same asshole I have used for twenty-two years to unload from, without fear of its becoming frazzled? Why not? Why do I have a gun in my behind, aimed at all fathers? I ask you, why not?
Do you remember my telling you about a violin that could blow farts all the way from Paris to Augsburg? Today is very it heavy, stuffed it because full shit of is. Bow when the pull strings across the I, streams f-holes out stink of its.
This is called music, I mean moo-sick, because it is cowshit.
Od uoy dnatsrednu em?
Forgive me, dear Bäsle. My asshole is on fire today. I would appreciate it if you would lick it to cool it off. If you will be so kind, I will kiss your lips, your eyes, your cheeks, your hands, your elbows, your knees, your thighs, your…well, whatever does not have a sign on it, saying DO NOT KISS MY —. You are a dear cousin. If I could not write to you, I would be very angry. Good night! Get in bed and dump a load to keep yourself warm!
Your father’s brother’s deafening-defecating son,
Wolfgang Amadeus Moo-sick
Paris, June 13, 1778
My dear, dear Father:
I was deeply distressed to read of your pain at receiving my last letter. You must know, dearest Papa, that I was only half serious about that fanciful tour of the great cities with Mademoiselle Héloïse and her kind and elegant mother. I am afraid I was not entirely truthful to you about my own Mamma’s views of the trip. She is altogether too ill and weak these days to undertake such an ordeal. And to be candid Madame la Duchesse herself was not altogether persuaded that her tender daughter should be so exposed just now to public view. Héloïse is a bountifully talented young woman, but such a grand tour would have pushed her too hard and too fast—and, as you so wisely point out, would have got in the way of my proper work of writing music.
I tried hard to be angry at you for what you wrote, but I failed. You are right in saying that I get carried away by trivial fancies, and that my greatest weakness is my generous heart’s desire to give protection to those who seem to me to need it, when all the time my own greatest need is to be protected from myself! Thanks be to God I am easily turned aside from my follies, because the moment people lose confidence in me, I am liable to lose confidence in myself.
Of course you are right about that little singer in Munich. I think I must have been influenced by the praise all the Müncheners were heaping on her—and she was pretty! I was hurt, Papa, by your sarcastic remarks about my playful intercourse through the post with my Bäsle; writing to her is like being bled, it is good for me. And what was the harm of writing fine sonatas for girls who were kind to me in Mannheim? As to Aloysia Weber, yes, again I was hasty, for though she has a voice that goes straight to the heart, especially when she sings cantabile, she does not yet know how to act and so is not ready for opera. On my advice, she is studying acting now with the actress Signora Toscani—and one of these days, mark my words…!
It breaks my heart to read your outcry that I am killing you. You are my Papa! I wept when I had to read your letter about how shabbily dressed you are for my sake. Do you doubt me? Don’t you remember how, when I was a little boy, I used to perch on your knees and sing my little nonsense song, “Nannetta Nanon, puisque la bedetta fa, Nannetta, inevenedetta fa Nanon,” and when I had finished I would kiss you on the tip of your nose? The rule of my life then and now was and is, Next to God comes Papa. I am sworn to love, honor, and obey you as long as we both shall live. Papa! Papa! I beg you to go on loving me, for I cannot live without your arms around me.
