Life of Mozart. I. Childhood: His Birth

The social relations of the Mozart family were, however, cheerful and unconstrained; their intercourse with their friends had more of innocent merriment than of intellectual enjoyment. "The Salzburg mind," says Schubart,²⁴ "is tuned to low comedy.
Their popular songs are so drolly burlesque that one cannot listen to them without dying of laughter. The clownish spirit25 shines through them all, though the melodies are often fine and beautiful." This tendency would scarcely please so serious and critical a man as L. Mozart, whose humour was caustic, but not broad, and who appears to have entered with constraint into the ordinary tone of conversation.
On November 21, 1747, Leopold Mozart married Anna Maria Pertlin (or Bertlin), daughter of the steward of the Convent of St. Gilgen. " To-day is the anniversary of our wedding," wrote L. Mozart (November 21, 1772); "it is, I believe, exactly twenty-five years since we were struck with the good idea of getting married, or rather it had occurred to us many years before. But good things take time."
They were reputed the handsomest pair of their time in Salzburg, and their existing portraits do not contradict this. Frau Mozart was, as far as she can be represented by letters and descriptions, a very good-tempered woman, full of love for her family, but in no way distinguished ; and the often verified experience that great men owe their gifts and their culture principally to their mothers was not proved to be true in the case of Mozart. She submitted willingly to the superiority of her husband, and left to his care and management with absolute confidence all that lay outside the sphere of the actual housekeeping.

     24 Schubart's Aesth. d. Tonk., p. 158.

²⁵ Stranitzky, who introduced the buffoon (Hanswurst) on the Vienna stage, gave him the Salzburg dialect (Sonnenfels ges. Schriften, VI., p. 372), and the buffoon was ever afterwards a native of Salzburg. The people of Salzburg were credited not only with boorish manners, but with a dulness of intellect amounting to stupidity. Mozart complains of it, and there was a proverb in Salzburg itself: " He who comes to Salzburg becomes in the first year stupid, in the second idiotic, and in the third a true Salzburger."

                                                                                                                     
The possession by each of those qualities necessary for the happiness of the other lay at the root of the heartfelt love and affection which bound them to each other and to their children, and the latter were provided with the surest foundation for their moral culture in the influence of a pure and harmonious family life. They were deeply attached to their cheerful, happy-tempered mother; but that she failed in authority was clear when she accompanied her son in his ill-considered visit to Paris. In spite of her better judgment she was unable either to control his impetuosity or to withstand his endearments.
Though far inferior to her husband in cultivation, she was not without understanding, and had a turn for the humorous, which characterised her as a native of Salzburg. In this respect Wolfgang was her true son.
Of seven children resulting from this union, only two survived: a daughter, Maria Anna (called Marianne or Nannerl in the family), born July 30, 1751, and a son Wolfgang, born January 27, 1756.26 His birth almost cost his mother her life, and her lingering recovery occasioned much anxiety to her friends.

²⁶ The full name in the Church Register is Joannes ChrysostomusWolfgangus Theophilus (Gottlieb, the father writes), and in his earlier letters he adds his " Confirmation name" Sigismundus. On several of his early works and on the Parisian engraving of 1764 his signature is J. G. Wolfgang, but afterwards he always signed Wolfgang Amade.

The daughter showed so decided a talent for music, that her father early began to give her lessons on the clavier. This made a great impression on her brother, then but three years old; he perched himself at the clavier, and amused himself by finding out thirds, which he struck with much demonstration of delight; he also retained the more prominent passages in the pieces which he heard. In his fourth year his father began, in play, to teach him minuets and other pieces on the clavier; in a very short time he could play them with perfect correctness and in exact time. The impulse to produce something next awoke in him, and in his fifth year he composed and played little pieces, which his father then wrote down.27 A music-book which was intended for Marianne's exercises, and preserved by her as a precious relic, was in 1864 presented by the Grand Duchess Helene to the Mozarteum in Salzburg.28 It contains minuets and other little pieces, and further on longer ones, such as an air with twelve variations, and is partly filled with passages by the composers Agrell, Fischer, Wagenseil, &c, of increasing difficulty, for the purpose of instruction, in the handwriting of the father and his musical friends. Wolfgang learned from this book. The following note is appended by his father to the eighth minuet: " Wolfgangerl learned this minuet in his fourth year." Similar remarks occur repeatedly ; e.g., "This minuet and trio were learned by Wolfgangerl in half-an-hour, at half-past nine at night, on January 26, 1761, one day before his fifth year." They are simple, easy pieces in two parts, but requiring an independence of the hands, not possible without a degree of musicial comprehension which is surprising in so young a child.

The first of Wolfgang's compositions have his father's superscription: "Di Wolfgango Mozart, May 11, 1762, and July 16, 1762," little pieces modelled on those he had practised, in which of course originality of invention cannot be looked for; but the sense of simple melody and rounded form so peculiar to Mozart are there already, without any trace of childish nonsense.

The book went with them on their travels, and Mozart used the blank pages to write down pieces, which afterwards appeared in the first published sonatas (1763).

    27 I have taken this account from Schlichtegroll's Nekrolog, which is founded on communications from Wolfgang's sister.

²⁸ Recensionen, 1864, X., p. 512. The exercise-book is a square folio, with the title "Pour le Clavecin. Ce livre appartient a Marie Anne Mozart, 1759." It was perfect when Frohlich saw it (A. M. Z., XIX., p. 96); now, unfortunately, a number of leaves are wanting. Nissen has given specimens from this book, some of the earliest compositions.