Reassessment-10
As described in my previous chapters, there have been many different opinions
on Mozart in the past. And they are still parallel with their opposite
opinions even now, without being consolidated into one firm opinion.
No matter how his aspects were discussed differently, each fact regarding
Mozart was surely only one, to say nothing of. Nevertheless, so many different
understandings had arisen in the past. Why was that ?
In my view, that was because all the opinions in the past must have overlooked
some important problems involved in the original sources on Mozart.
In addition, insufficient researches for Mozart's background and careless
and/or unfair judgements by posterity had all the more contributed to the
confusion on Mozart's arguments.
These were the causes why many persons could have said this and that in
different ways in the past, I suppose.
Then, as my wrap-up for all my articles submitted here, let me describe the details why I think so .
(1) Mozart's Letters left as if they were moth-eaten
(2) Decisive Evidences which were lost
(3) Original Sources which had not reflected the Truth
(4) Unfair Descriptions in the Three Biographies
(1) Insufficient Researches for the Original Sources
1) Imprudent Researches for the Lost Letters
2) Misinterpretation of Mozart's Letters
3) Lack of Verifying the Authenticity of the Sources
4) Doubtful Assessment for Constanze's Character
(2) Lame Excuses and Ill-prepared Theories
1) Ridiculous Sophistries
2) Curious Silence
3) Unacceptable Prejudices
4) Skillful Inventions
We may be able to summarize roughly the original sources on Mozart as follows.
1. Letters left behind which were exchanged between Mozart and his family/friends.
2.Many documents kept to posterity which had existed in those days. They were, for example, newspapers and magazines, laws and announcements by the government, reminiscences, diaries and letters written by persons in those days, meeting minutes and concert programs etc..
3. The three biographies (written by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek and Nissen) and Novello's travel diary.
Well, if these original sources were left to posterity in a satisfactory
condition, our arguments on Mozart would not have been so confusing.
However, things were quite different. Many important original sources were
lost or hidden, and some false sources had contaminated in them. By these
factors, the arguments on Mozart in the past have been put into confusion,
I believe.
(1) Mozart's Letters left as if they were moth-eaten
When we read Mozart's letters left to posterity carefully, everyone will
soon notice the following two which are hard to understand.
One is that Mozart's letters were left to posterity as if they were moth-eaten,
the details of which are explained in Lost Mozart's Letters.
For example, his letters to Aloisia and Fridolin Weber were respectively
kept only one although Mozart had apparently sent many letters to them.
As to his letters to Leopold Mozart, we can, after June 1784, read only
one letter although we can see many letters to his father before that.
We also can know some letters from Mozart to Constanze were lost or hidden.
These may suggest that some part of his true relationships with Aloisia,
Leopold and Constanze were hidden due to lack of Mozart's letters to them.
The other is the very curious facts that all the replies from his family
and friends during his Vienna years had been completely lost as shown in
the Attachment-1.
This means that we are obliged to read only Mozart's one-sided information
through all his Vienna years, and we can not know at all the thoughts of
his addressees.
For example, we can not know if Constanze truly loved Mozart or not since
her letters to his husband were completely destroyed.
Under such condition, I wonder why most scholars can think that they mutually
loved each other. Wasn't that their self-willed consideration at their
own discretion ?
Thanks to many moth-eaten Mozart's letters and no-existence of replies
from the addressees, persons in the past could have the right to describe
as they wish as to the relationship between Mozart and his family/friends.
Thus so many lost letters have surely brought serious confusion in discussing
Mozart down the ages.
We should have paid careful attention to this issue, but things so far
were quite the opposite. It seems to me that persons in the past have engaged
in a heated discussion only referring the letters left to posterity. But
they have had no concerns about these lost letters.
I will come back to this issue again in 2- (1).
(2) Decisive Evidences which were lost
We regret that there were some important original sources which had decisively cleared the true purpose of Mozart's behaviors if they were left to posterity.
One is the lost trial records of Lichnowsky's law suit.
As described in Mozart's Debts, only the decision by the Austrian Court was left to posterity. But other
principal trial records like petition and testimony have completely been
lost.
If these principal trial records were left to date, we surely could have
understand what the purpose of Mozart's debts was. However these were lost
somehow.
By this lost we can not find out a clue to solve Mozart's debts issue.
As a result, the incomprehensible Mozart's letters to Puchberg became the
only one key to solve Mozart's debts.
But these letters had been written very ambiguously.
Then, reading Mozart's letters to Puchberg, some thought that Mozart borrowed
on account of his poverty. Other thought on account of the necessary expenses
for Constanze's disease.
However, it seems to me that persons in the past have completely misunderstood
Mozart's letters to Puchberg since their opinions had contained serious
errors as explained below ( See 2-(1)-2) ).
Since no decisive opinion on Mozart's debts was expressed in the past,
more dubious opinions, his dissipation theory and the gambling debts theory,
were also proposed.
Thus the arguments on Mozart's debts went into confusion without having a remark that decides the argument.
As to the lost original sources, the second are the lost records related
to Freemasonry.
Since reserved records related to Mozart as a Freemason are so few, it
is very difficult to decide if Mozart were an enthusiastic Freemason or
not.
As explained in Mozart, an enthusiastic Freemason, during the term from 1786 to 1791, we can find only a few attendance
records to his lodge " New Crowned Hope". However we can not
find any other important records like meeting minutes which showed what
sort of activities were done in that lodge. They were probably destroyed
by Freemasonry themselves.
As a results, we can not know exactly how Mozart has behaved and contributed
to Freemasonry during the five years.
Together with this fact, it was very regretful that the project plan by
Mozart for establishing a new lodge "Cavern" had been lost. If
this plan existed, we will be able to find out what scope Mozart had held
to Freemasonry.
To know if Mozart was frivolous or enthusiastic as a Freemason is, in my
view, very important when defining his character.
However, it seems that few records on Mozart as a Freemason let persons
after ages think that Mozart was not such a serious person who had strong
interests in Enlightenment thoughts and politics. But was it true?
(3) Original Sources which had not reflected the Truth
Discussing with " Problems involved in the Original Sources",
I must describe this issue next.
So far persons have blindly put faith in so called original sources without
any assessment. However,we should have noticed that there existed among
them the documents which had not reflected the truth.
Let me show two samples here.
One is the Mozart's inheritance records, the details of which are explained
in Property left by Mozart.
No one has ever questioned that this was the false declaration by widow
Constanze. However, after studying the contents in details, I decisively
can say that Constanze had hidden almost all Mozart's valuables before
the declaration.
By these false inheritance records, persons in the past have had illusion
that Mozart and his family were poor in his late Vienna years. But he indeed
was not in the least poor any time as explained in Mozart's Debts.
This false declaration, which showed Mozart's asset as only 592 florins
in total, would have helped Constanze set up to a good wife who reconstructed
the home finance. That was because she, after the repayment of her husband's
death, had accumulated so big fortune as 27,191 florins to the end of her
life.
But we should coolly consider that above 592 florins were completely false,
and hidden Mozart's valuables by Constanze were transformed to her big
fortune.
We should question why a woman who had been idling away without having
a work could have accumulated such big fortune.
Next is Guldener's letter to Carpani which is famous as the written statement
of an expert opinion on Mozart's death.
Many doctors, scholars and writers insisted by this letter that Mozart
was dead by natural malady. And the natural death theory could have held
overwhelming majority now thanks to this letter.
However, as explained in Mozart's Death and Burial, I firmly believe that Guldener's letter, which were written as if he himself
had done the examination of Mozart's dead body, must have been quite a
lie.
It seems that no one, except for Karl Bärr who had spread a sophistry
at his discretion, has ever tried to check the rightness of Guldener's
letters carefully. Therefore all of the persons in the past have blindly
believed Bärr's sophistry and thought that Guldener's letters had
reflected the truth..
But reading Guldener's letter carefully, we can find no firm evidence in
his letter that he surely had examined Mozart's dead body.
On the contrary, unlike Bärr's sophistry, there were many things which
revealed that Guldener must have not examined Mozart's dead body, the details
of which are explained in Mozart's Death and Burial.
Then we should make a fresh start on the cause of Mozart's death taking
up Guldener's letter for discussion again if we can admit that he had really
examined Mozart's dead body.
Thus such lost and false documents as described above had mislead the arguments
on Mozart to wrong directions for a long time.
(4) Unfair Descriptions in the three Biographies
When we read the three biographies written by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek
and Nissen, we do not have a feeling for wrongness in the description about
Mozart during his Salzburg years. However when it comes to his Vienna years,
we can not help feeling that we are out of place there.
The difference may come from the information sources.
Nannerl and Andreas Schachtner who loved Mozart much told about him in
his Salzburg era. On the other hand, Constanze, who was doubtful if she
truly loved Mozart or not, told about him in his Vienna era.
To say nothing of, the three biographers who had no contact with Mozart
in Vienna had to depend on Constanze's talk when they were describing about
Mozart in Vienna.
How did she mention about her husband to these biographers?
Reading these biographies, we come to know what Constanze talked was that
Mozart in Vienna was a loose drinker, a womanizer, a poor worker, a man
who could not control himself and a man of ignorant of the world, etc..
Surprisingly enough, we can find no admiring word for Mozart there, except
for his music talent. Only his shortcomings were written there.
After reading these biographies, I wonder strongly if Constanze had talked
about Mozart in Vienna justly and objectively. I myself think that Constanze
had twisted Mozart's character largely. But persons in the past have easily
believed only her talk because she was the very wife of Mozart.
Consequently Mozart's character as a grown-up has been thus defined wrongly by Constanze's spiteful talks, which has given wrong impression about him for a long time to the persons in the past.
However, can they explain the reason why Constanze had talked about only
Mozart's blemishes without leaving an admiring word ?
In my opinion, the reason why she was so hard on Mozart might have
been caused by their unfavorable relationship, though my view is far from
common myth. The details of which are explained in Mozart's Marital Relationship.
Above four were, in my opinion, the main reasons for the confusion of
the past arguments on Mozart, which were involved in the original sources
themselves.
In a sense, we may be able to assume that we are left a jigsaw puzzle where
a whole Mozart's portrait was once completely drawn, but now some important
pieces were lost and some false pieces mixed in.
Under such conditions, it will be of little use if they try to reproduce
Mozart's portrait correctly only by rearranging these existing pieces in
accordance with their self- serving manners. But those were the very traditional
ways to discuss about Mozart in the past, I suppose.
However, to approach to proper Mozart's portrait, we should eliminate false pieces from among them in the first and consider carefully about the lost/ hidden pieces next .
Well, together with these unsatisfactory original sources, I must point
out that there certainly were another problems brought by posterity when
arguing Mozart issue.
Now let me describe them next.
As described above, incomplete original sources have caused persons in
the past to misunderstand Mozart in many aspects.
However, we can not blame these misunderstandings only for the insufficient
original sources.
We should blame it also for easy and careless attitudes by posterity in
the study of Mozart as well.
(1) Insufficient Researches for the Original Sources
So many papers on Mozart have been submitted in the past. However, it seems that most of them were explained from the standpoints of clinical medicine, whose diagnoses were limited to the visible signs and symptoms on Mozart. But pathological standpoints of analyzing Mozart's issue, why so many curious phenomena had taken place around him, were very few.
In my opinion, they have not done deep dissection to the depths of Mozart
issue thinking this and that carefully, but have just made superficial
explanations on Mozart utilizing the existing original sources only.
1) Imprudent Researches for the Lost Letters
Taking a bird's-eye view to the past studies on Mozart, I may say that
all of them had little consciousness about the lost letters between Mozart
and his family/friends.
Of course, we can not now read them whether we are willing or not since
they were already lost far long time ago.
However, thanks to the existence of Mozart's own letters, we can somehow
find out what sort of letters were lost. The details are explained in Lost Mozart's Letters, however I would like to show only the summary of those lost letters below.
1. All letters between Mozart and Aloisia/Fridolin during his Mannheim-
Paris travel except for only two letters (each one letter from Mozart to
Aloisia and Fridolin).
2. All Leopold's letters to Mozart in Vienna after 1781.
3. All Mozart's letters to Leopold after June 1784 except for one dated
on April 4,1784.
4. Some Leopold's letters to Nannerl sent from Vienna during his stay there.
5. Four consecutive Mozart's letters to Constanze and a letter to Puchberg
during his trip to Sachsen.
6. All Constanze's letters to Mozart.
7. All Puchberg's letters to Mozart.
We should recognize that we can not read so many important letters which
had surely existed those days. But only deploring for the lost is meaningless.
Yes, there must be something important for us to do by watching these lost
letters.
I mean that we should not pass over why such curious happenings had taken place in many letters between Mozart and his family/friends.
In this regard, we should detect with enough care what facts had become
blind by these lost letters and if these results were brought by natural
progress or a wicked intention by someone.
And if it were done by a wicked intention, we should find out the criminal
and the incentives of destroying many letters.
My answer in short is that Constanze had done such stupid deeds to hide
many information inconvenient to her, the details of which are described
in Lost Mozart's Letters.
As a result, such important things were left quite obscure as the true
relationships among Mozart and Aloisia, Leopold, Constanze, the real Constanze's
character, the true Mozart's way of life in Vienna, and the cause of Mozart's
debts etc..
By only thinking about the letters left to posterity, persons in the past
have completely forgotten their consciousness to this problem.
Consequently persons so far have not noticed at all that the letters they
were reading were ones after Constanze's wicked information control.
As a result, they made many misunderstandings here and there since they
have paid no attention to the background of the lost letters.
2) Misinterpretation of Mozart's letters
Reading many books on Mozart in the past, I can not help feeling that they
must have misinterpreted Mozart's letters here and there.
The cause might have existed in the point that persons blindly followed
the precedent way of reading Mozart's letters which was established far
long time ago. I mean here that no one has ever tried to make a different
interpretation of Mozart's letters in the past.
Let me explain this by two examples.
Mozart's letters to Constanze
Mozart's letters to Constanze have been regarded as his love letters to
his wife for a long time. This has been to be sure a common myth among
persons in the past.
It was in a sense natural that such myth became common since we can find Mozart's loving words to Constanze here and there in all his letters when we read Mozart's letters to his wife.
Together with this fact, Constanze had talked again and again in the three
biographies and the interview with the Novellos that she was Mozart's beloved.
Thereby these letters have been recognized as his loving letters to Constanze.
I myself also admit that Mozart often wrote his loving and attentive words
to his wife in every letter. But we should not overlook that he never failed
to add the following phrases in his letters too;
" Therefore I want you to love me too." or " And then you
should love me too."
As long as I know, no one has ever touched on these phrases. But we should have questioned why he had to add such phrases in all his letters.
According to my thought, that was because Mozart could not have held his
conviction that Constanze loved him too. Yes, he probably was treated very
coldly by Constanze from sometime in his late Vienna years.
What was the cause?
In my view, it must have been Mozart's illicit love affair with her sister
Aloisia which the persons so far have never dreamed. As a result of this happening, Constanze was naturally put in the position that she had to hold a strong grudge against Mozart.
If not, why could she have shown such merciless attitudes toward Mozart
as follows ?
1. She annoyed Mozart often not by responding to his letters. We often can find his impatient feeling in his letters that he could not have gotten Constanze's reply properly.
2. She sent Mozart by the cheapest third class funeral ceremony although
she had a lot of money secretly upon his death.
3. She ran away from her house on the very Mozart's death day and had not
attended the funeral service and burial.
4. She never visited Mozart's grave for 17 years until she was suggested
to do so by the third person.
5. In the three biographies, she only talked Mozart's blemishes and did
not leave an admiring word about Mozart.
6. She stood against for installing Mozart's memorial monument in Salzburg
(The Mozarteum was instead established that time).
Above are all apparent contradictions to the opinions that Constanze was
a good wife, Mozart's beloved and their relationship was favorable. We
should have considered these carefully. However, the good wife theorists
have kept silence and never touched on these topics.
Together with such problem, we should not overlook that Constanze had destroyed
many letters. Some of them were probably the letters which revealed their
true relationship and Mozart's illicit love affair.
So far Mozart's letters to his wife have been regarded as "His loving
letters to Constanze". However, they were not. They indeed were "
The letters which Mozart desperately asked Constanze's reconciliation.",
I suppose.
Mozart's Letters to Puchberg
As to misinterpretation of Mozart's letters, persons in the past have also
misinterpreted Mozart's letters to Puchberg, I think.
Reading these letters, they thought that Mozart's debts were caused by
his poverty and/or his wife's disease.
However, it seems to me that they have only read the apparent meaning of Mozart's letters. At their back, there must
have existed a wrong prejudice and many carelessness as I describe below.
One is that they have blindly believed the common myth for a long time that Mozart had become poor in his late Vienna years, which was widely spread only by his wife Constanze.
Therefore they thought that Mozart had to borrow frequently from Puchberg
believing the apparent meaning of Mozart's letters.
But this really was only his expedient to cover his real use of money.
We should be careful that Mozart often utilized some substitutes in his
letters to cover his real intentions when he anticipated the disclosure
of his real intention. His letters to Puchberg were the very case.Yes,he only assumed his poverty and his wife's disease in the letters of his
borrowing from Puchberg.
With regard to this, persons in the past were very careless because no
one had ever checked his annual income in his late Vienna years. If someone
in the past had checked it, no one could have thought that Mozart was poor.
For that proof, I have shown my own estimation Attachment-2 which was cited in Mozart's Debts.
I do not necessarily insist that this table reflects the truth faithfully.
Even so, it is enough if we can regard Mozart's income every year was about
that. In the past, such estimation was not made except for Solomon's which
was submitted very recently.
But, without such detailed research for many years, they could have easily
noticed that the real cause of Mozart's debts was other than his poverty
and/or his wife's disease, if they have only checked Mozart's economic
situation in the first half of 1788, when these curious borrowing had started
for the first time.
In the letter dated on June 17, 1788, he asked Puchberg for the borrowing of 1,000 to 2,000 florins. However,
he was not in the least in short of money for his ordinary living that
time.
As we well know, he was already assigned to the court musician at that time whose salary was annually 800 florins, he had gotten 225 florins of the
premier for Don Giovanni in Vienna, and he must have had the residue of
1,000 florins which he brought from Prague at the previous year end. Together
with these, we can assume that he earned some money from his composition
and lessons.
Thus he was never in short of money that time. And we also know that Constanze's
disease in her legs took place not in this year but in 1789. Consequently
we should have noticed that his poverty and/or his wife's disease had nothing
to do with his debts.
However persons have disregarded such background completely, and they blamed
it only for his poverty and/or his wife's disease. They have been made
a fool of by the apparent meaning of Mozart's letters.
3) Lack of Verifying the Authenticity of the Sources
Among many original documents, we should have noticed that there were mixed some documents which were
false or did not reflect the truth as explained before.
However persons in the past blindly believed that all the original sources
reflected the entire truth. Yes, they could not detect the mix-up of some
false documents. And their easy understandings also have brought confusion
in arguing Mozart. Let me explain two examples here.
Guldener's letter to Carpani
As stated before, I myself firmly believe that Guldener had told a lie
in his letter to Carpani.
Following are the grounds why I doubt if Guldener himself had really examined
Mozart's dead body.
1. There existed no record or witness that Guldener visited Mozart's house
in the morning of December 5, 1791.
2. Guldener himself had not written in his letter, when, where, how and
with whom he had examined Mozart's dead body. He only described ambiguously
in his letter that he examined Mozart after his death.
3. Guldener had not explained any state of his examination, especially his observation about Mozart's dead body. He simply wrote that there was no abnormality on Mozart's body.
4. He himself was a physician who had no qualification or duty under the
laws those days in which surgeons were regulated to do the body examination.
Guldener's letter shows thus no concrete description and his way of writing
is not in the least full of his confidence. Then it is very doubtful if he really examined Mozart's dead body.
However, without checking such rightness of Guldener's letters, persons in the past have
blindly believed this as the written statement of an expert opinion on Mozart's death and jumped
to the conclusion that Mozart was dead by natural malady.
However, this can never be the written statement of an expert opinion on
Mozart's death. Furthermore, upon Mozart's death, there were many suspicions
about the final diagnosis by Closset and incomprehensible happenings around
Mozart's funeral, the details of which are explained in Mozart's Death and Burial.
Then we should make a fresh start on the cause of Mozart's death, not laughing the poisoning theory off.
Mozart's Inheritance Records
It was very thankful for us that Mozart's inheritance records were left
to posterity. By these records we can know all Mozart's possessions upon
his death. But to our regret, these records were based on false declaration
by Constanze and did not show the entire truth of Mozart's assets, the
details of which are explained in Property left by Mozart.
In the past, persons blindly believed that these records had reflected
entire truth though they have never tried to do overall assessment about
these records.
By these inheritance records, they partially mentioned about trivial matters
only, his gorgeous clothes for example, but have never described about
many curiosities in this records.
They are the questions why such Mozart's valuables as silver goods, jewelry,
autographs as well as a lot of money can not be found in the records.
As to this I described what I want to say in Property left by Mozart , and then I keep from writing the details here. But in short, my conclusion
is that Constanze had hidden all Mozart's valuables while he was in death
bed. And after that she declared the false assets to the authority.
As described before, an important point to be considered as to these Mozart's
inheritance records is that the total value of his assets was only 592
florins. On the other hand, we know that Constanze's inheritances upon her death was so huge as 27,191 florins.
We should carefully consider why Constanze, who had been only idling away
for a long time without having a work and whose reliable income was annually
266 florins of widow's pension only, could have accumulated such a big
fortune.
It will be no need to say that the hidden Mozart's valuables had enabled her to accumulate such big fortune
after Mozart's death as explained in Property left by Mozart. .
Without noticing such false declaration by Constanze, persons in the past
have put their emphasis on the opinions that;
1. Mozart was very poor in his late Vienna years.
2. Constanze had reconstructed her home finance by herself after Mozart's
death.
Lack of verifying the authenticity of the sources have thus contributed
to misunderstand Mozart issue.
4) Doubtful Assessment for Constanze's Character
It seems that almost all persons in the past have entirely put their faith
in what Constanze told without doing assessment of her character justly.
There have been to be sure no assessment as to the rightness on what she
told (wrote) in the past like the assessment as I did in Constanze, a Good Wife ?
Yes, they have blindly believed what she told since she was the very wife
of Mozart.
As a result, there appeared many twisted opinions on Mozart.
The matter especially I want to argue here is about Mozart's character
talked by Constanze. Because only her talk had defined Mozart's character
and posterity have believed by her talk that he was a childish, loose and
dissipated man. But was it true ?
I have a strong question on this. But even if we tried to seek the documents
about Mozart's character as a grown-up, any document other than Constanze's
talk may not be found.
Though I described so, I admit that there were some observations by Joseph Lange, Sophie Heibel and Caroline Pichler.
However all of them have just talked about his strange habits which could
commonly be found in many other artists. Yes, they have talked only a side
of Mozart's character and have never talked his overall character.
Consequently only Constanze's talk was left to posterity as if her talk
portrayed overall Mozart's character faithfully.
However, I must point out here that persons in the past have overlooked
the important point that she had destroyed many letters in which different aspects of Mozart were supposedly observed.
Yes,I mean that she had made many person hold their tongues by destroying their letters and talked as she desired
after that.
In this regard, many destroyed letters were the matter of greatest regret in arguing Mozart's character.
On the other hand, no assessment for Constanze's character in the past
has brought another problem. That was the good wife theory.
As described before, she talked herself as if she were a clever and attentive
wife in the biographies.
Reading these biographies, persons after ages carelessly and blindly believed, without doing any fair assessment, that she was a good wife. And they tried to compete with others in polishing her up.
But they have lost their heads during their excessively enthusiastic description
for admiring Constanze. And then they have not at all noticed the following which contradict
to their good wife theory.
1. She was an easy wife who could be without doing all household affairs,
letting her maids and a cook do.
2. She was quite unconcerned about the education of her children.
3. She was poor in management of money.
4. She was the merciless woman who had not attend her husband's funeral, and had not visited Mozart's grave for 17 years.
5. She was actually a terrible liar who told barefaced lies frequently.
6. She was a woman who talked only Mozart's blemishes but admired herself exaggeratedly in the biographies.
7. She was a woman who had destroyed many important letters inconvenient
to her.
The detailed explanations are described in Constanze, a Good Wife ?
From above, I think that we should review all about Constanze once again.
After that, we should discuss about Mozart issue forgetting all Constanze's
false talks.
As explained so far, no care for the lost letters, misinterpretation of Mozart's letters, no detection for the false documents,
and no assessment for Constanze have caused to lead the argument on Mozart to wrong ways.
(2) Lame Excuses and ill-prepared Theories
Like above, the past opinions on Mozart contained many mistakes and contradictions
here and there. These were most of the case caused by carelessness and
misinterpretation to the original sources by posterity, I suppose.
But such distorted opinions were somehow pushed through to the present.
The reasons might have been in the point that the following lame excuses
and ill-prepared theories by scholars and writers in the past which only
tried to keep up appearance have been carelessly accepted among the public,
I think.
1) Ridiculous Sophistries
As explained before, we have been largely dazzled by Constanze's false
talks. However, many supporters for Constanze, who blindly believed she
was a good wife and Mozart's beloved, have tried to hide these falseness
under their sophistries and obstinate insistence.
Poor Mozart Theory
Mozart has never been poor any year in his Vienna era as explained before.
However, only Constanze talked loudly that they were miserably poor, without
showing any concrete evidence of their poverty. Were there any other witness
than Constanze who told that Mozart was very poor ?
In response to Constanze's talk, persons who wanted to be enthusiastic
Constanze's supporters have tried to list up only miserable signs which stirred up poor Mozart image.
They were his repeated borrowings from Puchberg, Constanze's disease and her frequent stillbirths, pitiful trips to Sachsen and Frankfurt for money and his petitions to the court and the cathedral, which were nothing to do with his poverty at all, in my opinion.
Those persons also must have believed the dubious anecdote that Mozart
and his wife had warmed themselves by dancing in a cold winter day.
They thus tried to emphasize poor Mozart exaggeratedly but they never touched
on his well-to-do life which apparently contradicted to their poor Mozart
theory. They are for example,
1. Education of his son Karl Thomas at a very expensive educational facilities
for four years up to his death.
2. Lavish Frankfurt trip by his own carriage, which were only idling for
nearly two months. In addition, he had after all not acceptance for a very
favorable offer from O'Reilly in London just after the trip.
3. Transfer to an expensive apartment house in Rauhensteingasse.
4. Having 800 florins of his loans to two persons (It turned out by his
inheritance records).
Thus persons in the past pretended that Mozart was poor by emphasizing
his seeming and plausible poverty one-sidedly, not glancing at any Mozart's
well-to-do life.
Prodigal Mozart Theory
Many persons in the past believed that Mozart had spent a dissipated life
through all his Vienna years. And so, there appeared persons who blamed
his vast amount of debts on his dissipation.
Without doubt, Constanze's exaggerated talks, that he was addicted to drinking and womanizing and spent a very loose
life, would have contributed to promote this theory much.
But those persons only could make a trivial fuss about his dissipated life
in his late Vienna years since they could not have found out any important
Mozart's dissipation in the latter half, apart from his early Vienna era.
What they could do at most was to describe as if Mozart's clothes were
equivalent to those of aristocracy's or rich merchant's. But this surely
was a ridiculous sophistry and was quite out of the mark. The grounds to
think so is explained in Property left by Mozart.
In my opinion, it was natural that they could not find out any Mozart's
dissipation in his late Vienna years. Persons in the past have not recognized
that Mozart had been completely rejected from the Vienna fashionable society and had no company with noble men and rich merchants in his late Vienna
years, the details of which are explained in Sudden Drop of Mozart's Popularity.
Yes, there was no need for Mozart to dress well and live in grand style
unjustly in his late Vienna years. But persons in the past have carelessly
overlooked this fact and written their sophistries at their discretion.
By such one-sided descriptions, Mozart has unjustly been accused as a dissipated
man by posterity.
Catholic Piety in his late Vienna Years
All of us will admit that Mozart was a pious Catholic in his Salzburg years.
But when it comes to his Vienna years, it was quite questionable. The reason
was clear because he was transformed to an enthusiastic Freemason in Vienna.
However there are persons who do not want to admit Mozart as a Freemason
and obstinately insist with their sophistries that he had pious Catholic
belief to the end of his life. Their grounds to say so come from the following.
1. He returned to compose church music at the end of his life.
2. He joined the saintly body queue at Josephstadt.
However, as explained in Mozart, an enthusiastic Freemason, the purpose for these two do not seem to come from his Catholic piety but
from his other necessities. In short, they were his return gift for Anton
Stol and his expedient for changing his son's school to a Piarist school.
We should recognize that Mozart was a man who disliked the Establishment
to which the Catholic Church had belonged. And the Church have denounced
Vienna Freemasonry violently to which Mozart belonged up to his death with
his enthusiasm.
Therefore, I can not understand why such a man could have hold the piety
for Catholic to the end of his life.
Reading his many letters written in his Vienna years, we are surprised
to know that there were no word for admiring God, church and priest there.
This will in a sense reveal that he had already lost Catholic piety since he joined Freemasonry whose party believed in deism.
Mozart had his clear consciousness before two hours of his death. Then,
if he had a piety for Catholic that time, he might have asked Constanze
to call a priest for his last blessing. But he himself never had done so.
Yes, he who was a stalwart Freemason refused to be sent to Heaven by Catholic
way.
Therefore, I think this opinion, that Mozart had held his Catholic piety to the last of his life, is also a sophistry.
Wrong Justification for the Suspicious Funeral
The serious matter, by which Constanze's heart had throbbed with pain for
her life after Mozart's death, was the one concerning with her husband's
death.
When she was asked the questions about Mozart's death, she always made evasive answers to get out of difficulties . Her answers
were of course not persuasive to anyone because most of them were apparent
lies.
Persons in the past who pitied Constanze volunteered to support her with
their unique opinions. However, they were quite unacceptable as described
below.
- Selection of the third class funeral ceremony
Reading Nissen's biography, they strongly supported Swieten's thought that
he had to select the third class funeral on account of poverty of the bereaved.
But it was based on a shameless lie by Constanze. The fact was that she
had hidden a lot of money upon Mozart's death as explained in Mozart's Death and Burial. Persons in the past have completely ignored Mozart's huge income during
the five months just before his death.
Next they strongly insisted that the common people those days could not
select the first class funeral under the regulation of the funeral laws.
But this was also not true. Because only a commoner, Glück, J.Haydn,
and a wife of wholesaler named Jacobine for example, could actually be
sent by the first class ceremony and buried into an independent grave in
spite of the existence of such laws.
They shamelessly ignored these facts and would not described a bit about
these only for justifying Mozart's miserable funeral.
- Constanze's absence from the funeral
We know well that Constanze, who was Mozart's beloved by her own talk,
had run away from her house on the very day of Mozart's funeral.
To our surprise, persons who tried to support Constanze insisted that it
was by no means a surprising matter that she had not attend the funeral.
Yes, they blamed it on the social custom those days that the widow and
female relatives remained at home in many cases. Then what they want to
say was that there was no wonder that Constanze had not attend the funeral.
This opinion seems to have been acceptable somehow or other among the public.
But this really is an incoherent opinion, I suppose.
Assume here that Constanze did not attend the funeral in response to this social custom. In that case, I wonder why Constanze and her relatives had not remained in her house.
The fact was that her relatives, Caecilla, Aloisia and Sophie, had actually
attended the funeral regardless of the social custom. And only Constanze
had run away from her house without remaining there. As a result, no female
remained at home on the funeral day.
Then we can say that this opinion is a lame excuse itself.
- Suspicious cause of Mozart's death
It seems nowadays that the cause of Mozart's death is concluded as a natural death though the firm disease name of his death is not yet settled.
As explained earlier, Karl Bärr had greatly contributed to make people
believe that Mozart's death was caused by natural malady. His main subject
was that he let persons believe Guldener's letter as only one reliable
written statement of an expert opinion on Mozart's death.
However, his opinion was full of sophistries and deceptions without showing any clear evidence, the details of which are described above.
Having been deceived by skillful Bärr's sophistry, persons now believe
that the cause of Mozart's death was natural malady.
However, in my opinion, poisoning theory can not be denied considering
from many other suspicions, the details of which are explained in Mozart's Death and Burial.
2) Curious Silence
Reading many books written by posterity, we easily notice that there are
a lot of things which they dared not to write and kept strict silence for
a long time.
They are the things described below which were probably the very nuisance
to the traditional opinions. I am afraid that they tried to hush up the
things which smelled nasty.
1. Mozart asked Constanze just a few moment before his death that she should
inform his death to Albrechtsberger first and ask him to execute his funeral
ceremony.
But she completely ignored his last will. We can know it from the fact
that Swieten, without doubt by her information and request, came first and executed the funeral against Mozart's last will.
Why had she done such a merciless deed ?
2. Constanze would not speak to anyone the state of Mozart's last moment
and the disease name which robbed him of his life. As a result, even her
second husband Nissen had to ask Sophie to let him know by letter when
he had to write the state of Mozart's death in the biography. Why had she
hesitated to talk ?
3. The reason why Constanze had never visited Mozart's grave.
4. The reason why Constanze was strongly against for installing Mozart's
memorial monument in Salzburg when the contributions by good will were
fully gathered.
5. The reason why Constanze, who was only idling away after Mozart's death,
could have accumulated so big fortune as 27,191 florins upon her death.
6. The reason why Constanze had destroyed so many letters.
Persons in the past should have noticed such questions and described fair
statements. However, there have been no statements about these as long
as I know.
I firmly believe that such traditional opinions as the good wife theory,
the favorable relationship between Mozart and Constanze, the poor Mozart
theory, the natural death theory will loose their grounds if we deeply
analyze these background with greatest care.
My views on these are written here and there in this web-site.
3) Unacceptable Prejudices
For a long time, some prejudices among people have affected the arguments
on Mozart, I suppose.
Typical examples are the prejudices for Freemasonry and Aloisia.
Prejudice for Freemasonry
In my view, there seems to have been few books in which Mozart's enthusiasm
for Freemasonry were actively described .
I guess that the reason may come from that people in Western have had bad
impression for Freemasonry from late 18th century to the present mainly
from their religious views.
As a result, posterity have paid less attention to the aspect of Mozart's
enthusiasm about Freemasonry. On the contrary, he was treated by posterity
as only a frivolous Freemason who were indifferent to the Enlightenment
thought, the politics and the society.
In addition, Constanze's false talk that Mozart was only a dissipated person
who tried to enjoy his own pleasures had greatly contributed to the misunderstanding
of Mozart's character.
Such careless attention to Mozart as an enthusiastic Freemason had led
posterity to a wrong way when they thought about the following issue.
1. They blamed his incomprehensible debts on his poverty and/or the expenses
for Constanze's disease which were quite groundless. His debts really were,
in my opinion, no doubt for his Freemasonry activities ( various expenses
for establishing new lodge "Cavern")
2. The reason for his debt to Lichnowsky is not yet explained now. However,
as explained in Mozart's Debts, this was also the same reason as above.
3. His incomprehensible trips to Sachsen (in 1789) and Frankfurt (in 1790)
were regarded as the solutions for his poverty for a long time. However,
these were quite questionable when thinking about his financing situation
those days. These really were for the purpose of his repayment to Lichnowsky.
4. Unlike the common stories, his petitions of the post of deputy Kapellmeister
to the court (in 1790) and the St. Stephen Church (in 1791) were not on
account of his poverty.
He was in trouble of his unsatisfactory repayment to Lichnowsky. And then
he asked abruptly these posts to get the fund of repayment.
5. Mozart was completely rejected from the fashionable society in Vienna
in his late Vienna years. That was because he, who was a stalwart Freemason,
was excommunicated from the society by the Establishment who were hostile
to Freemasonry from mid 1780's.
Unlike the traditional opinions, the cause of sudden drop of his popularity
in Vienna had not existed in the overall Vienna economic conditions but
in his adhesion to Freemasonry, I suppose.
6. Though he had clear consciousness up to two hours before his death,
he, unlike ordinary Catholic believers, had not asked his wife to call
a Catholic priest for his last blessing. This was because he was a stalwart
Freemason.
My views above are quite different from the past opinions.
However, persons in the past have overlooked and/or completely neglected
Mozart's Masonic aspects by their prejudices. As a result they thought
in different ways, which contained big contradictions here and there as
I explained before.
Misunderstanding to Aloisia by prejudice
Aloisia Lange was a miserable lady who was regarded as a merciless lady
that jilted Mozart easily. And then there appeared no one who took sides
with her during the 20th century and even now.
The reason may be blamed only on an influential book named " Die Frauen
im Leben Mozarts" by Carola Belmonte who described Aloisia as a selfish
and merciless woman.
To my surprise, all persons have completely and blindly believed what she
described in that book. By this book persons in the past have had strong
prejudice for Aloisia Lange.
However, if we check Aloisia's character carefully, we come to know that
she really was a tender hearted lady as explained in Aloisia Lange, the misunderstood lady.
Yes, Belmonte who had hatred towards Weber's women had simply mixed her
together with Constanze and Caecilla without any careful analysis. She
was after all one of persons who was deceived completely by Constanze's
false talk.
One more thing I would like to propose newly in this site is that Mozart
and Aloisia had been in an extraordinary relationship in Vienna. That comes
from the following.
1. Mozart visited Aloisia as soon as he arrived in Vienna in early 1781
because he could never forget Aloisia. At that time Aloisia showed Mozart
her favorable interest to him, although she has already been married that
time.
2. He was so nice to her through his Vienna era by composing many arias for her, co-starring at the theater and giving main roles for his operas performed in Vienna.
3. She was tender to Mozart and became one of few attendants to his funeral
and burial. On the other hand his wife Constanze were absent from both.
4. Constanze had been so cold to Mozart for a long time and probably destroyed
all their letters except for one from Mozart to Aloisia. That was because
Constanze had detected their illicit love affairs.
I admit that above are not firm evidences to prove illicit love affairs
between Mozart and Aloisia. However, if we do not consider like this, how
can we explain Constanze's very cold and merciless deeds towards Mozart
during their Vienna years and still after her husband's death ?
There were some books in the past in which we can find skillful inventions
by the author's discretion. These inventions also have become one of factors
which let people misunderstand Mozart. Then let me show such samples below.
Pawned silver spoons
A very famous Mozart scholar today described in his book as to a part
of Mozart's inheritance like this.
" Silver goods (other silver goods were pawned for Frankfurt trip and not redeemed ) 7.00 florins "
I must say that this description is quite dogmatic and unreliable since
the description in the original inheritance records do not show such sentence.
It is simply described as follows.
" Three poor spoons 7.00 florins "
I strongly suspect from what grounds the author could rewrite so.
Can he show the pawn tickets that other silver goods ( what kind of and how many) were pawned ?
We have never heard that such pawn tickets were left to dates.
I also have a strong suspect for what purpose he added such an unreliable
comment. I guess that this author wanted to emphasize Mozart's poverty
by writing such skillful invention.
Mozart must have owned such silver goods as large spoons, knives, folks,
dishes, candle sticks etc.. Then if he had pawned all of them for the trip,
he would have gotten a lot of money and no need for the trip ( Think that
only three small spoons made 7 florins !).
As explained before, he was not in trouble financially for spending his
ordinary life any time. Trip to Frankfurt by his own carriage and moving
to a rich apartment house in Rauhensteingasse around that time will prove
this. More to say, he had not accepted a very favorable O'Reilly's offer after his trip which
promised 3,000 florins of composing fee.
As a result, I think that such rewriting as above was a kind of skillful
invention to switch the fact only to author's convenience, which became
one of the factor to mislead the argument on Mozart.
Absence of Mozart's autographs in the inheritance records
Checking Mozart's inheritance records, we can not help surprising to see
that no Mozart's autographs except for one, "Quintette del Figaro",
can be found there.
As to this, the same scholar described like this.
"We get an impression that Mozart must have cleared away many music
scores as well as his books before December 1791. The comptroller took
no account of Mozart's manuscripts."
However, this opinion does not seem to be persuasive at all.
He described nothing about the reasons why Mozart had to do such incomprehensible
action before his death and why the comptroller took no account of his
autographs.
In short, this seems to be a skillful invention to cover Constanze's criminal act (the false declaration to the authority), the details of which are described in Property left by Mozart.
Regarding this issue, there seems to be another invention nowadays in Europe
that autographs were not taxable those days. Therefore we can not find Mozart's autographs in his inheritance records, they say.
However, this is quite an incoherent opinion because Mozart's inheritance
records themselves denied it. Yes, not a few autographs are listed in his
inheritance records whether they were Mozart's own or not, and they are
actually taxed with their valuation respectively.
I think therefore that these are the opinions not worthy for bending our
ears, and these inventions also might have dazzled and affected many persons.
Gambling debts theory
At the time of late 20th century, there appeared some persons who thought
that the vast amount of Mozart's debts was on account of his gambling.
This theory was proposed to explain the cause of incomprehensible Mozart's
debts.
Probably this theory was proposed by Mozart's strong preference for billiard
and card playing. However, no person who protested this theory could show
any grounds to believe so and/or the firm evidence at all. Usually they
point out that Mozart had gorgeous billiard facilities in his house. Only
with such fact, they falsely charged Mozart as a notorious gambler.
One more thing to support this theory may be in the point that they carelessly
believed Mozart was a man of dissipation. Probably they themselves wanted
to set Mozart up as a dissipated person in favor of Constanze.
Among them, to make this theory more plausible, there was a scholar who
invented without showing any evidence that Puchberg as well as Stadler,
Hofdemel and Da Ponte would have been Mozart's gambling mates. However,
we can say that this also a skillful invention by posterity.
Thus there was no firm evidence at all in this opinion, and then I believe
that this is also an invention by the persons who could not support the
poor Mozart theory but were in troubles not to find out the real cause
of Mozart's debts.
So far I have explained my strong questions to the past opinions on Mozart
in many aspects.
Based on my analyses, we can not help thinking that the traditional views
on Mozart have been distorted in many points. It is no doubt that the causes
might have existed both in the insufficient original sources and the ways
how to approach them by posterity.
When we want to express our own opinions, it is needless to say that every
opinion should be based on the firm original sources, eliminating single-minded
hypotheses and mere imaginations. But I wonder if the past opinions on
Mozart have been based on such awareness.
Regarding this, I myself wonder why so many different opinions on Mozart
can be seen here and there still now without being unified into a collective
view. This fact will reveal in a sense that the past opinions were not
standing on the same solid grounds.
Here we should find out the reason why they could not have stood on the
same grounds.
That was, in my opinion, because they have argued only the insufficient
original sources left to us and paid little care for the lost and false
sources.
What I mean in another words is that they have tried to complete the jigsaw
puzzle of Mozart only by rearranging pieces left to posterity. But if we
try to complete the jigsaw puzzle correctly, only the existing pieces are
not enough since many important pieces were lost/hidden and some false
pieces were contaminated in.
Under such conditions persons after ages have argued this and that for a long time. Then it was natural that so many different opinions have appeared in front of us.
To complete a satisfactory jigsaw puzzle of Mozart, they should have eliminated false pieces from among existing pieces and tried to find out what kind of pieces were hidden or lost in the first place.
Though I described so, we can not see now the lost pieces how we struggle.
That is true. But we may be able to feel for them somehow if we think hard.
Taking the lost letters for example, we can not know the contents of the
lost letters themselves now, of course. But we can detect what kind of letters (to/from whom, when,
about what subjects were written) were lost or hidden since we fortunately
can read a lot of Mozart's letters as one of exchanged letters.
If we carefully examined the lost letters in such way, we may be able to
know who had done such stupid things and what were the subjects that the
stupid person had tried to hide, the details of which are explained in
Lost Mozart's Letters.
In my opinion, so many keys for solving such important but still ambiguous
matters as below might have existed in many lost/hidden letters.
- Real cause for Mozart's debts
- His actual way of living in Vienna
- Mozart as an enthusiastic Freemason
- Real Mozart's character as a grown up
- Real Constanze's nature
- Entrapped Mozart's marriage with Constanze
- Real marital relationship between Mozart and Constanze
- The reason why Constanze was so cold to Mozart
- Real reason for the collapse in Munich between Mozart and Aloisia
- Relationship between Mozart and Aloisia in Vienna
In addition, it seems that persons in the past have excessively and wrongly
put their faith on what Constanze had told without doing any analysis about
her.
However, this really was a big harm to put the argument on Mozart into
confusion since almost all her talks and writings were wicked lies, the
details of which are explained in Constanze, a Good Wife ?.
Therefore we had better think what she told over again considering her
real backgrounds carefully why she behaved so.
Lastly if I describe my overall comment on the past opinions on Mozart,
they might be as well the troublesome children who have unbalanced diets.
They willingly eat with joy what they like, but wouldn't touch the food
at all what they dislike. And if they were reproached, they suddenly keep
silence getting awkward.
Now, ending this chapter, I would like to emphasize again that we have after all been deceived for a long time by Constanze's wicked information control, many lies and the destruction of letters .
If we do not think over Mozart issue again from the beginning, many self-willed
opinions will still be rampant and they will not be unified into one even
in future.
(The End)
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author: Shuji Fujisawa
e-mail: ssfuji@mbj.nifty.com
first published: December 5, 2008
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