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Mozart in Vienna

Born in Salzburg, Mozart chose to stay in the capital, where over the rest of his life he achieved fame but little financial security. His final years in Vienna yielded many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He performed often as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781and he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna".He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 to enormous acclaim. Thе work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe",and fully established Mozart's reputation as a composer.

1782 portrait of Constanze Mozart by her brother-in-law Joseph Lange

Near the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.^[ Aloysia, who had earlier rejected Mozart's suit, was now married to the actor Joseph Lange, and Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter, Constanze. The couple were married on 4 August 1782, eventually securing Leopold's "grudging consent".In the marriage contract, Constanze "assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which [...] the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden", with the total "to pass to the survivor". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both.

In the course of 1782 and 1783 Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in Baroque style, and later had a powerful influence on his own personal musical language: for example in fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute") and the finale of Symphony No. 41.

In 1783, Wolfgang and Constanze visited his family in Salzburg. Leopold and Nannerl were, at best, only polite to Constanze; but the visit at least prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.^[39]

Mozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna, and the two composers became friends . When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and amount to a carefully considered response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. He stood in awe of Mozart, whose sister recorded that in 1781 Haydn told the visiting Leopold: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."

From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theaters was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof (an apartment building); and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube (a restaurant). The concerts were very popular, and the concertos he premiered at them are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period Mozart created "a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre".

With substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, he and Constanze adopted a rather plush lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins.Mozart also bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300.^[42] The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school, and kept servants. Saving was therefore impossible, and the short period of financial success did nothing to soften the hardship the Mozarts were later to experience.

On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit ("Beneficence").Freemasonry played an important role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended many meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions he composed Masonic music.

1786–1787: Return to opera

Despite the great success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act Der Schauspieldirektor. He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. However, around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing^[ and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. 1786 saw the successful premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera Don Giovanni, which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, and also met with success in Vienna in 1788. The two are esteemed among Mozart's most important works and are mainstays of the operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty for both listeners and performers. These developments were not witnessed by the composer's father, as Leopold had died on 28 May 1787.

In December 1787 Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his "chamber composer", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and only required Mozart to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal. Mozart complained to Constanze that the pay was "too much for what I do, too little for what I could do".However, even this modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph's aim was to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.

In 1787 the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent two weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. The evidence concerning this time is conflicting, and at least three hypotheses are in play: that Mozart heard Beethoven play and praised him; that Mozart rejected Beethoven as a student; and that they never even met. (See Mozart and Beethoven.)

1788–1790

Toward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for all musicians in Vienna because Austria was at war, and both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined.

By mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund.Although it has been thought that Mozart reduced his rental expenses, recent research shows that by moving to the suburb Mozart had certainly not reduced his expenses (as claimed in his letter to Puchberg), but merely increased the housing space at his disposal.Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow Mason Michael Puchberg; "a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans" survives.^[53] Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems that his output slowed.^] Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, and 41, all from 1788, and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, Così fan tutte, premiered in 1790.

Around this time Mozart made long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes: to Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789 (see Mozart's Berlin journey), and to Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790. The trips produced only isolated success and did not relieve the family's financial distress.

1791

Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of great productivity—and by some accounts a time of personal recovery.^[55] He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute, the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B-flat), the Clarinet Concerto K. 622, the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E-flat), the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618, and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.

Mozart's financial situation, a source of extreme anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart, in return for the occasional composition. He probably also benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer.Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg, and made a start on paying off his debts.

He experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably The Magic Flute  and the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, premiered on 15 November 1791.

Final illness and death

Mozart fell ill while in Prague, for the premiere on 6 September of his opera La clemenza di Tito, written in 1791 on commission for the Emperor's coronation festivities. He was able to continue his professional functions for some time, and conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. The illness intensified on 20 November, at which point Mozart became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.

Mozart was nursed in his final illness by Constanze and her youngest sister Sophie, and attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. It is clear that he was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem. However, the evidence that he actually dictated passages to his student Süssmayr is very slim.

Mozart died at 1 a.m. on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The New Grove gives a matter-of-fact description of his funeral:

Though Mozart lived at a dozen different addresses in Vienna, the only apartment that has survived to this day is at Domgasse number 5. The composer lived at this address from 1784 till 1787. His apartment on the first floor was positively grand, with four large rooms, two small ones and a kitchen. His whole life long, he attached great importance to outward appearances, so smart clothes and buckled shoes were a must for him.

Mozart was buried in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St Marx cemetery outside the city on 7 December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.

The cause of Mozart's death cannot be known with certainty. The official record has it as "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. The most widely accepted version, however, is that he died of acute rheumatic fever; he is known to have had three or even four attacks of it since his childhood, and this disease has a tendency to recur, with increasingly serious consequences each time, such as rampant infection and damage to the heart valves.