Mozart in Fiction: Mozart's Mother

It seems so appropriate that I should write about Wolfgang Mozart's mother on Mothers' Day, but it is really coincidental. I finished reading the historical novel, Stitiches in Air, a few days ago.  The author is Liane Ellison Norman, who has written several other historical novels. Stitiches in Air is out of print, but can be found used and in some libraries.

Anna Pertl Mozart is a shadowy figure. Not much is known about her. Her father was a part-time musician, as was her maternal grandfather. Her father died when she and her sister were very young, casting the family into poverty. Her sister died as a child. Anna married Leopold Mozart, had seven children of whom only two survived. From a letter that Leopold wrote to her asking her to find and send a piece of music, it's clear that she could read music. Anna died in Paris at age 57 of an unknown illness. Leopold blamed Wolfgang for Anna's death and accused him of neglecting her while he went out each day having fun.

Because of how little is known about Anna, any story written about her life will have be mostly invented, which is what Ms. Norman has done. I found the beginning of the book very interesting - a picture of Anna's childhood before her father's death in the village of St. Gilgen, followed by several years in a nunnery. The nunnery education of Anna and her sister is fictional, but it fits the story well. The "stitches in air" of the title refer to the bit of lace Anna holds in the one portrait of her, which may have been a way of showing that she was a lace maker, though we don't know this for sure.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the novel, though interesting, becomes more and more a statement about how the author views the plight of women in the 18th century, using the Mozart family as a canvas. I have written before about truth versus fiction in historical fiction, and I felt the same annoyance with this book as with several other historical novels about the Mozarts and other historical figures. Ms. Norman depicts Anna as a repressed musical genius, and Leopold as both a tyrannical husband and father and a lesser musician who passes her compositions off as his own. She hints that Wolfgang's early works were either written by Nannerl or Leopold. Later, Nannerl also becomes stifled as a musician, but who accepts her lot in life, giving up composing and performing, and even her desire to marry Franz Armand d'Ippold. In actuality, Nannerl probably did compose and give it up, but she continued to be a performer and teacher.

As the story continues, Leopold becomes increasingly tyrannical, turning against Anna, telling her that women composing is unnatural. There is quite a lot of discussion of witchcraft trials, related to women trying to do "unwomanly" activities. From the author's notes, her research shows that Salzburg had many accusations of witchcraft against women and a number of trials. Interestingly, Ruth Halliwell, in her very thorough investigation of the Mozart family, their correspondence, and the social, economic and political milieus of the time, does not mention witchcraft at all. To me this indicates that it was most likely not a concern to the Mozart family.

The picture of the Mozart family's life I carried away from this novel was very different than the snapshot I got from Halliwell's The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context. Ms. Norman paints a somewhat deary, isolated existence, with a few friends and social activities few and far between. Halliwell's study of the family documents shows that they entertained several times a week, frequently having friends over to make music, play cards, and shoot air guns at targets. Their circle of friends and acquaintances was huge. The family also regularly attended the theater. In their letters to each other, the Mozarts regularly shared jokes, including quite a bit of off-color humor. These fun-loving parts of life are missing from Stitches in Air.

The author includes an afterword in which she explains what parts of the story are factual and which events she created. In her afterword she refers to Ruth Halliwell's book, incorrectly referring to it as Mozart's Family and calling it "an elaborate defense of Leopold's good name." She does not list this book in her extensive extensive bibliography of references consulted. This leads me to believe that Ms. Norman did not read Hallliwell's book, as it is not a defense of Leopold, but an attempt to accurately depict each member of the family without the layers of myth that have accumulated.

Anna Pertl Mozart has appeared in novels as everything from an uneducated, coarse woman who swears frequently, to the musical genius of Stitches in Air. She was probably courageous, to have undertaken so much traveling in the 18th century. She was surely musical. As part of a fun-loving, sociable family, she must have enjoyed much of her life. But she will remain a mystery.

Mozart and ... Vampires?

While I was searching online for yet another Mozart book, the novel Mozart's Blood popped up on the screen. It's a vampire novel! With Mozart as a character! How bizarre and ridiculous! I thought.

Then I started reading the reader reviews and many people liked the book. They complimented the historical and musical details and the interesting story. So I checked it out of the library.

I am not a reader of vampire novels. I read the first Twilight novel, mostly to see if it was appropriate for 4th graders (it isn't), and I was a fan of Dark Shadows when it was on TV long ago. But I haven't been interested in the avalanche of vampire novels and television shows that have appeared in recent years. As I read Mozart's Blood, it sometimes seemed to me that the vampire story was an awkward addition to an interesting story of a young soprano trying to succeed in the 18th century. This might be due to my own disinterest in vampires.

The historical details of 18th century Europe, as well as 19th century San Francisco, ring true and are a highlight of the novel. There are abundant musical details of the 18th century, too. I learned more about castrati than I realized there was to know. Author Louise Marley, who is a former opera singer, has also captured the essence of what it's like to perform in an opera and also the way musicians see and hear music, whatever the century. The main character, soprano Teresa Saporiti, was a real person and did premiere the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni.  Mozart is an important part of the story, though he only appears briefly, and his music is also important to the entire novel. And there's also a werewolf!

When I was reading this outside of my house, I kept trying to hide the cover. No one ever commented on it, but I felt somewhat like I did two summers ago when I was reading Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde, which is a wonderful dystopian novel set in the future. Everyone who caught a glimpse thought I was reading 50 Shades of Gray and wanted to know how I liked it.

Author Louise Marley has written a number of novels, several of which are about musicians. You can find out more on her website: Louise Marley: Words and Music.

If you want to check out the bizarre worlds of Jasper Fforde, he also has a website: http://www.jasperfforde.com/.

Why was it more fun?

If we think that maybe at least some people did have more fun in the 18th century than we're having in the 21st, we naturally wonder why that would be, and maybe even how we can have more fun now. There are several good theories, in my opinion. The Mozarts' fun was generally centered around getting together with their friends and acquaintances to play games, talk or make music, so I
'm considering what is different now that stops us from having that kind of experience.

We've all heard that electronics in general and the Internet, Facebook, etc. are stopping us from having live interactions with our friends. Certainly the Mozart family had no choice but to interact in person or through hand-written letters with their acquaintances. There are many articles and studies about the ways in which people interact with their devices instead of the people that they're with. Recently NPR reported on a study that too much time on Facebook can make us sad. A recent New York Times article looked at how our extreme use of our smart phones is distracting us from the events and people in our lives. My favorite book on the subject is Hamlet's Blackberry, by William Powers. Powers takes a long view of technology, looking all the way back to the ancient Greeks, and suggesting reasons and ways to take control of how and when we switch off and reconnect face to face.

Then there's that three to four hour break after lunch that many residents of Salzburg and Vienna enjoyed in the 1700s. In spite of our many time-saving devices today, we work a lot. I don't know anyone who could take a break like that from work.

Perhaps because 18th century families tended to stay in one area instead of moving away from family and friends, it was just a part of their lives to socialize together. The Mozart family, though, does not fit this description. Leopold Mozart was estranged from his mother and siblings, perhaps because of his choice not to go into the family trade of bookbinding and also because of a dispute over inheritance. His wife, Anna Maria, had lost her family. Her father and sister died when she was still a child, leaving only her mother and herself. The Mozarts also traveled much more than most people at that time. Their large social group was made up of neighbors, fellow musicians, visitors to Salzburg and people they met on their travels.

There are no doubt other reasons as well. So many things back then were different and difficult, but there are some specific aspects that I envy, especially the frequent musical gatherings and that three hours in the afternoon!

Did people in the 18th century have more fun?

When we think about life in the past, we often think of what people didn't have -- indoor plumbing, central heat, air conditioning, shopping malls, airplanes -- the things that make our lives easier and more comfortable. People in the past, of course, didn't realize that they were missing these things. We might also have an impression of lives of hard labor, poor medical care, and a lack of education for many. This was no doubt true for many, though some might argue that it's still true today in many places in the world.

I have been thinking about this because of The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context, by Ruth Halliwell (see previous blog post here). Halliwell includes lots of information about the daily life of the Mozart family, as well as the economics and politics of their time and place. The Mozarts would fall into middle class of 18th century Salzburg. They were not rich, but neither were they poor. They were educated and valued education. Leopold had a reasonable position with a salary in Salzburg that enabled him to support his family and retire with income to live on. He was always hoping for a better position or a promotion, but on the other hand, his job allowed him to travel extensively with his family.

Aside from the extraordinary three-year tour of Europe when Wolfgang and Nannerl were children and the later trips to Italy with just Wolfgang and Leopold, what were their daily lives like? Halliwell has used Nannerl's diaries to find a window into those lives. Nannerl's diary is a barebones account of activities, with no description or commentary (though there are a few lighthearted or nonsensical additions from Wolfgang), so, Halliwell explains, most historians have not found much value in them. She has used the entries to reconstruct the events during the visit of Wolfgang and Constanze to Salzburg in 1783.

During the three months that Wolfgang and Constanze visited, Nannerl went to church nearly every morning, sometimes with Constanze. Mornings were often devoted to giving lessons, or sometimes to playing visits. After the mid-day meal, many Salzburgers had a three to four hour break from work!! The Mozarts spent this time entertaining, walking, or playing music. They had visitors almost every day. Nannerl mentioned over 170 people in her diary during the mid-1770s, an indication of how social the family was. Of course, during this three month period in 1783 there were no doubt many friends who wanted to see Wolfgang, but its' clear that even at other times the family had frequent visitors. A group of friends regularly came over to shoot air guns with darts (Bolzlschiessen). Members took turns designing a humorous target, which sometimes featured members of the group in caricatures, and prizes were awarded for the best shooting. Other days they would host musical afternoons with various musician friends. Other entertainments included card playing and skittles.

In the evenings there were sometimes concerts at the court, which Leopold would participate in as part of his job, or the theater. The Mozarts lived across the street from the theater and would go every day that the troop was in town. As an "old" man Leopold wrote that he could only manage to get to the theater once a week. ("Old" because that is how Leopold described himself, though he was 67 when he passed away.)

When I told my husband about all of the above, his remark was, "I think they had more fun than we're having."


In addition, carnival season offered many opportunities for entertainment. Carnival in 18th century Germany was the weeks before Lent began, so it included February, to give some perspective. (Carnival today in Rio is a modern version.) Because Lent is time for forgoing many pleasures, such as rich foods and some types of entertainment, carnival was the season for concerts and operas, masquerade balls and other parties. New operas and other works were commissioned for carnival. Mozart's operas Lucio Silla, Mitridate, re de Ponto, and Idomeneo were commissioned for carnival seasons. The Mozarts celebrated carnival not only in Salzburg, but in Munich, Vienna, and Italy. Nannerl attended a masked ball in Munich one year dressed as an Amazon. There is no record of the reaction to her costume,as far as I know.

Certainly many things were harder in the 18th century. Many children died in infancy; Leopold and Anna Maria had five infants die. Travel was difficult, slow, and dangerous. Opportunities were limited, especially for women. But, the amount of free time, at least for people in the Mozarts' circle, is astounding, as well as the amount of socializing they did and the number of friends and acquaintances. Maybe they did have more fun.

(Facts in this post come from The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context by Ruth Halliwell, Mozart's Women by Jane Glover, and Mozart; A Life by Maynard Solomon. If there are errors or omissions they are mine, not these authors'.)

Just the facts, ma'am, about the Mozarts

One of the best classes I ever took was called Music in the Middle Ages. It was my senior year at Eastman and the course was taught by Dr. Hendrik van der Werf. I learned a lot about medieval music, but the most important lesson was one that was more universal. Dr. van der Werf taught us to think critically about all the historical information and commentary we were reading, even when it was written by experts in the field. His big question always was: how do you know? Are you sure you know? What are you basing your ideas on? In the case of the middle ages, he pointed out that we use the music that has survived to draw conclusions. We don't know how much music originally existed, so we can't know how much was lost over time or what percentage of the original amount what we have is. Do we have 50% and 50% is lost? Do we have only 10%, or 75%? We don't know. We could be missing music that would throw a very different light on music in the Middle Ages. The message was, any conclusions we make from the existing evidence, including the artwork of the time, must be provisional and subject to rethinking.

This idea of examining evidence and also thinking critically about it obviously applies to many parts of life - politics, advertising, all those scientific studies that turn out to have been funded by an interested industry. However, I have been thinking about Dr. van der Werf's concept in relation to the Mozart biographies I have been reading.

I was impressed with Maynard Solomon's biography of Mozart and his use of primary documents in making his points. I also thought that Jane Glover solidly supported her points with the use of letters and scores. But even as I read them, I wondered about how they used the letters of the Mozart family. The letters are so extensive and nearly everyone who uses them only quotes bits, often the same letters over and over. Even if you get a book of the letters, they aren't all in there because there are so many.

One of my summer projects was to find and read The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context by Ruth Halliwell. This was a "project" because it is a very expensive book, so I needed to find a library with a copy. This involved getting a library card for the Northwestern University Library and checking out the book, which is 788 pages long (though the very extensive bibliography is part of those pages). So there was a significant investment of time on my part in traveling and then reading, but it was worth it. The Mozart Family is a wonderful book. Halliwell has read all the letters, as well as Nannerl's diaries and other primary sources. She puts into context some of the quotations that have been used out of context, and she notes where a statement is just mysterious and we don't really know what the author was trying to say. Halliwell also gives an amazing amount of background information, such as the political situation, economics of the Salzburg area, and what daily life was like at the time.

One lesson I got from reading this was how broad and minutely detailed the historian's work is. Simultaneously! For an example of the minute details, Halliwell includes a long explanation of how Leopold and Nannerl communicated after her marriage and move to St. Gilgen, while Leopold remained in Salzburg. The two tradespeople who carried letters and parcels back and forth are identified and details about them are given, as well as the particular days and times they would come and go. How Leopold would quickly shop for Nannerl's requested items and send a response is also documented. It is an unexpected look into the 18th century. There are also highly detailed sections on the medicine of the time and smallpox, which crosses over into religion and the state of vaccines.

Echoing the problems of studying the Middle Ages, quite a few of the letters have been lost. We know this because in some cases the replies still exist. Scholars have actually worked out a chronological sequence of letters, giving numbers to both existing and missing letters, though there are missing letters that haven't been entered into this system.

I came away from Solomon's biography thinking that Leopold Mozart was a tyrannical control freak who interfered with both of his children's lives and happiness and that Wolfgang was a visionary musician with reasonable plans who finally had to escape from his family in order to write the music he needed to write. After reading Halliwell's look at the Mozart family (which is not a biography of Wolfgang Mozart) I had a more nuanced view of both men. Leopold had valid concerns about some of his son's plans, based on his own experiences touring with the family, for example. Wolfgang was neither an eternal child, as some writers depict him, but neither was he always kind and sensible. Does Halliwell draw her own conclusions, like other biographers? Yes, but as I read the book, it was always clear to me when she was giving her own opinion or interpretation. For example, she presents quite a bit of evidence that Leopold loved Nannerl and was a good father to her, as opposed to some other authors who present him as carrying little about her and her musical education. On the other hand, when the Mozart family arrived in Vienna during a smallpox outbreak, Leopold took Wolfgang and fled to a safer location. Halliwell states that the conclusion that Leopold valued Wolfgang above Nannerl appears unavoidable.

Author bias in biography is inevitable. Just as a reader needs to consider the source of the information being presented, so he or she also needs to be aware that no author is completely neutral. I find that this makes reading biographies more interesting. It's another layer to consider.

The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context is a wonderful book for learning more about the time and place of the Mozart family. Next - did people have more fun in the 18th century?