Who was a genius of the very highest order? Who fell into being guided, almost created, certainly educated, by his father? Who then became the financial support of this parents and sister while still in his teens?
Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, known to us today as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. An American professor of music said to me while walking in Munich that Mozart was the greatest composer of all time. The Teaching Company series on the life and music of Mozart by Robert Greenberg is difficult to take at times. We know at the outset that Mozart only lived to be 35 years old. We know his music is fabulous and that it beautifies our lives. We hear strong praise from some of the greatest composers for his work, from Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Mahler. When you get praise from a set like that, you are definitely good.
It is clear that at the age of 5 and 6 and 7, Mozart wrote very good music. I listen to it often. It’s not rock and roll but it gets to me, stays in my head and haunts me.
In Mozart’s own time, some people said he was guided by God in order to be so good. Others said only the devil could empower such skill. Another common opinion was that his music was too advanced and demanding for most people to grasp.
For me, it was the time at about 22 years of age, when Wolfie was really beginning to take off and also ready to marry, the greatest pains were felt. His father Leopold, a solidly competent musician but not at the top of the world class, could see that his gold mine and his accomplishment were about to slip out of his control. He used every plea and outlandish comment he could to keep things as they were for a little longer and Wolfgang had all sorts of guilt and fear about disobeying his father’s injunctions to stay away from women and to keep on following Daddy’s wishes. Eventually, he had to go his own way, thankfully.
I like the movie Amadeus and recommend it to friends but Greenberg goes to great effort to debunk both the film’s portrayal of Mozart’s personality and his death. He was very intelligent and sensitive to human emotion. That is the only way he could have produced the music he did.
He did have money problems and he did accept a commission to compose a requiem but it was not part of a plot by anyone to have him write his own funeral music. He had lots of health problems and of course, that was in the days before antibiotics. He may have had a head injury that was bleeding internally and mystified doctors may have bled him on their own to use the remedy they tried when they weren’t clear about what to do.
