Leopold Mozart


Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, music teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.

Life

Childhood and student years

He was born in Augsburg, son of Johann Georg Mozart, a bookbinder, and his second wife Anna Maria Sulzer. From an early age he sang as a choirboy. He attended a local Jesuit school,, where he studied logic, science, and theology, graduating magna cum laude in 1735. He studied then at the St. Salvator Lyzeum.
While a student in Augsburg, he appeared in student theatrical productions as an actor and singer, and became a skilled violinist and organist. He also developed an interest, which he retained, in microscopes and telescopes. Although his parents had planned a career for Leopold as a Catholic priest, this apparently was not Leopold's own wish. An old school friend told Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777, "Ah he was a great fellow. My father thought the world of him. And how he hoodwinked the clerics about becoming a priest!"
He withdrew from the St. Salvator Lyceum after less than a year. Following a year's delay, he moved to Salzburg to resume his education, enrolling in November 1737 at the Benedictine University to study philosophy and jurisprudence. At the time Salzburg was the capital of an independent state within the Holy Roman Empire, now part of Austria. Except for periods of travel, Leopold spent the rest of his life there.
Leopold received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in 1738. However, in September 1739 he was expelled from the university for poor attendance, having "hardly attended Natural Science more than once or twice".

Early career as musician

In 1740, Mozart began his career as a professional musician, becoming violinist and valet to one of the university's canons, Johann Baptist, Count of Thurn-Valsassina and Taxis. This was also the year of his first musical publication, the six Trio Sonatas, Opus 1. These were titled Sonate sei da chiesa e da camera; Leopold did the work of copper engraving himself. He continued to compose, producing a series of German Passion cantatas.
In 1747 he married Anna Maria Pertl, who bore him seven children, although only two of them survived past infancy:
In 1743 Leopold Mozart was appointed to a position in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. His duties included composition and the teaching of violin to the choirboys of the Salzburg cathedral. He was promoted to second violinist in 1758 and in 1763 to deputy Kapellmeister. He rose no further; others were repeatedly promoted over him to the head position of Kapellmeister.
The question of whether Leopold was successful as a composer is debated. The Grove Dictionary says that as of 1756, "Mozart was already well-known. His works circulated widely in German-speaking Europe." However, biographer Maynard Solomon asserts that he "failed to make his mark as a composer", and Alfred Einstein "judged him to be an undistinguished composer".
Scholars agree, however, that Leopold was successful as a pedagogue. In 1755, he wrote his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, a comprehensive treatise on violin playing. This work was published in 1756, and went through two further German editions, as well as being translated into Dutch and French. Today, the work is consulted by musicians interested in 18th century performance practice; see Historically informed performance. This work made a reputation in Europe for Leopold, and his name begins to appear around this time in music dictionaries and other works of musical pedagogy.

As teacher of Nannerl and Wolfgang

Mozart discovered that his two children were musically gifted in about 1759, when he began with keyboard lessons for the seven-year-old Nannerl. The toddler Wolfgang immediately began imitating his sister, at first picking out thirds on the keyboard and then making rapid progress under Leopold's instruction. By 1762, the children were ready to work as concert performers, and Leopold began taking the family on extensive concert tours, performing for both aristocracy and public, throughout central and western Europe. This tour included Munich, Vienna, Presburg, Paris and the Hague together with a lengthy stay in London; see Mozart family Grand Tour.
The discovery of his children's talent is considered to have been a life-transforming event for Mozart. He once referred to his son as the "miracle which God let be born in Salzburg". Of Leopold's attitude, the Grove Dictionary says:
By "missionary", the Grove Dictionary refers to the family's concert tours.
Scholars differ on whether the tours made substantial profits. To be sure, often the children performed before large audiences and took in large sums, but the expenses of travel were also very high, and no money at all was made during the various times that Mozart and the children suffered serious illnesses. Mozart biographer Maynard Solomon takes the view that the tours were lucrative and produced long-term profits for Leopold; Ruth Halliwell states to the contrary that their income generally only covered their travel and living expenses.
Since the instruction took much of his time, and the touring kept him away from Salzburg for long periods, Mozart cut down his activities in other areas. Nannerl later claimed that he "entirely gave up both violin instruction and composition in order to direct that time not claimed in service to the prince to the education of his two children". After 1762, his compositional efforts seem to have been limited to revising his earlier work, and after 1771 he composed not at all.
The touring continued into the early 1770s. The last three trips were to Italy, with only the father accompanying Wolfgang. Leopold Mozart's failure to advance above his Vice-Kapellmeister position at Salzburg is attributed by the Grove Dictionary to the great amount of time that the journeys kept him away from Salzburg. After the final return from Italy in 1773, Leopold was repeatedly passed over for the Kapellmeister post.

Family life in Salzburg

Although Mozart is portrayed as generally quite worried about money, the Mozart family by 1773 evidently felt prosperous enough to upgrade their living quarters. They left the home in the Getreidegasse where the children had been born and moved to rooms in the Tanzmeisterhaus, which had been the home of the recently deceased dancing master Franz Karl Gottlieb Speckner. As tenants of Speckner's cousin and heir Maria Anna Raab, the Mozarts had eight rooms, including the quite large room that Speckner had used for dancing lessons. This the Mozarts used for teaching, for domestic concerts, for storing keyboard instruments sold by Leopold, and for Bölzlschiessen, a form of recreation in which family and their guests shot airguns at humorously designed paper targets.
Starting around this time, a major preoccupation was the lengthy and frustrating struggle to find a professional position for his son. His wife died in 1778 in Paris while accompanying Wolfgang on a job-hunting tour.

Relations with his children in their adulthood

Mozart is a controversial figure among his biographers, with the largest disagreements arising concerning his role as the parent of adult children. Mozart biographer Maynard Solomon has taken a particularly harsh view of Leopold, treating him as tyrannical,, and possessive; Ruth Halliwell adopts a far more sympathetic view, portraying his correspondence as a sensible effort to guide the life of a grossly irresponsible Wolfgang.

Relations with Nannerl

Wolfgang left home permanently in 1781, and from this time until 1784, his father lived in Salzburg with just Nannerl and their servants. Nannerl had a number of suitors, of whom the most important was Franz Armand d'Ippold, with whom she was evidently in love. In the end she did not marry him, and the reason for this is unknown. One possibility, frequently entertained by biographers, is that the marriage was blocked by Leopold, who liked having Nannerl at home as the lady of the house. However, Halliwell observes that no written evidence on this point survives and insists that we simply do not know why Nannerl married so late. Nannerl finally did marry in August 1784, at age 33. She moved to the home of her new husband, Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg, in the small rural town of St. Gilgen, roughly six hours journey east of Salzburg.
During his remaining years, Mozart spent a fair amount of his time trying to help Nannerl at a distance, as her new marriage situation, involving five apparently ill-educated stepchildren, was apparently not easy. According to Halliwell, Nannerl depended on him in many ways: he did "shopping the engagement of servants.... He relayed news from Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna to divert her, did his best to organize the maintenance of her fortepiano, paid for Wolfgang's music to be copied and arranged for her to receive it; collected musicians together when she had visited him so that she could play it with most of the parts;.. tried to look after her health; and encouraged her to stand up to her husband when he was being unreasonable." Following Leopold's death in 1787, Nannerl had to do without this support, and Halliwell asserts that "there is every reason to believe that Leopold's death was devastating" to her.

Raising Nannerl's child

In July 1785, Nannerl came to Salzburg to give birth to her first child, a son. The infant stayed with his grandfather when she returned home, and with the assistance of his servants, he raised the child. He frequently sent letters to Nannerl that usually began with the sentence "Leopoldl is healthy", and offered a full report on the child. Leopoldl stayed until his grandfather's death in May 1787. He apparently found raising his grandson a happy experience. Halliwell relates one repeated episode:
Maynard Solomon suggests that in keeping his grandson in his home, Mozart may have hoped to train yet another musical prodigy. Halliwell notes a different possibility, that conditions for child-rearing in the Berchtold household were distinctly suboptimal.

Relations with Wolfgang

Wolfgang left home for good in 1781, when instead of returning from a stay in Vienna with his employer Archbishop Colloredo he remained in the city to pursue a freelance career. This effort was to a fair degree successful; Wolfgang achieved great fame and was for a time quite prosperous. The move almost certainly aided Wolfgang's musical development; the great majority of his most celebrated works were composed in Vienna.
As indicated by Mozart's return letters, his father was strongly opposed to the Vienna move, wanting Wolfgang to return to Salzburg. A fairly harsh family quarrel resulted. He was also strongly opposed to Wolfgang's marriage to Constanze Weber in 1782, and gave his permission late, reluctantly, and under duress. Biographers differ on the extent that Constanze was later snubbed by Leopold, if at all, during her visit with Wolfgang to Salzburg; the Grove Dictionary calls the visit "not entirely happy".
In 1785, he visited Wolfgang and Constanze in Vienna, at a time when his son's career success was at its peak. He witnessed first hand his son's success as a performer, and on February 12 heard Joseph Haydn's widely quoted words of praise, upon hearing the string quartets Wolfgang dedicated to him, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name: He has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition." The visit was the last time that Leopold saw his son, though they continued to correspond, and Wolfgang sometimes sent copies of his piano concertos and string quartets for Leopold and Nannerl to perform with friends.
Later in 1785, when Leopold Mozart took in Nannerl's child, Wolfgang was not informed. However, in the following year Wolfgang found this out from a mutual acquaintance in Vienna. At this time, Wolfgang wrote to Leopold to ask if he would be willing to take care of his own two children while he and Constanze went on concert tour. Leopold turned him down, probably with harsh words. His letter to Wolfgang does not survive, but his summary to Nannerl of it does :
For interpretations of this letter, see Halliwell, which takes a viewpoint sympathetic to Mozart, and Solomon, which takes a viewpoint sympathetic to Wolfgang.
Starting around the time he wrote this letter and continuing through the first part of 1787, his health was failing. He had become seriously ill by April 4. On this day, Wolfgang wrote to him in alarm at the news, though he did not travel to Salzburg to see him. When Leopold Mozart died on 28 May, Wolfgang was unable to attend the funeral, the travel time to Salzburg being too long.
Little information is available on how Wolfgang took his father's death, but a postscript he included in a letter to his friend Gottfried von Jacquin suggests that, despite the quarrels and partial estrangement, his father's death was a blow to him: "I inform you that on returning home today I received the sad news of my most beloved father's death. You can imagine the state I am in."

Assessment

The assessment of Leopold Mozart as a person and as a father brings forth serious disagreement among scholars. The Grove Dictionary article, by Cliff Eisen, denounces "his misrepresentation at the hands of later biographers":
Other scholars have taken a harsher view. Solomon portrays Mozart as a man who loved his children but was unwilling to give them their independence when they reached adulthood, resulting in considerable hardship for them. Daniel Steptoe makes a similar assessment, and particularly faults Leopold for having blamed Wolfgang for his mother's early death – not just immediately following the death in 1778, but even later on in 1780.
Robert Spaethling, who translated Mozart's letters, typically takes a position strongly sympathetic to Wolfgang in his struggles with his father; he describes
Wolfgang's resignation of his Salzburg position and marriage to Constanze as a two-act "drama of liberation from Salzburg, specially Wolfgang's liberation from Leopold Mozart".

Compositions

Leopold Mozart's music is inevitably overshadowed by the work of his son Wolfgang, and in any case the father willingly sacrificed his own career to promote his son's. But his Cassation in G for Orchestra and Toys, remains popular, and a number of symphonies, a trumpet concerto, and other works also survive.
A contemporary report described what he had composed prior to 1757:
Leopold Mozart was much concerned with a naturalistic feel to his compositions, his Jagdsinfonie calls for shotguns, and his Bauernhochzeit includes bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, whoops and whistles, and pistol shots. calls for bells and whips in addition to a rich orchestra.
His oeuvre was extensive, but only recently have scholars begun to assess the scope or the quality of it; much is lost, and it is not known how representative the surviving works are of his overall output. Cliff Eisen, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on Leopold Mozart's symphonies, finds in a Symphony in G major examples of his "sensitivity to orchestral colour" and a work that "compares favourably with those of virtually any of Mozart's immediate contemporaries".
Some of his work was erroneously attributed to Wolfgang and some pieces attributed to Leopold were subsequently shown to be the work of Wolfgang. Much of what survives is light music but there is some more substantial work including his Sacramental Litany in D major and three fortepiano sonatas, all published in his lifetime.