Mozart family grand tour

• 1. Introduction

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  The Mozart family grand tour was a journey through western Europe that lasted from 1763 to 1766, undertaken by Leopold Mozart, his wife Anna Maria, and their two children, Maria Anna and Wolfgang. When the family set out, Maria Anna, known as Nannerl, was eleven years old. Her brother Wolfgang was seven. By the time they returned to Salzburg three years later, Wolfgang had composed his first symphonies, played before kings and queens across the continent, and transformed from a performer of simple keyboard pieces into a composer of genuine range.

  What drove a father to pull his children from their home for three years, moving them through dozens of cities in a hired carriage? What did the children actually encounter in the courts and concert halls of Paris, London, and The Hague? And what was the cost, in money, in health, and in childhood itself, of what biographer Wolfgang Hildesheimer called dragging a son all over Western Europe?

• 2. Two Children, One Father

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  Of seven children born to Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart, only two survived infancy. Nannerl was born on the 31st of July 1751, and Wolfgang was born on the 27th of January 1756. Leopold raised them under his own guidance, teaching reading, writing, drawing, arithmetic, history, and geography at home. Musical instruction was woven into daily life; the children grew up hearing their father and his colleagues rehearse and perform constantly.

  When Nannerl was seven, Leopold began teaching her the harpsichord. Wolfgang watched. According to Nannerl's own account, her brother immediately showed what she called his extraordinary, God-given talent, spending long stretches at the keyboard picking out intervals and composing small pieces by the age of five. A family friend, the poet Johann Andreas Schachtner, recalled that at four years old Wolfgang began to compose a recognisable piano concerto and could already demonstrate a phenomenal sense of pitch.

  Nannerl was no mere supporting act. She was playing with striking virtuosity by the time she was eleven, and Leopold regarded her as one of the most skilful keyboard players in Europe for her age. In 1762, when that milestone arrived, Leopold brought both children to Munich to play before Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria, and then took the whole family to Vienna for three months. At the Vienna imperial court, the Empress Maria Theresa tested Wolfgang by requiring him to play with the keyboard covered. The Viennese Treasury councillor Karl von Zinzendorf noted in his diary that a little boy said to be only five-and-a-half years old played the harpsichord, though Wolfgang was actually nearly seven. At the end of that first hectic week in Vienna, Leopold was able to send home the equivalent of more than two years' salary.

• 3. Preparing for Europe

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  Leopold had been appointed deputy Kapellmeister to the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg only in January 1763. He secured an extended leave of absence on the grounds that the family's successes would bring glory to Salzburg, its ruler, and to God. The practical machinery for such an undertaking relied on Johann Lorenz Hagenauer, a prominent Salzburg merchant who was also the Mozarts' friend and landlord. His trading connections in the major European cities would function as a banking network, allowing Leopold to draw funds while concert earnings accumulated.

  The route Leopold planned included southern Germany, the Austrian Netherlands, Paris, Switzerland, and possibly northern Italy. London was added only after encouragement during the Paris visit, and the eventual journey through the Dutch Republic was never planned at all. Before leaving, Wolfgang prepared by mastering the violin, apparently without any instruction. On the 9th of July 1763, the family set out. A carriage wheel broke on the very first day, forcing a twenty-four-hour halt for repairs.

  Leopold used the delay to his advantage. He took Wolfgang to the nearby church at Wasserburg, where, according to Leopold, the boy played the organ pedalboard as if he had been studying it for months.

• 4. Courts and Concert Rooms

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  In Munich the children played before Elector Maximilian III on successive evenings, earning the equivalent of half of Leopold's annual salary of 354 florins. At Mannheim the performance apparently amazed Elector Palatine Karl Theodor and his Electress. In Frankfurt the fourteen-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was present at the first public concert and would later recall, many years afterward, "the little fellow with his wig and his sword".

  At Aachen, Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, sister of Frederick the Great, tried to persuade Leopold to abandon his route and travel to Berlin. Leopold refused. She had no money, he wrote to Hagenauer, adding that she had repaid the performance with kisses, and noting that neither his host nor the postmaster would be contented with kisses. The family reached Brussels on the 5th of October, where they waited several weeks for Prince Charles of Lorraine to summon them. Leopold described the prince in a letter as doing nothing but hunt, gobble, and swill. When a grand concert was finally arranged in the prince's presence on the 7th of November, the family departed for Paris just over a week later.

  In Paris the German diplomat Friedrich Melchior von Grimm heard the children play and recorded Wolfgang's abilities in glowing terms, writing that the most consummate Kapellmeister could not be more profound in the science of harmony and modulation. At Versailles, Wolfgang was reportedly allowed to kiss the hand of the queen at a royal dinner. The family also visited the courtesan Madame de Pompadour, then in the last months of her life. According to Nannerl's recollections, Wolfgang was made to stand on a chair so the Madame could examine him, and she would not allow him to kiss her. In February 1764 the royal entertainments office gave the family 50 louis d'or, roughly 550 florins, and a gold snuff-box, presumably for private performances for the royal household.

• 5. London and the First Symphonies

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  On the 23rd of April 1764, the Mozarts arrived in London. Their first lodgings were above a barber's shop in Cecil Court, near St Martin-in-the-Fields. Four days later, the children played before King George III and his nineteen-year-old German queen, Charlotte. At a second royal engagement on the 19th of May, Wolfgang was asked by the king to play pieces by Handel, Johann Christian Bach, and Carl Friedrich Abel, and was allowed to accompany the queen as she sang an aria.

  Leopold organised a concert for the 5th of June, then arranged for Wolfgang to appear at a benefit for a maternity hospital on the 29th of June at Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens. The advertisement described the child as the celebrated and astonishing Master Mozart, a child of seven years of age, though he was in fact eight. On the 8th of July Leopold attended a private performance at the Grosvenor Square home of the Earl of Thanet and came home with an inflammation of the throat. He wrote to Hagenauer that his heart should be prepared to hear one of the saddest events, anticipating his own imminent death. He was ill for several weeks, and the family moved to a house at 180 Ebury Street, then considered part of the village of Chelsea.

  With concerts impossible during Leopold's illness, Wolfgang turned to composition. According to writer and musician Jane Glover, Wolfgang was inspired to write symphonies after meeting Johann Christian Bach. He soon completed his Symphony No. 1 in E flat, K. 16. The D major Symphony No. 4, K. 19 has, in Hildesheimer's words, an originality of melody and modulation which goes beyond the routine methods of his grown-up contemporaries. Wolfgang also composed his first vocal works in London, including the motet "God is our Refuge", K. 20, and the tenor aria Va, dal furor portata, K. 21. A set of violin sonatas was dedicated to Queen Charlotte at her own request and presented to her with an inscription in January 1765.

  Back in central London, the family moved to lodgings in Thrift Street in Soho, close to the residences of both J. C. Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel. Bach became a family friend; Nannerl later recalled Bach and the eight-year-old Wolfgang playing a sonata together, taking turns bar by bar, and that anyone not watching would have thought it was played by one person alone.

• 6. Illness in the Netherlands

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  Leopold had told Hagenauer the family would not visit the Dutch Republic. Then an envoy of Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau, sister of the Prince of Orange, persuaded him to bring the children to The Hague as official court guests. The detour began badly. At Lille, Wolfgang fell sick with tonsillitis and then Leopold suffered prolonged attacks of dizziness. The family reached The Hague on the 11th of September 1765.

  Soon after arriving, Nannerl developed a severe cold that kept her from performing before the Princess in the first week, and from a concert before the Prince a few days after that. Her condition worsened steadily; on the 21st of October she was given the last sacrament. A visit from the royal physician changed her treatment, and by the end of the month she was recovering. Then Wolfgang fell ill, and it was mid-December before he was on his feet again.

  Despite the illnesses, Wolfgang composed prolifically. He wrote a quodlibet for small orchestra and harpsichord called Gallimathias musicum, K. 32, for a special concert on the 11th of March to honour the Prince of Orange's coming of age. He also wrote keyboard variations on the Dutch song Laat ons juichen, Batavieren! and arias for the Princess using words from Metastasio's libretto Artaserse. The symphony K. 22 composed in The Hague is, according to biographer Stanley Sadie, a good deal more sophisticated than the earlier ones written in London, reflecting how rapidly Wolfgang's technique was advancing through those months of hardship.

  At Haarlem, on the way out of the Netherlands, the organist of St Bavo's Church invited Wolfgang to play the church organ, one of the largest in the country.

• 7. The Homeward Road

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  The family returned to Paris for two months, with no public concerts, though Grimm reported that Wolfgang's symphonies were being performed there. Grimm praised Nannerl as having the finest and most brilliant execution on the harpsichord, adding that no-one but her brother could rob her of supremacy. He quoted a Prince of Brunswick as saying that many Kapellmeisters at the peak of their art would die without knowing what the boy knew at the age of nine.

  In Switzerland the family encountered the composer André Grétry in Geneva. Many years later Grétry wrote that he had given Wolfgang an Allegro in E flat that was difficult but without pretension. Everyone except Grétry himself thought the boy's performance was a miracle. Grétry noted that when Wolfgang encountered passages he could not play, he substituted his own, following the modulations. This was the only adverse comment on record from the many who tested Wolfgang during the tour.

  The Prince of Fürstenberg received the party at Donaueschingen on the 20th of October for a stay of some twelve days. The family reached Munich on the 8th of November, where Wolfgang fell ill again and was delayed nearly two weeks. He recovered in time to perform before the Elector, with Nannerl, on the 22nd of November. They set out for Salzburg a few days later and arrived at their home on the Getreidegasse on the 29th of November 1766. On the 8th of December, one of Wolfgang's symphonies was performed at High Mass at Salzburg Cathedral, and the Prince-Archbishop confessed he was sceptical that the compositions were actually Wolfgang's, believing them not nearly bad enough to be the work of a child.

• 8. Costs and Consequences

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  The tour's finances remained opaque. Leopold never disclosed the full accounts. The librarian of St Peter's Abbey in Salzburg estimated that the gifts and curiosities the family brought back were worth about 12,000 florins, while placing the total costs of the enterprise at 20,000 florins. After ten weeks on the road in September 1763, Leopold had already spent 1,068 florins, covered by concert earnings but without any significant surplus. He wrote that there was nothing to be saved because they had to travel in noble or courtly style for the preservation of their health and the reputation of his court.

  At peaks the coffers filled quickly: near the end of the Paris visit in April 1764, Leopold announced he would deposit 2,200 florins with his bankers, and two months later, after initial London successes, he banked another 1,100 florins. But by November 1764 he had spent 1,870 florins in just four months. That following summer, with concerts drying up, the family resorted to daily performances at the Swan and Harp Tavern in Cornhill for two shillings and sixpence, which Jane Glover describes as humiliating. Hildesheimer compared this phase of the tour to a travelling circus.

  Musically, around thirty pieces composed by Wolfgang during the tour survive. They span keyboard sonatas, four symphonies, arias, church music, and the assorted pieces written for the Prince of Orange. Abel's Symphony No. 6 in E flat was similar enough to Wolfgang's style to be mistaken for his and was listed in the original Koechel catalogue as Mozart's Symphony No. 3, K. 18. Zaslaw notes that the earliest symphonies, though not in the class of the later Mozart masterpieces, are comparable in length, complexity, and originality to those being written at the same time by the acknowledged symphonic masters of the day.

  Nannerl's fate diverged sharply from her brother's after the tour. When Leopold and Wolfgang left for Italy in December 1769, Nannerl, now eighteen, was not taken along. She was no longer exhibitable as a child wonder. Wolfgang continued travelling for another six years before his appointment as a court musician, while Grimm's parting observation from Paris proved accurate: monarchs would soon be disputing about who should have them.