526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall

Speaker 1 If you want more from the show, join the Rest is History Club and with Christmas coming, you can also gift a whole year of access to the history lover in your life.

Speaker 1 Just head to therestishistory.com and click gifts.

Speaker 2 Hello everyone, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and we have two festive treats coming up for you today and on Thursday.

Speaker 2 These are two halves of a show that we recorded at the Royal Albert Hall on the 18th of October with a full choir, a full orchestra.

Speaker 2 So this is going to be, aside from, of course, those immortal episodes in which I sang, the first Rest is History episodes with musical accompaniment. The first episode, today's episode is on Mozart.

Speaker 1 Thursday's episode will be on Beethoven.

Speaker 2 Enjoy.

Speaker 4 Good evening, and welcome to The Rest is History.

Speaker 2 And Dominic, ladies and gentlemen, I think you'll agree that was quite something. We've had many great musical moments on the rest is history.

Speaker 2 One thinks of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, sung by me. And more recently, Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, which was also sung by me.
But I think, I mean, that wasn't bad.

Speaker 2 That was kind of up there, wasn't it?

Speaker 4 Ladies and gentlemen, please do not indulge him.

Speaker 4 That was not in that league at all, Tom. I think it is.
I think we can all agree on that. That was Mozart Symphony No.
25.

Speaker 4 It was played by the brilliant orchestra that I have behind me, the Academy of St. Martin in the fields.
We have the Philemonia Chorus.

Speaker 4 And above all, the most important person who's on the stage tonight, the person whose idea for this evening this was, the person who has made it possible, and that is our majestic conductor, Oliver Zeffman.

Speaker 4 I've become a fan of the podcast since the beginning.

Speaker 5 Actually, in a past life, I had a history undergraduate degree, but yeah, not anymore.

Speaker 5 And I want to touch on Tom Tom and Dominic because actually there are so many interesting, exciting stories in classical music, and people know music a little bit, but actually, if you don't go to concerts or you don't have much exposure to it, how would you get into it?

Speaker 5 And so this was a perfect opportunity to talk about two of the most important composers ever, probably two of the most important cultural figures ever, and their lives also found a very interesting point in history, which I'm going to talk about.

Speaker 5 So I got in touch, Eric, and we're here today. So

Speaker 5 thanks for coming. Actually, the piece you just heard now, you might recognise from the opening of Amadeus, the film.

Speaker 5 And actually, you're also here on stage. I think some of the players on stage were in that recording.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Oliver. Thank you.
Now, those of you who've seen the film Amadeus will know that it is the story of a brilliantly talented man who is hounded to his death. by a mediocre rival.
Yep.

Speaker 4 And Tom, this is

Speaker 4 a dynamic

Speaker 4 at Goalhanger Podcasts, is it not?

Speaker 2 No, I mean,

Speaker 2 this is not a dynamic that we have to worry about on the rest of history, is it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so we wanted to open with a kind of a tipping of the hat to Amadeus,

Speaker 2 because here we are in the Royal Albert Hall, one of the great music festival centers in the whole world.

Speaker 2 And so we thought that Mozart and Beethoven would be absolutely ideal themes because they are probably the most celebrated, the most iconic composers in the whole history of music.

Speaker 2 But I think as Oliver hinted, they're not just iconic. They are also the embodiments of a particular moment in cultural history.

Speaker 2 So the key thing about Amadeus is that people sitting down to watch this film, they know that Mozart is a genius. If they don't know that, then the film doesn't work.

Speaker 2 And the sweep of history that is covered by the lives first of Mozart and then of Beethoven, it witnesses the onset of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of the Romantic movement.

Speaker 2 And Dominic, this is the period that kind of enshrines the idea that an artist can be a genius, isn't it? A genius with a capital G.

Speaker 4 Absolutely, and that's why the lives of Mozart and Beethoven are a brilliant window onto the world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Speaker 4 We'll be exploring in this show the emergence of the idea of the genius and the idea of art with the capital A and the way in which that reflects political and social change and also, frankly, the way that people make money.

Speaker 4 So it's a continuous story that we've got for you tonight, but we're going to tell it in two halves.

Speaker 4 We will be coming to Beethoven in the second half. Now, can I just ask, are there any members here of the Restis History Club?

Speaker 4 Very good.

Speaker 4 So you can listen to that second half right away.

Speaker 2 And Dominic, I think we should say that that joke is made up by our beloved producer, Theo.

Speaker 4 It is, that is Theo's joke. Theo is very cross if people tell that joke and they don't give him the credit.
So well done, Theo.

Speaker 3 And in his own way, he's a genius.

Speaker 4 So, for now, in the first half, it is the story of Mozart, and that will be told to you by Mr. Tom Holland.
Tom, take it away.

Speaker 2 Right, so

Speaker 2 Mozart. He is born in 1756 in Salzburg, Austria, which is part of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by, I guess they're friends of the show, aren't they? The Habsburgs?

Speaker 3 Definitely friends of the show.

Speaker 4 Yeah, very much so.

Speaker 2 And so he's born into a Europe that is becoming ever more obsessed by music. But if it's an era that loves and values music,

Speaker 2 it's not a period that necessarily loves and values musicians.

Speaker 2 And if you think of the one other great 18th century composer who can kind of stand on the podium beside Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, he spends his whole life as an employee. He's not a genius.

Speaker 2 He's essentially a kind of salaried servant. And in fact, when he tried to leave the employee of one of his masters, the Duke of Weimar, the the Duke responded by locking him up in prison.

Speaker 2 So there is no room for playing the genius in the first half of the 18th century. There are, however, growing opportunities to perhaps make money under your own steam.

Speaker 2 And the person who exemplifies this is a fellow German of

Speaker 2 Bach's.

Speaker 2 But rather than staying in Germany as Bach did, this guy, Handel, comes to the richest, the most culturally significant city in Europe, the great El Dorado of music, and that city, I'm proud to say, is London.

Speaker 2 Hurrah! So Handel comes to London and he makes such a success of it that he ends up fabulously rich and he even has a tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Speaker 2 So there you have a kind of tension between the musician as servant and the musician as entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 And the father of Mozart, Leopold, who will play a key role in our story, he kind of has feet in both camps. So on the one hand,

Speaker 2 he is a violinist in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg. He's essentially kind of one rung up from a footman.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, he has a kind of secret brooding contempt for aristocratic and indeed archepiscopal employers. And as time will show, he has a brilliant, brilliant future as an impresario.

Speaker 2 And the reason for that is that his son, Wolfgang Amadeus, turns out to be a genius. And Dominic, I think your son, Sambrook Jr., is here tonight, isn't he? Yes, he is.

Speaker 2 And am I not right in thinking you mentioned to me that he won a regional poetry reading competition with

Speaker 2 the charge of the light brigade?

Speaker 4 He did, he did, and people laugh, and they shouldn't laugh because that was a sublime performance.

Speaker 2 So if you had shown a fraction of the entrepreneurial zeal of Leopold Mozart,

Speaker 2 you could have made an absolute packet by taking Arthur around poetry competitions across the length and breadth of the city,

Speaker 2 of the country.

Speaker 2 Now, I don't know when Arthur started reciting Tennyson, but young Mozart, his musical career supposedly begins very, very young.

Speaker 2 So it is said that at the age of two, he's picking tunes out on a keyboard. At the age of four, he composes his first concerto.

Speaker 2 And at the age of six, he goes to the imperial court in Vienna, where he meets the Habsburg royal family.

Speaker 4 Oh, and that's we've talked about that in the French Revolution series. So that's when he meets Marie Antoinette.
She's very young, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, she's just a little girl at this point. And little baby Mozart, he climbs up onto the lap of Marie Antoinette's mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, gives her a big hug, gives her a little kiss.

Speaker 2 It's all absolutely adorable. And Leopold is watching this and he goes, Kuching,

Speaker 2 we have got a gold mine here. And so he gets permission from his employer, the Archbishop, to go on tour.

Speaker 2 And they go to all the cities of the Holy Roman Empire, they go to Paris, they go to London, they go to Versailles, and of course, they end up in London.

Speaker 2 And they have a brilliant time here, I'm happy to say. They meet the king and queen, they hang out in Soho.

Speaker 2 Leopold becomes so kind of habituated to London life that he catches a very British ailment, which he notes in

Speaker 2 his journal, the English call a cold so he has a terrible cold

Speaker 2 and it's absolutely brilliant they make absolute packet

Speaker 2 and they're not actually generally paid in cash although there is a bit of cash it's generally kind of knickknacks and gigors so endless snuff box silver watches that kind of thing and one of the markers of how well Leopold is doing is that he can actually complain having eaten four roast chickens on the trot that he is still hungry so this is very like the scenes at the Northamptonshire Regional Poetry Competition.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 Well, you should have thought, you know, if you'd taken Arthur and pushed him in the way that Leopold did, you could have had as much roast chicken as you wanted for the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 So the whole reason that the young Mozart makes Leopold such money is the fact that he is seen by the whole of Europe as being something completely exceptional.

Speaker 2 And so because he is the talk of Europe, people across the continent are saying, you know, what's going on here? Where has this extraordinary

Speaker 2 precocious talent come from?

Speaker 2 And there are various theories, and they're not mutually contradictory, but I guess this is a very devout religious age, probably the most popular theory, and it's the one that Leopold himself cleaves to, is the notion that

Speaker 2 Mozart is a gift from God. And this is certainly what he tells the archbishop.

Speaker 2 You know, he goes and says, look, I've been given this miracle by God. I should basically take him out and make loads of money because it's what Jesus would have wanted.

Speaker 2 There are others however who kind of slightly cut God out of the equation and say that he's a prodigy of nature and this is a period where the idea that

Speaker 2 humanity kind of separate from civilization so the idea of a child being possessed of kind of great quality It's very very important So Rousseau the innocence of childhood

Speaker 2 Exactly and so Mozart becomes a kind of icon for this idea

Speaker 2 It's also the Enlightenment of course and there are skeptics there are people who think think that that Leopold is kind of writing You know the young Mozart's concertos for him and so some of these savants take the little boy and lock him up in a room and tell him to write something and he does and they're satisfied and actually the the ultimate proof of Mozart's genius is that he is inspected by a member of the Royal Society here in London and he gives Mozart a clean bill of health as well.

Speaker 2 So it becomes apparent that he is not a fraud. He really is an absolute prodigy of nature, a a gift of God, whatever you want to call him.

Speaker 2 But there is, of course, a problem coming down the road towards Leopold.

Speaker 2 You know, he's got to keep himself in his roast chicken and his snuff boxes.

Speaker 2 And the problem with a prodigy is that while it's amazing to watch a six-year-old play the violin, it's slightly less amazing to watch a teenager play the violin.

Speaker 2 And so what Leopold decides as the young Mozart is approaching his teenage years is is that rather than emphasizing his precocity as a musician,

Speaker 2 as a player of instruments, which is what he had previously been doing, he's going to focus on the young Mozart's ability as a composer.

Speaker 2 And to that end, he goes on the kind of the most extravagant, the boldest tour of all. It's kind of the equivalent of the Beatles the first time they go to America.

Speaker 2 Mozart goes to Italy, the home of music. This is an age age when Italians would regard the idea that a German speaker could be musically able as kind of comical.

Speaker 2 But Mozart pulls it off. He dazzles everybody.
He, you know, lots more snuff boxes, but also lots of Italian maestros going, wow, this guy is incredible.

Speaker 2 And the ultimate imprimatur of quality, the stamp of approval from Italy, comes when Mozart is given a commission from the opera house in Milan.

Speaker 2 So, one of the most famous opera houses in the whole of Europe. And he is told, Would you like to write us an opera? And Dominic, when he is given this commission, Mozart is 14 years old.

Speaker 4 So, if you ever wanted to hear a 14-year-old's music,

Speaker 4 this is your chance.

Speaker 4 We have for you Mitredati Drei di Ponto by Wolfgang Mamadeus Mozart.

Speaker 4 We have Nel Grave Tormento, which I believe means in a very grave torment.

Speaker 4 And it's going to be sung for us by Nardas Williams.

Speaker 4 The

Speaker 4 road to remote

Speaker 4 praise

Speaker 4 of

Speaker 4 freedom

Speaker 4 is

Speaker 4 free

Speaker 4 just

Speaker 4 single

Speaker 4 if you look at my story, it's the most important.

Speaker 4 It's not your wisdom.

Speaker 4 It's not your mistake.

Speaker 4 Lord.

Speaker 4 You

Speaker 4 go

Speaker 4 before

Speaker 4 Jesus.

Speaker 4 Kissing.

Speaker 4 Oh,

Speaker 4 oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

Speaker 4 oh, oh,

Speaker 4 oh, oh, oh,

Speaker 4 oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, so,

Speaker 4 yes, the best soul,

Speaker 4 it's not your misconception,

Speaker 4 but me

Speaker 4 no more.

Speaker 4 Wow, thank you, Nardis. That was amazing.
And thank you, Mozart.

Speaker 4 So remember, Mozart was just 14 years old when he wrote that piece.

Speaker 2 Yeah, amazing. So everything is going brilliantly for young Mozart.
He's got his GCSE in music.

Speaker 2 He's got loads of new commissions on the back of Mitradate. And back in Salzburg, everyone's unbelievably proud of him.
The Archbishop absolutely purring. It all looks superb.
Except that...

Speaker 2 There are gathering clouds hanging over Project Mozart. Now, the first of these is what Leopold really wants for his son.
He wants to get him long-term security.

Speaker 2 And the way he thinks he can best do that is to find his son a post as a Kappelmeister, which effectively is the kind of the head of music at a court. And so he takes him round various courts.

Speaker 2 And all the dukes and the counts and so on, I mean, they're impressed, they recognize that Mozart is quality, but they keep saying, oh, he's too young, he's too young, come back in 10 years' time.

Speaker 2 So this is very disappointing for Leopold, but even more disappointing is the fact that there seems to be no interest in Mozart whatsoever from the imperial court in Vienna.

Speaker 2 And he's puzzled by this because, of course, you know, as a six-year-old, little Mozart had hugged the Empress. But the awful truth is, is that the Empress actually thinks they're a bit vulgar.

Speaker 2 She says, you know, they've been going around Europe like beggars. It's very, very undignified.
And so she is not interested.

Speaker 2 And then the worst blow of all, the Archbishop of Salzburg, who'd been such an indulgent patron,

Speaker 2 he dies. And he gets replaced by a new archbishop who's a very different character.
And he rejoices in the splendid name of Count Hieronymus Coloredo.

Speaker 2 And Count Hieronymus Coloredo, the new Archbishop, he's had enough of the Mozarts gadding around Europe. He wants them to be what they are.
He wants them to be essentially his servants.

Speaker 2 And so his goal, you know, which he institutes the moment he has been enthroned as Archbishop, is to treat Mozart not as a genius, but as an employee.

Speaker 4 So, John, this is very like our situation, isn't it?

Speaker 4 This is how we are treated. They're in the audience tonight.
Our executive producers, Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, they treat us like employees, don't they? And

Speaker 3 we

Speaker 4 like Mozart feel humiliated, treated like servants. And this is exactly what happens to Mozart when he goes back to Salzburg, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and well, I mean, I don't want to compare us to Mozart. Let's not go down there.

Speaker 3 No, I have Mozambique with Absolutely.

Speaker 2 But just to say,

Speaker 2 there are social humiliations, but I think also what oppresses Mozart more than anything else is that he knows how good he is. You know, he wants to test the limits.

Speaker 2 He doesn't want to be chained up in Salzburg, having to compose whatever rubbish the Archbishop wants. He wants basically to do a handle, to go out there and become a freelance.

Speaker 2 And the Archbishop is furious at this.

Speaker 2 He sees it, I mean not unjustifiably, as kind of rank ingratitude. And Leopold, his dad, is also worried for various reasons, I think.

Speaker 2 One, he doesn't want his son to end up kind of starving to death in a garret. He knows it's going to be very insecure being a freelance.

Speaker 2 I think also he's anxious that if his son annoys the Archbishop, then this might you know, end up badly for him. He might get dismissed from his own position.

Speaker 2 And I think also he can't bear the thought of being separated from his son.

Speaker 2 The relationship between Leopold and the young Mozart, it's the most intense relationship that either of them will have in their entire lives.

Speaker 2 And the thing that Leopold is becoming increasingly worried about,

Speaker 2 Mozart's little fellow, as he calls it, Mozart is getting interested in girls. And

Speaker 2 what Leopold is worried about is that Mozart might actually marry. So this is the real disaster that he's fretting about.
But, you know, Mozart, he's 1770, he turns 21.

Speaker 2 And he decides that he's going to go out into the world and he doesn't care. And when Leopold says no, he goes, oh, damn, I'm off.

Speaker 2 And so off he goes, and Leopold can't go because he's got to stay behind with the Archbishop. So Mozart's much-loved mother goes with him.

Speaker 2 And they head off and they go to various places across the Holy Roman Empire. Not to any great effect, but I think Mozart's having quite a good time.

Speaker 2 And then they end up in a city on the Rhine called Mannheim. And in Mannheim, they stay in a house that is owned by the prompter in the local theatre, Herr Weber.

Speaker 2 And Herr Weber has not one, not two, not three, but four gorgeous daughters.

Speaker 2 And young Wolfie...

Speaker 2 He falls madly in love with a soprano called Aloisha

Speaker 2 and the news of this gets back to Leopold and he absolutely blows a gasket and he writes to Mozart and to his mother and says what are you doing why are you wasting your time mooning over girls in a no-hope place like Mannheim go to Paris go to London you know if you want to make a go of being freelance do it in a place where you can make enough money for it to be sustainable and so Mozart obeys and he goes to Paris and it's a disaster.

Speaker 2 He hates Paris. He hates the French.
He hates French music, he hates French taste, he hates everything about it.

Speaker 4 That's fair enough, Tom.

Speaker 2 I was waiting for the gusts of laughter.

Speaker 2 I'm glad they finally came. Because we are now, and you'll be ashamed of yourselves for laughing, we're plunging into tragedy.
Because while Mozart is in Paris, his mother dies.

Speaker 2 And Mozart is prostrated by this. He adored his mother and he is crippled by grief.
And eventually he leaves Paris and he crawls back to Mannheim to bury his face in the comforting chest of Aloisa

Speaker 2 only to find that Aloisa's only gone and married someone else and so what's poor Wolfie to do? He has to go back to Salzburg.

Speaker 4 That must be humiliating Tom.

Speaker 2 Very, very humiliating. And essentially he kind of knuckles down for several years.
You know, he writes the kind of dreary stuff that the Archbishop wants.

Speaker 2 But all the time he's kind of, he's pulling at his chains. And, you know, he still has his dreams.
And we've got to follow our dreams, Dominic. We've got to follow our dreams, haven't we? I mean, you,

Speaker 2 as a young man,

Speaker 2 you were an academic, but you had dreams of writing enormously long books about the Wilson government and

Speaker 2 recording podcasts about monkeys. And you lived your dream.

Speaker 4 I have. A nightmare, I think some people would call it.

Speaker 2 And Mozart is determined to live his dream.

Speaker 2 And the crucial moment comes in 1781 when he's 25, and he's summoned to Vienna by the Archbishop of Salzburg, who wants to show him off like a kind of performing monkey.

Speaker 2 And this is humiliating for Mozart because he is a figure of great consequence in Vienna, much admired by fellow musicians, by fellow composers, and he doesn't want to be at the beck and call of an archbishop.

Speaker 2 And so he says,

Speaker 2 no go.

Speaker 2 On top of that, as well as infuriating the Archbishop, he also infuriates Leopold because when he turns up in Vienna, he finds that the Webers have moved there. And although the soprano, Aloysia,

Speaker 2 has, you know, she's got her own man, there is another Weber sister available, and this is Constanza. And Mozart announces that he wants to marry her, and Leopold hits the roof.

Speaker 2 So he's infuriated both the Archbishop and Leopold. He's summoned to a kind of

Speaker 2 a make-or-break conference, and it goes so badly that the Archbishop's steward, according to Mozart's own account, kicks him up the arse out of the room, and that is it.

Speaker 2 That is the end of Mozart's term of employment at Salzburg, and from this point on, he will become...

Speaker 2 freelance.

Speaker 4 So he's in a bit of a mess, isn't he, Tom? Because this is all very stressful for him.

Speaker 2 It is a mess. And I think Mozart's music has such a quality of lightness and often of joy that

Speaker 2 it can be easy to miss the expressions of stress and unhappiness, but they are definitely there. And the piece we're going to hear now is...

Speaker 2 I'd never heard it played live before. When we walked in here this morning, this afternoon for our rehearsal, I heard the strains of it coming from the stage.
And I can't wait to hear it again.

Speaker 2 It's a piece that he wrote in Paris in the days and weeks after the death of his mother and it is simply sublime.

Speaker 4 So ladies and gentlemen this is the violin sonata in E minor and it is going to be played by Stephanie Gonley on the violin and Mishka Rushdie Momung on the piano. Enjoy.

Speaker 4 I mean, Dominic, that was wonderful.

Speaker 2 That is a reminder that no recording can compare with Power of Live music. That was amazing.
Not at all.

Speaker 7 Now, as you have been listening to this episode, you might have noticed that this episode had something a little extra special, didn't it, Tom?

Speaker 2 It absolutely did. And that's because every piece of music you've heard during this podcast has been performed live by the Academy of St.
Martin in the Fields.

Speaker 7 And if you were there, you will remember how absolutely extraordinary their performance was. We are thrilled to have them featured on this episode.

Speaker 6 And frankly, we're even more thrilled to be able to make that recording of that event open and free to everybody in the podcast who wasn't able to attend. in person.

Speaker 2 The Academy of St.

Speaker 2 Martin in the Fields is one of the most recorded orchestras of all time, giving more than 80 concerts a year across the world, including a stunning series in London at the historic Church of St.

Speaker 2 Martin in the Fields.

Speaker 7 The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is offering an exclusive, complimentary friends membership to all listeners of the rest is history.

Speaker 2 You can attend open rehearsals, enjoy pre-concert talks and meet and greets with soloists, access exclusive digital downloads, and crucially, receive 25% off tickets to their London concerts.

Speaker 2 To claim your complimentary friends' membership and explore all these incredible opportunities, just go to asmf.org forward slash history. So don't miss out.

Speaker 2 Visit asmf.org forward slash history and sign up today.

Speaker 4 So, Tom, Mozart has left Salzburg.

Speaker 4 Does his gamble pay off?

Speaker 2 Well, obviously, it comes with costs.

Speaker 2 Leopold Leopold has repeatedly reminded Mozart of these costs. They are above all financial.

Speaker 2 So Mozart is very vulnerable to geopolitical shocks hitting Austria and affecting the ability of aristocratic patrons to

Speaker 2 sponsor him.

Speaker 2 Another risk of course is that he might fall ill because then you know no one he won't be able to write, he won't make any money.

Speaker 2 And even though he's left the Archbishop of Salzburg, there are still uncomprehending patrons.

Speaker 2 And the the whole point for Mozart to go freelance really is so that he can stretch his wings, he can test the limits of music. And I think because of that, he is seen by

Speaker 2 certain patrons as being difficult, as being challenging.

Speaker 4 Right, so there's the famous moment for those of you who've seen Amadeus,

Speaker 4 which apparently is reflected in some of the sources, that Joseph II, the emperor, sees one of Mozart's productions and says, it's great, but there are too many notes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so probably apocryphal, but I mean,

Speaker 2 it has the ring of truth because I think Mozart really is impatient with the kind of the musical ancien regime, if you want to put it like that. And in fact,

Speaker 2 in 1790, so when the French Revolution is really kicking off, a fellow composer accuses Mozart of being, in musical terms, a song collotte, someone who wants to kind of burn down.

Speaker 4 Somebody who's wearing trousers rather than britches.

Speaker 2 Well, so that's true. I mean, we'll see.
Mozart is actually quite, he likes his fashion, so he might like a clot, he might like a pair of trousers, but he is pushing at the limits.

Speaker 2 And then the other problem, of course, that he faces is a more personal and more emotional one, and that is that he has gone through a huge family bust-up.

Speaker 2 So not only is his father alienated, but his beloved sister Nanel, who's also a brilliant musician,

Speaker 2 much loved by Mozart, she kind of ends up so cross with him that basically communication between them breaks off. And in

Speaker 2 1782, when he marries Constanza, neither his father nor his sister is there at the wedding.

Speaker 2 And although Mozart remains in contact with Leopold, they love each other too much for the break to be total.

Speaker 2 I think that from this point onwards, the love that they undoubtedly both still feel for each other is massively, massively poisoned by a kind of sense of mutual resentment.

Speaker 4 But Tom, let's get down to what really matters.

Speaker 4 The point of going freelance is often to make more money. Is Mozart making more money?

Speaker 2 He is making more money, yes. So

Speaker 2 he has servants,

Speaker 2 he goes from being a servant to having servants.

Speaker 2 Like you, Dominic, like me, like Keir Starmer, he loves a suit.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 2 he's

Speaker 2 always cutting a dash. He has an exquisite red coat, which excites much admiration.
And actually, when his father comes to stay with him in Vienna,

Speaker 2 Mozart takes great pleasure in kind of saying, Look at these apartments.

Speaker 2 These are costing me more than I would have earned in an entire year had I stayed in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, which is, of course, what his father had done.

Speaker 2 But you said, you know, the most important thing to Mozart is money. I mean, it is important to him, but actually, I think the most important thing to him is that he can test

Speaker 2 his sense of his own genius to the absolute limits. And so so

Speaker 2 it is claimed that his reply to Joseph II's comment, oh, you know, too many notes, my dear Mozart, Mozart replies, there are exactly as many notes as there need to be, Your Majesty.

Speaker 2 And if there are, you know, Joseph II in Vienna and across Europe, people who don't properly appreciate what Mozart is doing, there are lots who do.

Speaker 2 And it's not just that Mozart is writing masterpieces. These masterpieces are recognized as such.

Speaker 2 And I think it's from this that you get in the Romantic period. Mozart is not really, you know, he's not a product of the Romantic period.

Speaker 2 But going into the 1800s, the 1810s, people look back and they say, actually, you know, he was a romantic figure before Romanticism. This is a man who

Speaker 2 defied convention. in the cause of following his art.
He didn't let anything stand in his way. And I suppose

Speaker 2 the great work that most famously, in the opinion of his romantic admirers, illustrated this was an opera that was premiered in Prague in October 1787.

Speaker 2 And it was written crucially four months, it was premiered four months after the death of Leopold, so Mozart's father. And this opera was called Don Giovanni.

Speaker 2 And Don Giovanni told the story of a man who cared nothing for convention, who seduced, who committed adultery,

Speaker 2 who killed people, and he never apologizes. But Don Giovanni has serious daddy issues.
And the daddy is a figure called the Commendatore,

Speaker 2 whom Don Giovanni had killed in the opening moments of the opera, and who he then sees a statue of and in a foolish moment invites to supper and is absolutely stunned.

Speaker 2 He's sitting down to his meal when there's a great hammering on the door, and in strides

Speaker 2 the statue of the Commendatore.

Speaker 2 And the Commendatore

Speaker 2 points at Don Giovanni

Speaker 2 and he sings:

Speaker 3 Don

Speaker 3 Giovanni

Speaker 4 at Chenate.

Speaker 4 Shameless.

Speaker 2 I've now sung up for her on the stage of the Albert Hall.

Speaker 2 Don Giovanni still refuses to apologize.

Speaker 2 The Commendatore urges him to repent. Don Giovanni won't.
He reaches out, takes his hand. You're going to take your hand?

Speaker 2 And then the Commendatore drags Don Giovanni down to hell, and the last you hear of Don Giovanni, he goes,

Speaker 2 and that's the story. Now,

Speaker 3 you don't need to see it.

Speaker 2 You never need to see it now. So is Mozart, is Mozart Don Giovanni?

Speaker 2 I don't think so. I think that is a kind of romantic overreading.

Speaker 2 And I think actually, if you want an opera that gives you a sense of where Mozart is coming from, the sense of frustration that he feels as someone who is beholden on the sponsorship of aristocratic patrons, much better to look at the opera he wrote the previous year in 1786.

Speaker 2 And this is The Marriage of Figaro an absolute smash hit I think it's the oldest opera to have been permanently on the the the repertoire

Speaker 2 and this is based on a very controversial French play which has been banned in Vienna because it is seen as being offensive towards the aristocracy and the marriage of Figaro it Figaro himself is a servant to a count

Speaker 2 and he wants to marry the maid of the Countess. The maid is called Susanna.
But the Count wants to claim the Droit de Seigneur, the right to take Susanna to bed before she marries Figaro.

Speaker 2 And Figaro is furious about this, understandably, I think.

Speaker 2 And the plot of the opera, there's a whole, you know, there's loads of jumping out of windows, swapping clothes, all this kind of thing. And it ends up with

Speaker 2 the Count humiliated in a garden. And

Speaker 2 this moment of humiliation is then transformed into a moment of the most exquisite reconciliation. The Countess, who has been wronged by the Count, forgives him.

Speaker 2 Susanna, who's been wronged by Figaro, forgives him.

Speaker 2 And I just want to pay tribute to my beloved uncle, who's no longer with me, who, when I was about 13 or 14, gave me a box set of cassettes of the marriage of Figaro and talked me through this moment, gave me love, not just for Mozart, but for opera full stop.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it would be my desert islandist that moment. But it's not the moment, I think, that best conveys the sense of frustration that Mozart felt with the social setup that he was involved in.

Speaker 2 Because there is a better aria that does that. And this is the last aria that Figaro the servant sings.

Speaker 2 And it's a moment where he thinks that Susanna has betrayed him. And he's so upset, he's so angry that he kind of breaks through the fourth wall and he addresses the men in the audience directly.

Speaker 2 And he says, aren't women awful? They're always betraying us. And of course, he's wrong.

Speaker 2 But But those in the know, those who are familiar with the original French play, would know that this aria is in the place that in the play has Figaro complaining about the aristocracy, addressing the count, saying, you think you're so wonderful, but you're not wonderful at all.

Speaker 2 The only reason that you can do what you do is because you were born into it.

Speaker 2 And so, if you want to have a sense of not just Figaro, but Mozart speaking truth to power, This aria we're about to hear now.

Speaker 2 This is the one.

Speaker 4 Well, the wonderful news is that Tom will not be singing that aria.

Speaker 4 It's going to be sung by William Thomas, thank God.

Speaker 4 And the aria is called Aprite un poquelli ochi, which means, I believe, open a little bit your eyes. William.

Speaker 4 Selvicina

Speaker 3 Yosento Cente,

Speaker 3 Edessa

Speaker 3 Mori alto,

Speaker 3 Edio comincho maya fare el shimonito, mistierimarito

Speaker 3 in girl

Speaker 3 El momento, del la miacelimoria

Speaker 3 y codevalecendo

Speaker 3 en el federlo yor redeva me sensa saperlo

Speaker 3 o

Speaker 3 susana

Speaker 3 suzano

Speaker 3 quanta per mi trusti

Speaker 3 unquel ince no afacha

Speaker 3 unqueliocchi no chuenti

Speaker 3 fi creduto lafria

Speaker 3 ya che el fiercia dona

Speaker 3 quadona

Speaker 3 falia

Speaker 3 A privo quel yochi

Speaker 3 muomini fauti shoci

Speaker 3 quarta te

Speaker 3 a son

Speaker 3 quadezon quality quality

Speaker 3 sensi

Speaker 3 Aku to be born like Jensi Blood for the Maton

Speaker 3 Mad More

Speaker 3 John

Speaker 3 Blood More

Speaker 4 Tom, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say it, but that is how a professional does it.

Speaker 2 It's got to start somewhere.

Speaker 4 So, thank you very much. That was wonderful.

Speaker 4 So, Tom, Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni are both great successes. And obviously, the image that we often have of Mozart is this sort of ludicrous spendthrift.

Speaker 4 But don't they show that actually he's an extremely capable entrepreneur as well as a magnificent composer?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it does.

Speaker 2 And I think the idea of Mozart as a spendthrift, as a kind of, you know, a genius who in money matters is just a child, I think that that's in large part a reflection of the impact of Leopold's letters in which he's cast as exactly that.

Speaker 2 But it is true to say that by 1789 and 1790, things are starting to go slightly downhill.

Speaker 2 And of course, these are the years that seize the French French Revolution breaks out and Austria is very much impacted by this.

Speaker 2 Marie Antoinette of course is a Habsburg and on top of that on the eastern flank of the Habsburg Empire a war has broken out with the Turks.

Speaker 2 So this is not good news for someone who depends essentially on kind of stable conditions, conditions of peace, to get commissions.

Speaker 2 But there are also more kind of domestic, more personal reasons for the downturn in Mozart's fortunes. His wife Constanza, falls very seriously ill.

Speaker 2 You know, he has to spend lots of money on medicine, packing her off to spas, all the kind of stuff that happens in the German-speaking world when you fall ill.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Mozart himself then falls ill. And this is the real calamity because, of course, when he's lying in bed, he can't work.
And if he can't work, he's not making any money. And he does recover.

Speaker 2 But he's really, really short of funds. And so 1790, 1791, his correspondence is full of, frankly, embarrassing cadging letters trying to get money out of his rich friends.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 in the summer of 1791, there comes a fateful commission, a commission to write a requiem.

Speaker 4 So the traditional version of this story is that it's a very strange and eerie and haunting moment in his life, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think the kind of the eeriest, the most haunting story perhaps in the whole classical music. And it derives from reminiscences from Constanza in the wake of Mozart's death.

Speaker 2 And she spoke to the man who would then go on to write the first biography of Mozart.

Speaker 2 And according to Constanza, the commission to write the Requiem,

Speaker 2 it's anonymous. It comes from an unknown messenger.
Mozart starts writing it.

Speaker 2 and he falls ill, but continues working on it. And as he works on it, he becomes convinced that he is writing the requiem for himself.
And not only that, but that he is being poisoned.

Speaker 2 Now, he never finishes it, because on the 5th of December, 1791, just after midday, he dies.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he is buried in a common grave. Almost no mourners attend the ceremony, and after he is buried, there is no memorial, no headstone to mark the place where his body lay.

Speaker 2 And it's from this that you get again the romantic myth that Mozart died forgotten, unknown, a pauper.

Speaker 2 And it's very powerful and this is why people believe it. However, in the main, it's not true.
Sorry.

Speaker 2 We've told it and now we're going to debunk it. We're going to have our cake and we're going to eat it

Speaker 2 We know exactly who commissioned the Requiem. It was an eccentric count who enjoyed employing musicians to write pieces for him and he would then pass them off as his own.

Speaker 2 So he was essentially employing Mozart to be a ghost writer. Mozart was not poisoned.
He seems to have died of rheumatic fever. He was not forgotten.

Speaker 2 When the news spread across Vienna that Mozart had died, huge crowds gathered outside his house to mourn him. He was cherished and admired.
And maybe because of that, he wasn't really a pauper either.

Speaker 2 He He was still in financial trouble, but he was starting to recoup his losses.

Speaker 2 An opera that he wrote in 1791 that got put on the magic flute, absolute smash, probably his most lucrative opera of the lot.

Speaker 2 So there are signs that he was kind of hauling himself back from the financial brink.

Speaker 2 And although it is true that he had a very spare funeral, that people didn't go to

Speaker 2 the ceremony, that there is no headstone, I think this reflects

Speaker 2 more than anything his personal piety, his sense that possibly as a reaction to the excesses of the Baroque, that an overly flamboyant funeral would be disrespectful to God.

Speaker 4 But even so, Tom, this is surely the most tragic moment in the history of classical music, of music generally.

Speaker 2 I do find it upsetting. to comprehend, you know, to

Speaker 2 ponder the death of Mozart so early. He dies when he's 36.

Speaker 2 You think of all the music that he could have written if he'd survived. He kept a journal and in it he

Speaker 2 was working out things that he might do late in the future and he would write up

Speaker 2 the date through the 1790s into the 1800s. So he was contemplating living certainly

Speaker 2 into the 19th century and of course he doesn't. And it's hard not to feel that as a terrible tragedy.
But I think also the kind of impersonality of that funeral,

Speaker 2 it is upsetting. So the scene in Amadeus where he's kind of chucked into the grave, and then

Speaker 2 lime is thrown over it, and they just wander off, and there is Mozart's body. I do find that kind of upsetting.
And I think the reason for that is that

Speaker 2 in his lifetime, Mozart was loved, but in the wake of his death, he became even more loved, and he has remained loved to this day.

Speaker 2 And there is a kind of sorrow about his death, I think.

Speaker 4 Well, thank you, Tom. That was, dare I say, a tour de force.

Speaker 4 And now to say farewell to Mozart.

Speaker 4 There is no better piece than Mozart's great requiem. For my money, one of the very best pieces of music ever written.

Speaker 4 So we're now going to have the introitus and the curie, and that's going to be with the Philharmonia chorus and the return of Nardus Williams.

Speaker 4 God

Speaker 4 is

Speaker 4 coming

Speaker 4 to

Speaker 4 sandboard

Speaker 4 Let's go stand

Speaker 4 for

Speaker 4 the faith in

Speaker 4 in the

Speaker 4 world

Speaker 4 God damn,

Speaker 4 God does

Speaker 4 not

Speaker 4 faithfuls

Speaker 4 King

Speaker 4 and burst

Speaker 4 forth, and

Speaker 4 the voice and

Speaker 2 Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it.
And we will be back on Thursday in 2025, our first show of 2025, with the second half of that show that we recorded at the Royal Albert Hall.

Speaker 2 And the focus of that show will be Beethoven. I hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 3 Bye-bye.