The Mozarts, Who They Were (Volume 1) - Diego Minoia

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a wide range of acquaintances, with friends who visited them at their home (some on a daily basis) or who they visited in their friends' homes, as well as the students of Leopold and Nannerl. They passed their time together chatting and gossiping or playing cards (tresette, tarocchi, briscola, etc.) or at range shooting played with air-compressed guns always made with small wagers of money or birilli (a game similar to bowling). The guests frequently stayed at the Mozart's home for meals and likewise the Mozart family was often hosted at their friends' homes to dine. And naturally, there were many occasions to play music. To begin with, there were the music lessons; Leopold taught violin while Nannerl taught the harpsichord at the Mozart residence or at the students' homes. But in the household, Mozart also played music with his circle of friends from Salzburg, many of whom belonged to the Orchestra of the Archbishop Court. He also played with foreigners passing through the city who were invited by Leopold or brought to him by his circle of friends who regularly visited.

       Nannerl's friends would style her hair, accompany her for walks along the city walls (which no longer exist today), participate in the almost daily religious receptions which were often accompanied by the music of the Court composers such as Eberlin, Adlgasser, Michael Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart, himself. Processions were another attraction for the people, especially those of solemn occasions of which the Archbishop Prince would make an appearance. Or, as on the occasion of the Feast of Corpus Christi where they were accompanied in grand style by the Order of Chivalry, as was written in Nannerl's diary, Wolfgang couldn't resist making fun of the fact that on the occasion of a visit to the Hagenauer family (the previous owners of the Mozart house in Getreidegasse), he "saw the horses crapping" and dropped a lit candle on the procession.

       Things wouldn't have been complete without blasphemous distractions, such as the frequent participation of the Mozart family (even for many days in a row) of the comedic performances proposed by the theatrical companies that toured Salzburg and would stop over for a few weeks where they offered various shows from their repertoire. In 1779, for example, Johann Bohm's theatrical company settled in Salzburg for the season, proposing over the course of the year about ten encore performances (in the neighborhood of sixty, according to Nannerl's diary) of a variety of comedies and ballets, which were, in truth, judged as "very bad". There were also the musical academies and ballets, as well as the evenings of weekly ballroom dancing, mostly during the Carnival at the Town Hall.

      Here is the musical program of an academy held on 18 March 1779. (In Nannerl's diary, the twenty-three year-old Wolfgang sometimes wrote in his sister's journal with his characteristic gags, describing the academy as "trendy crapademia"):

      1 -- a symphony (the Haffner Symphony KV385 composed by Wolfgang -- A/N);

      2 - an Italian aria;

      3 - a trio with three voices by Antonio Salieri (Imperial Composer and Kapellmeister during that epoch in Vienna -- A/N);

      4 -- a cello concert by Joseph Fiala (oboist, cellist and friend of Mozart -- A/N);

      5 -- a voice aria, oboe and harp;

      6 -- An aria with trumpets, timpani, flutes, violas, bassoons and basses written by me (Wolfgang -- A/N);

      7 -- Anfossi's first finale from "Perseguita incognitata" (Wolfgang's comically twisted title of the opera; the correct title by the composer Pasquale Anfossi's opera is "L'incognita perseguitata" (A/N);

      8 -- out of mere compassion did we let Ceccarelli sing a Rondeau (Ceccarelli was a "castrato" and family friend who served the Salzburg Court, and for whom Wolfgang wrote an aria and an acting part -- A/N);

      9 -- In conclusion, we performed in the entire city of Milan n.b.: with trumpets and timpani.

      Moreover, on special occasions there was other forms of entertainment, such as fireworks in the Summer Equitation School.

       Another fashionable activity during the mid-eighteenth century (also documented as a pastime in the Mozart household) was the silhouette, a portrait technique that traced the outline of a person or object and coloring the entire subject in black. This was achieved by hanging a white cloth in front of the subject while it remained back-lit, highlighting the outline. Among these activities (with the exception of brief lessons nearly everyday), there were of course the responsibilities at the Court that weren't particularly demanding for concerts or various tasks, such as Leopold's job tuning the piano at the Archbishop's summer residence at Mirabell Palace.

       Sometimes walks were taken in the gardens of the Mirabell Palace, in the newer part of the city on the other side of the river. Alternatively, there were excursions outside of the city walls, such as the visit in 1780 to the salt refinery and San Zeno (remember that rock salt was the principle source of wealth in the region, of which is derived the name of the city of Salzburg, the castle of salt and the Salzach River - the passage of salt). One last interesting fact regarding the Mozart family is the ciphered code that Leopold and his wife used to avoid the curiosity of censorship (during that epoch, letters and correspondence were often opened and read to monitor the subjects' thoughts and ideas in order to avoid conspiracies). The letters that Leopold wrote were meant to circulate around Salzburg to express recognition of the musical feats that were accomplished in the various courts, consequently the secret code was used to communicate with his wife the occasions in which there were lies present in their correspondence to be fed to the Archbishop.

       The most glaring examples we find in the letters from Milan, sent over the course of Leopold and Wolfgang's third and final Italian journey in which he complains of a terrible pain in his arms and legs that kept him from departing for their return to Salzburg. In truth, he was procrastinating in order to find out the result of his contacts with Peter Leopold of Habsburg-Lorraine, Gran Duke of Tuscany, regarding Wolfgang being hired by the Florentine Court, which turned out to be unsuccessful. Leopold was, unfortunately, obliged to return to Salzburg with his tail between his legs, his great Italian dream vanished.

       Looking back at the coded language, it was nothing particularly complex and if a censor were to have gone to the trouble of deciphering it, they would have probably figured it out. Besides, it appears that none of the letters with coded parts were chanced upon by the monitors because, if they had been, the censor would have surely been curious to know which secrets might have been revealed in these senseless sentences included in letters that were otherwise easily comprehensible. And the methods for saying it were surely not lacking. So here is the little Mozart family secret: substitute the vowels of some of the words with consonants

      A = M E = L I = F O = S U = H

      Instead of Milano, they would have written Mflmns

      Wolfgang's mother

      Anna Maria Walburga Pertl (1720 -- 1778), was born in St. Gilgen, a small village situated 545 meters above sea level on the banks of Lake Wolfgangsee, approximately thirty kilometers from Salzburg, the region's capital. It lies in a pleasant area and was enriched by small alpine lakes. In that epoch, there were just a handful of homes inhabited by farmers.

       Anna Maria's father, Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl (married to Euphrosina Puxbaum, the daughter and widower of two musicians of the church), completed his law studies and began a promising career as a state official in Salzburg, Vienna and Graz. However, an incapacitating disease forced him to accept a lesser job as Vice Superintendent at Huttenstein, a town near St. Gilgen, with a reduced annual salary of 250 florins. Taking into consideration the situation (imagine that today the town has little more than 3,000 inhabitants, divided into 7 districts and that at that time the population was much lower) such a position wouldn't be particularly honorary, let alone well paid. At her father's death in 1724, the family lived in serious poverty with debts of more than one thousand florins, causing their assets to be repossessed. This situation forced the wife to make the decision to return to the family's place of origin in Salzburg with two small children, one of which died shortly after. Here, they lived a life of misery, managing to survive only thanks to a town welfare payment and minimal domestic jobs for other families. Therefore, we can assume that Anna Maria and Leopold's first meeting surely occurred in Salzburg.

       The cultural habits of farm life acquired in St. Gilgen and the environment of the impoverished in Salzburg must have certainly impacted Anna Maria's

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