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"I have had to compose a symphony for the opening of the Concert Spirituel. It was performed on Corpus Christi day with great applause, and I hear, too, that there was a notice about it in the Courrier de L'Europe, -- so it has given great satisfaction."
With these words, Mozart began a lengthy account of the success of his latest composition in a letter from Paris to his father, Leopold, dated July 3, 1778.
"The audience were quite carried away" by the performance. "I was so happy that as soon as the symphony was over, I went off to the Palais Royal, where I had a large ice, said the Rosary as I had vowed to do -- and went home -- for I always am and always will be happiest there," Mozart added.
This is an unusually chatty letter, even by Mozart's standards. In it he comments on the recent death of Voltaire (". . . pegged out like a dog, like a beast!") and briefly refers to a proposed opera ("It is very difficult to find a good libretto") before wrapping it up with his usual closing: "I kiss your hands a thousand times and embrace my sister with all my heart and remain your most obedient son."
The only thing this most obedient son did not report was that his mother, Anna Maria, who had accompanied him to Paris, had died earlier that day.
Mozart intended to break that news as gently as possible. Immediately after finishing the letter to his father, he took up his pen again and wrote another, this time to the Abbé Bullinger, an old family friend in Salzburg:
"Mourn with me, my friend! This has been the saddest day of my life -- I am writing this at two o'clock in the morning. I have to tell you that my mother, my dear mother, is no more! God has called her to Himself." This letter, much briefer than the first, ends with a request that the abbé go to Leopold and prepare him for the "sad news." Six days later Mozart again wrote to his father, this time to share the truth.
Meanwhile, despite his son's clumsy if well-intentioned efforts, Leopold had already guessed it. "Though I am resigning myself as far as possible to the will of God, you will surely find it quite human and natural that my tears almost prevent me from writing," he responded on July 13. "And after all, what conclusion am I to draw?"
Anna Maria Mozart's death was only the latest, and most disastrous, event of this disastrous trip. The 22-year-old composer would remain in Paris for another two months, but there would be no more compositions, no more performances at the Concert Spirituel, no more reviews in the Courrier de L'Europe. He'd been shunned by the aristocracy and his influential acquaintances had given up on him as being hopelessly naive. He had filled only a few commissions and had failed to find permanent employment. Now, his once-promising career in a shambles, Mozart slowly returned home to Salzburg, no doubt reluctant to face his father and the archbishop. Once there, he humbly petitioned the court to be granted the post of organist at an annual salary of 450 gulden.
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| Allegro assai |
| Symphony in D, No. 31, "Paris" |
| © 1992 Philips Classics Productions |
| 432 977-2 |
But the festive nature of the work belies the serious consequences of Mozart's trip. For one thing, Leopold would never completely forgive his son for his wife's illness and death. And after the cold dose of reality he received in Paris, Mozart's estimation of his own ability would steadily become more realistic. Both consequences would play important, if unspoken, roles when the time came for Mozart to make the most important decision of his short career -- to leave Salzburg and carve out a life for himself in Vienna.
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