Mozart had reason to suppose that the work might gain him a permanent
and rewarding position. Once more he was disappointed; and a short time
after the production he received a summons from Salzburg to join the
Archbishop in Vienna, whither Colloredo had gone with a part of his
musical staff. Leopold, it should be added, was left at home. Wolfgang
boiled inwardly at the prospect of “having the honor once more of
sitting above the cooks at table.” His father begged him to be patient,
but to no avail. In a way he welcomed the present call to Vienna and
seemed to sense his impending liberation, if without knowing exactly how
it was to come. “It seems as if good fortune is about to welcome me
here,” he wrote his parent not long afterwards from the capital, “and
now I feel that I must stay. Indeed, I felt when I left Munich, that,
without knowing why, I looked forward most eagerly to Vienna.” He was
seeking an opportunity to break forever with his detested chief, to whom
he alluded as an “Erzlümmel” (“Archbooby”).
He soon found his chance. The archbishop at first refused Mozart
permission to appear at the Tonkünstler-Societät, about which he
wrathfully wrote to his father (yet a postscript added that, in the end,
he got it). That his place at table was between the valets and the cooks
is, Alfred Einstein says, rightly shocking both to the composer and to
us. But Mozart’s rank as court organist was actually that of personal
servant, and according to eighteenth century etiquette, which knew
nothing of special treatment for genius, this seating at table was
formally correct. In the end the threatened explosion did occur.
Colloredo ordered him back to Salzburg on a certain day. Alleging some
“important engagement” in Vienna, he refused and, when the archbishop
told him he could “go to the devil,” he applied for his dismissal from
the cleric’s service. Three times he presented applications. Finally,
when he made an effort to enter Colloredo’s apartment to hand him the
paper personally, Count Arco, son of the court chamberlain, kicked him
out of the room. But Mozart _did_ get the discharge he had demanded.
The tale of the kick is familiar even to people who have not the vaguest
familiarity with eighteenth-century codes. We might be well advised,
however, to suspend our judgment till we know both sides of the
celebrated story.
“No more Salzburg for me!” Wolfgang gaily wrote his father. Barring
repeated journeys to different cities, Vienna was to be his home for the
rest of his days. He was not to find the material rewards and the secure
position he had sought for so long, but he had that freedom his spirit
craved. And in Vienna he was to absorb those creative impulses that
Haydn had known before him and Beethoven was to know after him. In a
mood of elation he begged his father to leave Salzburg and join him in
Vienna. But Leopold was no longer young and, besides, he was made of
other clay.