Mozart took his wife to Salzburg in the summer of 1783. He had made a
vow the previous year that when he married Constanze and presented her
to his father he would bring along a newly composed mass for
presentation in his native town. The superb one in C minor was the
outcome, but for some reason it remained unfinished. We cannot speculate
here on the reasons for its incompleteness. The torso (or shall we say
patchwork?) was rehearsed in St. Peter’s Church in Salzburg, and
Constanze sang some of the soprano solos. Despite its incompleteness the
C minor Mass is a soaring masterwork, the music of which Mozart later
put to use in the oratorio _Davidde Penitente_.
The relentless dislike for the Webers that both Leopold and Nannerl
continued to harbor was not mollified by this visit, which proved
uncomfortable as long as it lasted. Wolfgang and his wife were relieved
when the troublesome “duty call” came to its chilly end and they were
back in Vienna once more. There was no end of professional business for
Mozart to transact—composition in flooding abundance, lessons to give,
concerts (“academies”) to organize, musical personages to cultivate.
Just now, at least, there were no interminable travels such as had
filled Mozart’s boyhood years. His pupils were sometimes talented,
sometimes the reverse. A few striking names stand out among them—Johann
Nepomuck Hummel, Xaver Süssmayr, Thomas Attwood. Of the composers and
executants with whom he came in contact we must mention Clementi,
Salieri, Paisiello, Righini, Haydn. With Clementi he appeared as a
pianist in a contest before Joseph II and some visiting Russian
blue-bloods. So evenly were the two players matched that the competition
was declared a draw. Paisiello, composer of _The Barber of Seville_, was
a lovable character for whom Wolfgang developed a great liking. Salieri,
a disciple of Gluck and a teacher of Schubert, appears to have
criticized some of Mozart’s works, and Viennese gossip did what it could
to make the matter worse. The result was that Salieri lives on in
history largely because of a wild slander that he had given Mozart a
poison causing the latter’s untimely death!
The meeting with Joseph Haydn resulted in one of the noblest and most
rewarding friendships the records of music afford. Artistically their
creations benefited inestimably from the mutual influence of their works
and personalities. Haydn, says Dr. Karl Geiringer, “was fascinated by
Mozart’s quicksilver personality, while Mozart enjoyed the sense of
security that Haydn’s steadfastness and warmth of feeling gave him.” It
was as if the two men kindled brighter sparks in each other’s souls.
They played chamber music together whenever Haydn made a trip to Vienna,
and the younger man was quick to acknowledge that it was from his older
colleague he first really learned to write string quartets. The six that
he composed between 1782 and 1785 and dedicated with moving words to his
“beloved friend Haydn” are doubtless among the finest he wrote. It was
on a visit of Leopold Mozart’s to Vienna that Haydn made to him the
oft-quoted remark: “I tell you before God and as an honest man that your
son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by
reputation!” And later, when someone questioned a detail in _Don
Giovanni_ and asked Haydn’s opinion, he replied: “I cannot settle this
dispute, but this I know: Mozart is the greatest composer that the world
now possesses.... It enrages me to think that the unparalleled Mozart
has not yet been engaged by some imperial or royal court! Do forgive
this outburst; but I love the man too much!” It is heartbreaking that
Haydn was not able, as he would have loved to be, to secure a post for
Mozart in England.
Mozart had another encounter of a different sort at this period in
Vienna—acquaintance with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Through the
Baron van Swieten he had an opportunity to know the scores of Bach and
Handel and later even to write for certain Handel oratorios “additional
accompaniments” for use in performances Van Swieten was in the habit of
giving on Sundays at the Imperial Library and in some private homes. And
the depth, the grandeur, and the polyphony of these masters he
assimilated to the added greatness of his own most mature works.
“Haffner” Symphony
With his concerts, teaching, clavier playing, and miscellaneous
composing Mozart may well have felt, as he remarked on one occasion,
that “people sometimes expected impossibilities of me.” The Haffner
family in Salzburg, for instance, asked Leopold to write a symphony for
some family festivity, to be ready in something like a fortnight!
Wolfgang, at that time up to his ears in a quantity of other schemes,
found the labor shifted to his own shoulders by his father, who was
otherwise busied. Somehow or other he contrived to turn out (in a trifle
over the appointed time, it is true) the work we now know as the
“Haffner” Symphony. The excellent Salzburg burgomaster, Sigmund Haffner
appears to have been well pleased. The composer himself instantly forgot
the work and was astonished and delighted when, a considerable time
afterwards, his father sent him the score. He worked at several operatic
projects but nothing lasting came of them—not even of _The Goose of
Cairo_, which contains charming passages and which, now and then, people
have attempted to revive. There was, indeed, an amateur performance in
Vienna of _Idomeneo_. But these and several other schemes must all be
dismissed as transient compared with the masterpiece we now approach—_Le
Nozze di Figaro_ (The Marriage of Figaro).