Johann Georg Mozart, the grandfather of the great composer, was a
bookbinder. He lived in Augsburg, and in 1708 he married Anna Maria
Peterin, the widow of a fellow-handicraftsman named Banneger. By her he
had five children, and the youngest boy was Johann Georg Leopold, the
author of the "Violin School" and the father of Wolfgang, the immortal
composer.
Leopold Mozart was a man of no ordinary parts. His face is known to us
by the engraving from the portrait painted by the amateur Carmontelle
in Paris, 1763, and by the family group in the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
It is an honest face, keen, austere; a mocking jest might have passed
the lips, but neither flatteries nor lies. His tastes were simple, his
life was ever free from dissipation. In money matters he was regarded
as close, and the reproach has been made by some that he acted as a
Barnum towards his two precocious children. The reproach is unjust. The
man was poor. His earnings were small. He needed money to pay his debts
and support his family. But no specific charge of meanness or avarice
has been substantiated. On the other hand he was scrupulously honest,
sincere in the duties of his profession, and of a profoundly religious
nature that was shown in profession and practice. At the same time he
was not a bigot. He would not yield to the tyranny of priests; he was
free from superstition of every sort; his sane spirit and his bitter wit
were exercised in spiritual as well as temporal affairs. Grimm, who was
no mean judge of men, wrote of him as follows: "The father is not only a
skilful musician, but a man of good sense and ready wit, and I have never
seen a man of his profession who was at the same time so talented and of
such sterling worth." As a musician he was thorough, well educated, and a
composer of merit. His treatise upon violin playing was known throughout
Europe, and it showed the solid qualities of the musician and the ironical
temperament of the man. All of his gifts were used, however, chiefly in
directing and developing most wisely the extraordinary genius of the young
Wolfgang. The affection shown him, however, was lavished equally upon his
wife and other children.
Salzburg is a town renowned for its beauty. "To see it shining in the sun,
with its large white façades, its flat roofs, its terraces, its church and
convent cupolas, its fountains, one would take it for an Italian city."
The advantages of its natural situation and the artifical charms of the
place were, if the opinion of the eighteenth century may be accepted,
only equalled by the stupidity of the inhabitants. There was a German
proverb that ran as follows: "He who comes to Salzburg grows foolish
the first year, becomes an idiot the second; but it is not until the
third year that he is a Salzburger." The German Harlequin _Hanswurst_,
however, was a Salzburg creation; and the inhabitants were fond of heavy
and coarse jokes. No wonder then that the town and the society were
distasteful to Leopold Mozart. He left his birthplace to study law in
Salzburg; and in 1743 he entered the service of the Archbishop Sigismund,
as a court-musician. Later he became court-composer and leader of the
orchestra; in 1762 he was second Kapellmeister. In 1747 he married Anna
Maria Pertl or Bertl. She was the daughter of the steward of a hospital.
She was very beautiful, good natured, loving, and of limited education.
Seven children were born of this marriage. Five died at a very early age.
The fourth, Maria Anna (born July 30, 1751), was familiarly known as
"Nannerl," and she was a musical prodigy. The seventh and last was born
at eight o'clock in the evening, Jan. 27, 1756, and the mother nearly
died in the child-bed. According to the certificate of baptism, he was
named Joannes-Chrysostomus-Wolfgangus-Theophilus. His first compositions
published in Paris in 1764 are signed J. G. Wolfgang. Later works bear the
name Wolfgang Amade. In private life he was known as Wolfgang. Variations
sometimes found in the biographies come from the fact that Theophilus and
Amadeus and Gottlieb are but one and the same name.
Schachtner, the court trumpeter, and a house-friend of the father,
preserved for us in a letter written to Mozart's sister many interesting
details of the early manifestations of the boy's genius. At the age of
three he sought thirds upon the keys of the pianoforte. At the age of
four his father began to teach him little pieces. When he was five he
dictated minuets to his father, which are of natural but correct harmony,
melodious and even characteristic. The first of these minuets is given
herewith. These are not legends, but well attested facts. Four minuets and
an allegro have been published by Otto Jahn in the second edition of his
"Mozart." Singular indeed are some of the stories related. Up to the age
of ten he could not endure the sound or sight of the trumpet. He wrote a
pianoforte concerto, clearly conceived, but of unsurmountable difficulty,
when he was four. His sense of pitch was extraordinary. The father watched
this astounding precocity with loving fear and prayed that he might be
wise enough to direct it.
[Music: MOZART'S FIRST COMPOSITION.