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LAST-DITCH APPEAL

The life and times of one of music's greatest geniuses

He moved to Vienna in 1781 and took up residence as a free-lance composer. Despite assuring his father that his financial prospects were bright, Mozart did not receive a permanent position from the court until the very end of his life.

Although he managed to attract a few pupils, it appears that his financial position was grim, that he had, in fact, little prospect of obtaining any court appointment and that he knew this. Presumably -- for it is impossible to say for sure -- he was attracted to Vienna because it was, as it still is, "an intensely musical city," where people of every class and rank, from Emperor to chambermaid, were regularly involved in some sort of music-making or listening. Mozart planned to exploit this situation by performing his own piano music in Vienna, which he excitedly dubbed "Piano-land."

Mozart's social circle included enlightened members of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. He renewed his acquaintance with Countess Thun, whom he had met during an earlier trip to Vienna. In the period immediately following his move to Vienna, he visited her house, by his own account, "almost every day." Countess Thun ran something of a salon for enlightened aristocrats and government officials.

One observer noted in 1784 that "everyone with any knowledge and opinion gives (the countess) praise; the Emperor, Kaunitz (the chancellor), English people staying here, often visit her circle." As evidenced by this comment, the social, cultural and intellectual worlds of the government, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie overlapped to a certain extent during the 1780s.

Mozart was also acquainted with the master of Zur wahren Eintracht, Ignaz von Born. Born was a mineralogist and, for a while, a writer. He wrote an anti-clerical pamphlet "which painstakingly classified the various orders of monks on the evolutionary scale, in the hitherto unfilled space between the higher apes and man."

As master of Zur wahren Eintracht, Born used the funds of the lodge to support writers and musicians, including Mozart. Politically, Born does not appear to have been anything other than a supporter of enlightened absolutism, and after the emperor's consolidation order, he left the lodge.

On religious matters, however, Born appears to have been somewhat more radical. "Happy we are, honoured Brothers, to think of the Freedom and Equality of natural law as the true foundation of our honorable Lodge, and that in our free and spiritual republic we have no Pope."

Mozart, who was thoroughly devout in both sentiment and practice, probably would have been uncomfortable with such opinions.

In a letter, he wrote about the centrality of the ritual of worship in his relationship with his wife, Constanze: "... for a considerable time before we were married we had always attended Mass and gone to confession and received Communion together; and I found that I never prayed so fervently or confessed or received Communion so devoutly as by her side; and she felt the same. In short, we are made for each other; and God who orders all things and consequently has ordained this also, will not forsake us."

When his wife became ill just before they were married, Mozart prayed for her recovery and pledged to God that he would compose a celebratory mass if his prayers were answered. This was no idle promise.

Mozart wrote: "Concerning the vow, it is quite true ... I have really promised it in my innermost heart, and hope to be able to keep it. Constanze recovered and the result is the C minor Mass, KV 427.

The work was first performed in Salzburg at the Benedictine abbey in October 1783. Ironically, the mass could not have been performed in Vienna; Joseph's religious reforms, which aimed to reduce the expense and seductive extravagance of elaborate ritual, banned "loud choral music" in church. Mozart, however committed he was to Masonry, was more conservative than the emperor when it came to religion.

-- Jordan Stancil can be reached over e-mail at rialto@umich.edu.