Mozart Myths

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is legendary. That is, while he was a real person, well-documented in many sources, we can also find stories about him that are somewhat removed from fact.

Amadeus Myths The play and movie Amadeus started a fresh wave of Mozart mania—and popularized the following myths about Mozart’s life:

• Did Salieri kill Mozart? In real life, Salieri was not the jealous rival of Mozart and did not plot out his demise—he was an esteemed musical colleague of Mozart’s who later taught music to Mozart’s son. Toward the end of his life Salieri confessed to murdering Mozart—which might have been believable had Salieri not been confined to an insane asylum at the time of his confession.

• Did Salieri scare Mozart into writing his own Requiem? The origin of the Requiem does have an interesting story, but it does not involve a feverish obsession by Mozart with the ghost of his father. Mozart was commissioned anonymously to compose the Requiem by intermediaries acting for Franz Count of Walsegg, who hoped to pass it off as Walsegg’s own work.

• Was Mozart a silly, vulgar idiot with an annoying laugh? Mozart had to retain a degree of dignity when working at court and therefore could not have acted as he did in Amadeus. His entertaining letters, however, do reveal that he was playful and wonderfully quick-witted. He could sometimes have a vulgar sense of humor, but only showed that to his family and close friends— and, accidentally, to us when we read his letters (see Resources). The laugh in Amadeus might be based on his sister’s comment, in a letter, that Wolfgang’s laugh sounded like metal scraping glass.

• Did Mozart write “too many notes”? Emperor Joseph II’s reaction to Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio in 1782 is…true! Or at least, widely believed to be so. The complete quote was,“Too many notes, my dear Mozart, and too beautiful for our ears.” The Emperor may have beenechoing a sentiment felt by many regarding Mozart’s music: that it was so complex and sublimethat it sometimes overwhelmed the senses of his eighteenth-century audience. Or he may havesaid, “An extraordinary number of notes,” and been mistranslated from German.

How did Mozart die?
Nobody knows for certain how Mozart died. Theories include:

• A sudden attack of rheumatic fever, from which he had often suffered as a child
• Kidney failure
• Trichinosis—a parasitic disease caused by undercooked pork
• Fever and stroke caused by too much bloodletting
• Mercury poisoning

What most people do agree on is that Mozart’s final illness came upon him suddenly and included fever and rashes.

How poor was Mozart?
Mozart’s career is often romanticized today by the belief that Mozart lived in poverty and struggled desperately to make ends meet with his compositions, unable even to afford a private funeral. In truth he was well paid for his work but probably spent beyond his budget. He was given a small funeral service and buried in an unmarked grave—typical of Vienna at the time.

Was Mozart divinely inspired?
A forged letter describes how Mozart’s inspiration descended upon him as if from a lightning bolt from God, and supports a common misconception that Mozart was able to compose music in his head and notate it perfectly afterwards. This myth both belittles Mozart’s struggles and efforts as a composer, and gives undue importance to a skill that many composers have. In truth Mozart did have an uncanny ability to hear music in his head and write it down perfectly—probably more so than most composers—but that is not to say that he did not have to work through multiple drafts. In the 1790s Constanze burned all of her late
husband’s working drafts of completed works, further perpetuating this myth.

What didn’t Mozart write?
Quirino Gasparini’s sacred choral piece Adoramus te was erroneously attributed to Mozart for many years. Mozart met Gasparini, who was music director of the cathedral in Turin, when he visited that city during his European tour as a child. Mozart’s father admired Gasparini’s piece and copied it down, and the work later got mixed in with Mozart’s own collection.

—Pamela Feo, 2006-2007 Education Intern

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