Mozart's Sister - A Diary

Franz Xaver Mozart

2006-12-31T10:48:00.000Z

Franz Xaver - my brother's younger son and my nephew, has paid a visit. He is a composer in Lemburg but I have not heard any of his compositions. Reminds me of Jack Pudding – the way he talks -very fast - the shape of HIS forehead - wide - HIS gestures - restless - and HIS scent - a faint musk that remains when he has gone. We talk in waves. He insists he has learnt more about his father from his old auntie than from anyone he has known before, including his mother whose apartment I can see inside my head. I ask him to visit my son, Leopold in Innsbruck before he returns to Lemburg – I tell him they are more like brothers than cousins. Feel very close to this fine young man and share his sense of melancholy.

30th July 1829
My last Will and Testament while I can still think and speak:
I give Mama’s two jeweled rings to my nephews, Karl Thomas and Franz Xaver Mozart. What rights that I retain to my brother’s Requiem shall also be transferred to them. All other monies and worldly goods I bequeath in their entirety to my son, Leopold Berchtold zu Sonnenburg.

It is true that except in the matter of this diary, I have been an exile from what has gone before. I am sometimes gripped by a pattern of lights, a glittering aura that I cannot blink away. Just as it persists, without any intention on my part, it will suddenly cease to be and what I perceive in its aftermath appears fainter, until I can only imagine the shadows in front of me, for I cannot see.

It lasts - this aura- no more than six or seven seconds or the experience would be more than spirits could bear. Perhaps it is a moment of dying, a pleasurable signal and not a thing of fear that I am returning to the place from where I came, an instant of reckoning where I feel compelled to recapture what is past without a quill. I am quite tired.

Franz Xaver has brought some visitors - met English publisher, Vincent Novello and wife. They bring money from admirers in England. Good to be sister of genius.
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart zu Sonnenburg

My Lover

2006-11-26T10:20:00.000Z

I have been avoiding this - a description that goes beyond the white silk stockings and the lace handkerchief. Well, if you hear it from me, you hear it from the one person who has the right to say it. When he smiles, I laugh. When he is serious, I am as long faced as a horse. Yes, I desire him when I fall asleep. Yesterday I composed a Rondo with a tune he whistled on a sleigh ride in the woods. During this same sleigh ride, he took my hand from out of my muff and kissed it as Mama was not looking. He has a small tuft of golden hair inside each nostril and I saw the reflection of my eyes in his - we were that close. It will cost me six kreuzer per sheet to have my music copied, so being poor and unwilling to copy it myself, I will send him the original. In my next entry, I hope to have some good news but I must neither rejoice nor worry too soon. N

Fear Itself

2006-11-18T09:33:00.000Z

Everyone has something to hide or at least thinks so, which is much the same. Mine is fear itself. I am not afraid of spiders but I am of a pair of hands that hides under my bed at night, waiting to grab hold of my ankles as I leap onto my coverlet. I have perfected the art of the leap, making sure that the lower part of me is in the air when I dive, out of reach from this headless, bodyless mannikin. Since I am always telling Wolfie I am fearless, I am afraid he will see me flying and my secret will be out. N.

Connections

2006-11-07T09:43:00.000Z

I have no great hopes of anything happening in Munich. Frau von Durst has chicken pox. My brother's opera is delayed. Papa has said that he doesn't wish to work for the Elector under any circumstances and running about as he has done these last weeks and teaching singers to suck eggs when they know how to do so already is a dog's life. We are all to return to Salzburg and my dear Mama forthwith. I have made an extraordinary discovery this morning. I am my father in petticoats. N.

Valerian

2006-10-25T13:39:00.001+01:00

I know a doctor who prescribes this remedy in such doses that may lead to weeping, heartbreak, though not of a fatal kind, the occasional gnashing of teeth and a prolonged morning sleep after a night of severe restlessness. What is the point? N.

The Waltz

2006-10-09T13:00:00.000+01:00

I prefer a slow, gliding waltz, a Schleifer, to a minuet. Wolfie is tuning his fiddle to play because his E string snapped and his new one refuses to stick. The servants are shifting the widow's furniture to make space for an impromptu ball and Papa asks Frau von Durst for the first dance, which she accepts. I am picking at the harpsichord, listening to the scarlet coat with white silk stockings knocking at the door. I adore Herr - , but does he adore me? The sun has set and the widow looks quite skittish as she swirls. N.

The Widow Von Durst

2006-09-30T09:05:00.000+01:00

She has no more than twenty-six years and her late husband was a salt merchant. It is true that she discourages all visitors to her apartment and that she dresses her dark brown hair by herself. She does not care for the society of philanderers, nor society as such I would say, but prefers the presence of her lap-dog, Finette. Papa arranged for me to have a harpsichord in Frau Von Durst's room, which looks out onto the market place. I think she is quite taken with Papa for she asks me to read aloud a passage from his treatise on violin playing before she retires to bed each night. I was not aware that she understood the finer points of string instruments but I noticed that her cheeks were uncommonly pink when I said the art of vibrato is to enrich the sound. It is my belief that her greatest art is not to conceal what she knows. N.

A Lap-Dog in Munich

2006-09-24T16:11:00.000+01:00

Papa, Wolfie and I are in Munich, though I am lodging separately with the Widow Von Durst. Wolfie is pacing up and down my room like a small dog with fleas. It is because the performance of his opera buffa, La finta giardiniera has been postponed and the carnival is already in full swing. There are gambling tables set up in the Salle de Redoute and people are wearing masks and making a perpetual noise and I am quite thankful that today I am in bed with toothache. Frau Von Durst's lap-dog, Finette, who has not got fleas, is keeping me company together with Wolfie. Papa said the postponement of La finta is a good thing as nothing sensible is performed here at this time because no one pays any attention. He also said he wants me to acquire the habit of dressing my own hair very neatly, putting on a neglige cap and making up my face without any help, but Wolfie says I am much better with my arpeggios.

My Future

2006-09-14T14:42:00.000+01:00

The loss of my great aunt has reminded me that I must earn a living if Papa were to die. He asked me why I was practising my gallanteries with such zeal and such determination.
'Your death,' I replied.
'Not yet,' he said.
'Not yet,' I agreed. "But when it happens, I will become a music teacher in Salzburg to pay for a pie.'
He laughed and said, 'Over my dead body.'
Exactly. N.

A Death in the Family

2006-09-05T08:52:00.000+01:00

Papa and Wolfi have returned from Italy and we have moved across the river to an apartment in Hannibal Platz. The windows look out onto the square and I can see our visitors arrive, which is useful when I want to run away.

Between the making and the rising of a pie to celebrate our new home, a very old aunt of my father was gasping for breath like a canary in a cage. She whistled with her head against the pillows as we gathered round, mother and I, wishing it were otherwise. The abbe came with enough rosaries for a choir. I could not help but feel it was for the best when she breathed no more and was out of pain.

The pie had burnt into a small pile of cinders but remembering my great aunt, I made another with more careful attention. We cut a fillet of venison into three or four slices, seasoned it with savoury spice, a little minced up sage and some sweet herbs, laid it all in the pie with six fine slices of pig at the bottom. Betwixt each piece, I greased it and closed the pie. N.

My Family

2006-08-29T09:30:00.000+01:00

My father, Leopold Mozart :
He is happy to believe HIS talent has passed to the son and cajoles the archbishop not for himself but for Wolfgang. It is true he knows where to find my fur boots - in the trunk under the the roof - from a thousand miles away. My father has laid two eggs in one basket and is lying on them both just in case.
My mother:
She is devoted to her husband and God in that order. Anna Maria Mozart, nee Pertl, possesses a fine voice which is finest when she is vexed with the servants. Above all else, my mother has a wicked wit and a rare understanding of holiness.
My brother, Wolfgang:
He is a prey to toothache and an interest in his prettier cousins - a miniature rendition of a man, a boy prodigy who will soon be everything that my father forsees.
My lover: He has gold buttons on a scarlet coat and silk stockings on his legs- a cock of a man who visits me in dreams.
My future husband:
I have not met him yet but I know he will be dull by comparison. Perhaps I will die in childbirth. N

A Sin

2006-08-21T15:54:00.000+01:00

The church bells are tolling to remind us of our sins. Here is one of mine: lust. I have a lust for satisfaction of ALL my appetites. It is a type of greed that takes hold at unexpected moments and is never satisfied. I was at church the whole day on Sunday. Between sermons, I tried to lay aside all thoughts that would ruin me and failed. So wild was my imagining, I fancied I drank spa water with a certain friend and spoke in French, which I cannot do otherwise, and was observed to look ill. It was no doubt due to the hankering kindness I felt for Herr -- who told me of a sonata for violin and clavier he had composed, which he would like me to play. Play WITH him! I would like to play WITH the curls on his wig and blow wind very gently behind his ears. I would like to COMPOSE myself! In all my fancies, I am like a tree that has been sunk into a flowerpot and can be lifted out very easily when I am in his company. But alas, this is a sin of dreaming and only my distraction is real. N.

My Beloved Brother

2006-08-03T14:38:00.000+01:00

Mama and I are both longing for you to make your fortune as we believe that your success will mean happiness for us all. Although I wish to embrace you, I will delay such thoughts until you are NOT composing and can spare the time to receive them in spirit. Alas to bed I now must steal and with these words I do impart - as long as you can piddle, shit or deadly fart, our art will surely grab our heart O brother mine, the queerest fish, my dainty dish, your loving sister, Nan. Postum Scriptum Nonsensicum: the Latin psalms are difficult to read and a German translation would be helpful! What a pity this is not a letter but the dullest entry from your darling blister. N.

Out of Sorts

2006-07-22T21:50:00.000+01:00

When you left, there were a thousand matters which I simply could not discuss because I was ill, confused, out of humour, full of doubts, sad and miserable. I do not regret who I am - how pointless that would be - but I wish to be considered by yourself without regard to my sex. I would like to be cross when I have a reason - not for the vapours or my monthly cloth or the state of my heart. The truth is, I am mad with rage! I cannot make this composition work, upside down or sideways. I will have to start again. Poof! N.

The Song Bird

2006-07-18T16:56:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I have a dream without an image. There is only sound – a ravishing sound of a woman's voice, which I hear in that moment half way between sleeping and waking. It has –
1) the range of three octaves
2) always the same tune with the same embellishments and
3) the same degree of softness and loudness.
Can it be a dream if there is nothing to see? N.

An Admirer!

2006-07-05T14:24:00.000+01:00

I have a certain friend, who is plagued by nits. He has shaved off his own hair and rubbed his head in lavender oil as a precaution. He has called for the nit-picker to clean his wig, where I am told the nits have lodged in his curls. He has taken to wearing a silver, filigree basket containing lard, which he hangs around his neck. This is his decoy for the hungry monster and this is my admirer. I must buy myself a fine bone comb. N.

A Warm Bath

2006-06-30T21:38:00.000+01:00

Last night, while Mama played cards, I went to the theatre and slept through the entire play, which is a measure of how good the spa in Gastein is or how bad the play was - I am not sure which. I had spent the afternoon at the baths and dipped my feet into the warm water with my puffbox and handkerchief in a little tray that was tied to my waist. It kept floating out in front of me as I tried to remember an Italian madrigal about love. My mind was drawn to a number of ladies all around me, smiling in that half way at each other as people do when they don't know another soul. We retired to the assembly room to share our gossip but unfortunately, there was very little in the way of wickedness. N.

Scandal

2006-06-27T10:12:00.000+01:00

There is always some scandal or other to discuss in small towns. Life would be very dull otherwise. A certain abbe is regarded as a holy man in these parts but I do not believe it. At breakfast, according to my uncle, who is the finest tenor to have sung in the church at St Gilgen, their saint will drink three cups of strong wine after his hot chocolate before beginning mass. I have had the honour of lunching with this holy man and seen for myself that he ate six sweet pastries, a plate of venison, three small birds while consuming a decanter of wine, two saucers of milk with lemon and five cups of coffeee, which altogether makes a piffle of mama's and my two trouts apiece. Moreover, he takes several little snacks during the afternoon. N.

Confession

2006-06-09T09:43:00.000+01:00

This is a diary, not a collection of letters, more thoughts that people think and rarely ever say - dull when I am feeling dull or revelatory when there is something to reveal. To anyone who may happen on it by accident, I cannot change to please.

Last night Mama and I dined with my uncle, her brother, Anton Pertl, who sang for our supper in the church at St Gilgen. He has a fine tenor voice. We ate two trouts apiece and had such bellyaches and looseness of stool that I never want to eat trout again. N

What Is In The Bottom Drawer

2006-06-03T13:28:00.000+01:00

I have mentioned it twice - this bottom drawer - the fourth one down in the walnut chest next to my nun's bed. It contains all that I value - letters from admirers tied up with ribbon, my compositions, Wolfie's drawings for our targets in archery - mostly cartoons of naked bottoms, some small squares of silk from the dresses I've outgrown, family locks of hair and a collar that I made for Miss Pimperl when she was a puppy. It's a motley lot but it is mine. My compositions are there because they are the private proof of my passion. Everything contained in this sliding box is private or secret because I alone have the key. The bottom drawer seemed more discreet than the top, less likely to be discovered, although I sent Wolfie a copy of my latest song with a long story full of scandalous gossip. 'Cara Sorella Mia,' he wrote back post haste, 'you compose SO well . . . foul your bed, make a mess of it.' Does he mean, to hang with the consequences? I am perfecting my form. N.

I Am a Little Jealous, August 1770

2006-05-29T17:33:00.000+01:00

I am bored with my own company and this morning I found myself saying 'pop goes the weasel' to the walls of our apartment in Getreidegasse 9 - I wish I were in Italy. It is raining all over Salzburg and Mama says the living is becoming more expensive every day. Soon enough, we will have to manage on what Papa earns each month - there are NO more jewelled toothpicks, NO more gold snuffboxes that we can sell.
Papa and Wolfie have escaped the heat of Rome – or Milan - to stay at a country house in Bologna, which is owned by a Count BOLONYETTI. They eat ripe peaches, figs and melons, which look like small, Chinese lanterns…. and Wolfie is becoming fat. The bed linen is finer than a nobleman's shirt – and I wonder why my dear Papa doesn't make one for Wolfie by cutting up his sheet.
My brother has had to remove the silk thread from around his diamond ring because his fingers have grown so plump and his singing voice has gone. Poof! Papa says it is neither high nor low, nor good for even five small notes! Mine is clear as a bell. I sing my own songs and have sent the latest one to Wolfie - the others remain in my bottom drawer, waiting for someone to discover that I CAN COMPOSE! I might as well ride on a donkey... N.

Postscript by Franz Xaver Mozart

2006-05-28T00:11:00.000+01:00

Salzburg, 29th October, 1829
My beloved Aunt Nannerl died some time after midnight. It seemed she would never let go but wept in her bed and swallowed cups of water to replace the tears she had shed. Unable to see the walls of her room, she mumbled about the clouds on the tops of Nonnberg, Capuzinerberg and the Devil’s Horn. She described that point in the river Salzach where it curves beyond the bridge and where the water runs so fast. I kept waiting for the moment in the process of dying when the suffering is so great that the fear of death dissolves and both the mind and the body stop clinging to life. It happened in the earliest hours of the morning, which is when, the doctor told me, that most people slip away.
‘Wolfie,’ she began.
‘Yes, Auntie.’
‘You’re still there.’
‘I’m still here.’
She fell deeply asleep and never awoke. According to her wishes, she will be buried in a colonnaded vault in Saint Peter’s here in Salzburg. As soon as it can be arranged, I shall conduct my father's Requiem to celebrate her life.
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart - henceforth known as W.A.M.
P.P.S. Am burning all her compositions in the stove, again according to her wishes, but have decided to keep her diaries from this willful pyre - will read them tomorrow from the beginning. Rest in peace, dear Auntie...

Blind and Stroke-Ridden

2006-05-27T09:23:00.000+01:00

31st July, 1829
Writing too difficult – Franzl in Salzburg with visitors - met English publisher, Vincent Novello and wife. They bring money from admirers in England. Good to be sister of genius. N.

As Dictated to Josef Metzger:

2006-05-26T10:20:00.000+01:00

30th July 1829
My last Will and Testament while I can still think, speak and see a little:
I give Mama’s two jeweled rings to my nephews, Karl Thomas and Franz Xaver Mozart. What rights that I retain to my brother’s Requiem shall also be transferred to them and I instruct Franz Xaver Mozart to destroy all existing compositions by me. The snuffbox with the royal crest I give to my stepdaughter Maria-Anna zu Sonnenburg and my second best ivory snuffbox to the surviving niece of Katharina Gilowska. All other monies and worldly goods I bequeath in their entirety to my son, Leopold Berchtold zu Sonnenburg.

It is true that except in the matter of this diary, I have been an exile from what has gone before. I am sometimes gripped by a pattern of lights, a glittering aura that I cannot blink away. Just as it persists, without any intention on my part, it will suddenly cease to be and what I perceive in its aftermath appears fainter, until I can only see the shadows in front of me. That I know, though I cannot see.

It lasts - this aura- no more than six or seven seconds or the experience would be more than spirits could bear. Perhaps it is a moment of dying, a pleasurable signal and not a thing of fear that I am returning to the place from where I came, an instant of reckoning where I feel compelled to recapture what is past without a quill. I am quite tired.
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart zu Sonnenburg

Too Late To Turn Back

2006-05-25T08:50:00.000+01:00

Too late to turn back…
Lingering
like the winter fly… N.

Franz Xaver Mozart

2006-05-24T09:22:00.000+01:00

Franz Xaver - Wolfie's child and my nephew, has paid a visit. He is a professor of music in Lemburg and a composer but I have not heard any of his compositions. Reminds me of Jack Pudding – the way he talks -very fast - the shape of HIS forehead - wide - HIS gestures - restless - and HIS scent - the faint, sweet musk that remains when he has gone. We talk in waves. He insists he has learnt more about his father from his old auntie than from anyone he has known before, including his mother whose apartment I can just see from a corner of my window. I ask him to visit Leopold in Innsbruck before he returns home - telling him many times they are more like brothers than cousins. Feel very close and share a sense of melancholy. N.

Is This The Worst To Come?

2006-05-23T16:02:00.000+01:00

I try to forget the 1st September, 1805. Can a mother really forget the bleakness of such a day? I write as a blind woman, forming each letter with infinite care and seeing nothing on the page. Much grieving on the way – you understand, Salzburg was not a haven for my beloved Jeanette Babette – for my darling child, who fretting, faded, quickly ailed, and was taken by God after only sixteen years on this earth – it was the first day of spring. She is now buried with Papa. Am I to survive my little flower? Take me too, for I am almost emptied of purpose. But then I remember Leopoldl and I pray to God to give me fortitude. N.

Extract of a Letter for My Diary:

2006-05-22T09:32:00.000+01:00

'We have battered our way for days through freezing gales. The water broke across the decks and the rigging has gone to ice - colder than the day I came to visit you in Hannibal Platz when you performed one of your compositions. I remember frost on the windowpanes and how I was thinking more about you than the music and how you ran out into the courtyard without a coat, you were so cross with me…
I realise now that in all this dreadful cold at sea, the ravages of scurvy play havoc with men’s lives. The captain can barely muster a crew for the ordinary duties of the Watch and I have taken the precaution of eating more limes…I practise my violin to while away the hours but keep bumping my bowing arm against the wall of the cabin when the ship is in a violent roll. Nannerl, my dear…’
Your loving friend, Jakob

A Partial Revelation

2006-05-20T15:22:00.000+01:00

My pupils come to the apartment for their piano lessons and I am so tired when they have gone that I find myself drowsing in a chair, half-dreaming of a walk in Saint Gilgen. Where are you now, Jakob? On the shore of Adventure's Bay? I can hear the trees in the wind, see the catkins blow and shiver as they spill their pollen on the lae. When I stir, I look through the apartment window at the cobbles in the square and I am remembering the first day you came for your violin lesson with Papa. N.

A Sea Voyage

2006-05-19T15:00:00.000+01:00

‘The Atlantic Ocean, 7th January, 179-
My Dear Nannerl,
I am on a journey to the other side of the world, having boarded a ship called the Oracle at Portsmouth. I do not know when I shall return… You may never read this letter, but I like to think you will. I shall write to you anyway because first of all I made a promise that I would and secondly, (this has the same intensity as the first), because you matter more to me than anyone I have known.
If you find it difficult to accept my parting gift - Josef Metzger will describe it in more precise detail that you may understand my reasoning. I ask you to think of all the graves in the world and say to yourself, Mozart’s body could not be left to moulder amongst foreign worms. One day, you will rest near him, but not yet…’
This and other letters had been brought to me in a rusty box by Herr Metzger, who is both a fellow lodger in this building and a kind friend. The words belong to Jakob Hofmann and are meant to console me both for the loss of my brother and the absence of a friend. Therein lies another tale, but I am not yet certain if it is one for my diary. I will think on it. N.

Fortitude

2006-05-18T18:45:00.000+01:00

Some years after Wolfie was buried – the particular whereabouts I am unwilling to reveal just now– my dear Johannes was laid to rest in Saint Gilgen’s cemetery. As there was no home tithed for the widow by the lake, we packed our lives away in tin trunks and returned to Salzburg – the children and I.
N.

5th December, 1791

2006-05-16T19:38:00.000+01:00

A Terrible Prayer
Is this true? Did I pray ‘let our children live to see their parents die?’ I take it back. I did not mean this day, this month, this year - I did not mean my brother, dead?
Too soon, Wolfie – please not yet – come back. There is music to finish. What would Papa say?
Swollen like a drowned man - to the drumbeats of a requiem - your poor, puffed-up, stiffened body dressed in its nightgown for a funeral, which I cannot attend because I am HERE! Damn the pain of living while those you love are dead - at least you will share the same worms with Mama and Papa. Bones into ash, ash into life. Wait for me, Jack Pudding, wait for me. N.

26th July, 1791

2006-05-13T20:59:00.000+01:00

As luck would have it, the birth of my brother’s child, Franz Xaver Wolfgang - pray God, NOT out of the womb and into the tomb. Pray God a companion to HIS brother, Karl Thomas, and country cousins, Leopold and Jeanette-Babette. Pray God, they may all live to see their parents die. N.

29th April, 1791

2006-05-11T08:07:00.000+01:00

So very little time on earth for our third born child, Maria Barbara - such a delicate doll my dears, who was not meant to be. Can someone say why NOT? Poor little doll, you see my dears. Feel a very dull ache and cannot rub the pain away. There are no waters or prayers that will fix this pain. I have two fine children, five stepchildren, one husband, one imaginary lover, one friend, two hours of daily galanteries, some compositions in the bottom drawer and my dear brother, Wolfie, in Vienna. It is riches to some. Why should I complain? N.

22nd November, 1790

2006-05-10T09:25:00.000+01:00

Birth of Maria Barbara Berchtold zu Sonnenburg. Mother and child are well. Praise the Lord. N.

A Pause While I Wait

2006-05-09T08:42:00.000+01:00

In the months of confinement, I have rescued old songs from the bottom drawer and am sending them to Jakob Hofmann, not all at once but several at a time.
He likes them, he likes them not - he likes them?
I have tried not to break the limitations of compositional rules but to transcend them. I have tried to find the melody through the words. I am a convert to the romantic notion of inspiration. If there are faults in what I have written in the past, they stem from my doubts and the cure lies in my dreams. N.

Again...

2006-05-08T09:00:00.000+01:00

It seems that since my night of unexpected rapture I am obliged to put aside my monthly cloth in great expectation. N.

A Visitor

2006-05-07T09:14:00.000+01:00

An elderly burgher from a neighbouring village paid us a morning visit in his one-horse chaise. He moved with great difficulty and remained stooped throughout his stay with his head parallel to the ground. He informed me that he was looking forward to attending my next soiree and I promised him an invitation in the following post. Since then, a month has passed and he has not come again. I feared the worst and enquired through a mutual friend if he was ill. ‘Oh no,’ said she, ‘not ill, but too old for a single-horse chaise. Our friend is a half bent sausage with the pain of his chair and yet out of a desire NOT to look old, he refuses to wear his spectacles and cannot see the ruts on the road, feeling every solitary bump on the shortest trip.’
Her words set me thinking I am blessed to know those who are willing to make the six-hour journey from Salzburg. N.

A Different Provocation

2006-05-06T09:25:00.000+01:00

When the last coach has climbed the hills out of Saint Gilgen and when the china and furniture are restored to their rightful place at the end of a concert, there is peace in the house and I look forward to playing écarté with Johannes. The other night I won every game with a succession of voles. I cannot believe it! Not that I won, but that my husband eyed me with a look, which of late he has reserved for the wet nurse. It is true I had taken trouble with my appearance, having laid aside my wig to curl my hair, worn the diamond ear-bobs that belonged to Mama and dressed in my red velvet Bolognese gown to receive the archbishop. Wolfie was unable to attend this particular soiree but may have been escaping from His Grace. Those who came said the evening was well worth the six-hours of travel from Salzburg and Frau Von Tin-Ears insisted that the violist had such an excellent tone that for the first time in her life, she was able to hear the outer parts from within!
On retirement after our game of cards, Johannes followed me to bed and wrapped me warmly in his arms and offered me his most passionate gift, which I accepted willingly as I gave him mine in return. At the exchange of our gifts, he kissed away my tears of pleasure and I fell asleep against his warm body with perfect contentment. N.

The Odd Philistine

2006-05-05T10:23:00.000+01:00

Not all our small audience is well disposed to listen in silence to an entire concert. Frau Von Tin-Ears was tapping her large plump foot in the front row while I was playing a difficult cadenza. As if that were not bad enough, during the slow movement when it was meant to be molto espressivo, I could hear her snoring like a barrel organ on a still summer night and so I paused and waited for the shuddering to stop, at which point someone at the back cried ‘Brava,’ and our small audience began to clap so that Tin Ears awoke and eventually I was able to finish off the cadenza and play the final rondo without further incident. N.

Encore

2006-05-04T17:41:00.000+01:00

Yet more concerts in Saint Gilgen! I have arranged a variety of programmes to exalt Wolfie’s talents and will invite the Archbishop to attend the next soiree. Some fine and elegant string players will perform three of the quartets my brother dedicated to Joseph Haydn.
I do not expect Jack Pudding will keep his promise and journey from Vienna to see how his fame has spread but I have arranged for the most delicious coffee and cakes. The consolations of religion will be discussed after the music has been played. N.

Salzburg, 24th November, 1777

2006-05-03T09:06:00.000+01:00

Mama and Papa are in heaven but where are you Jack Pudding? Vienna might as well be the other side of the world... The following letter was copied out twice into my diary because the tears kept spilling onto the ink - as if they were trying to dissolve a memory.
Dear Wolfgango Amadeo,
My reply to yours of the 15th will be short for I have written at length to Mama and you may read THAT for gossip. Papa says about the German opera you mentioned to him a month ago, who composed it, who sang it, what did you think of it? And last week’s concert? Who whistled it? Who blew it? Not a peep in the post, my fine friend but old Pimperl wags her tail. Heigh-ho. The Andante is very fine and I look forward to the rondo with the downward scales prestissimo because I can PLAY them as you know-ho!
Kissie-kissies from Katherina Gilowska, Barbara Eberlin, (not all of Salzburg), and from your naturally vile sister, Nanny-kin!

Between Brother and Sister

2006-05-02T08:30:00.000+01:00

Some treasured, dog-eared letters have slipped out from the bottom drawer - their ink so faint, I am copying each one into my diary.
Mannheim, 15th November, 1777
Ma Plus Chère Soeur,
We have received every single e-pissle from Salzburg so please do NOT fret about old post.I’ve been to the closet this morning and am less full of rubbish. There is ice on the windows in Mannheim and I intend to accompany Mama by knitting in bed. Our same dear, saintly Mama has produced skeins of wool that she bought from Herr Hofmann and when we are fed up with the clickety-clacketing of our needles, she and I will play cards or tell our fortunes so we will all become rich. I am now off to the closet once again but would like first to ask if Pimperl has been snarling since I left? Do not answer that, because if she hasn’t, I will feel she does not miss us and if she has, I will be sad that she is. What a clever, subtle brother you have. I send you my latest Andante for my own dear sister to play. W.A.M.

The Best Medicine

2006-05-01T10:11:00.000+01:00

There is a weakness of mind to which I readily confess: a fondness for the merry dance. We have been spinning and twirling for an hour, the older children and I - upsetting the cat’s milk as we pass, knocking the mirrors on the walls askew. Marianna provides us with a jig on her violin. It is ALWAYS the same dah-deh-dah… dah-deh-dah daah - da capo, as our little M. knows no other tune. We pray for the smallest embellishment to add variety and cannot hide our laughter when she starts it up AGAIN! The dancing only stops when Johannes is returned. N.

Saint Katharina Gilowska

2006-04-28T08:19:00.000+01:00

It is Katharina’s belief that the spa should be a cure for EVERYTHING. We have just returned from Gastein – as always, the going, not the departure on her insistence. What she cannot understand is that SHE is my waters, my spa, my sanity, my municipal ball, my delight in companionship, my rival in target practice, my grateful audience when I perform an adagio, allegretto – my very own, noisy canary. What can I give HER? Not enough I fear. An elegant flower pot? A bowl of roasted apples or a small brown cat? I really wish that she had married Wolfie. N.

A Mistress of Sorts

2006-04-25T09:00:00.000+01:00

This morning the miraculous milkmaid was nursing Jeanette Babette behind the bamboo screen in our salon. It has the painted figure of a mandarin and a woman holding a parasol, a butterfly in her hair. They are crouching next to a stream that runs underneath a small arched bridge, at the point where the paint has started to peel. I saw Johannes pause for a moment before he passed, looking solemn and sad, as if he wished to be on the other side of the screen.
Our daughter grows apace while he and I are like two old hats lying side by side on a shelf in the cupboard. Now that is intimacy.

A Daughter

2006-04-23T11:02:00.000+01:00

Johanna Maria Anna Elisabeth, born 22nd March 1789, is lodged with the wet nurse and taking suck - I write, lying on my bed, facing the wall. ‘Milk fever,’ a voice whispers from behind closed door. ‘Unhinged by birth’ – like a rusty gate. No, no, they are mistaken. I am a failed milch cow, playing someone else’s figured bass. Do NOT feel pity for me. I am, you see, Freyfrau Anna Maria Walburga Ignatia Berchtold zu Sonnenburg - née Mozart. Ay, there’s the rub, who WAS Mozart but who IS no more. N.

Memories

2006-04-22T18:29:00.000+01:00

Jakob Hofmann travelled from Frankfurt to attend the last soiree before my confinement. He remained in Saint Gilgen as our guest for two more days, playing with the children, discussing town affairs with Johannes, examining my recent compositions, enjoying Salzburg gossip and regaling us with stories of Wolfie’s triumphs in Vienna.
On his last evening, I suggested we take a moonlit walk by the duck pond.
A wild boar bellowed out of the darkness of the mountains when we reached the end of the path. We laughed, waiting for the mournful howl to come again, talking freely and without shame as old friends – of how I reminded him of Papa when I performed an especially long trill with my tongue between my teeth. He told me this and so much more, before we collided trying to avoid the branches of a tree.
I confessed that he, my dear Jakob, used to visit me in dreams dressed in a scarlet coat with gold buttons and white silk stockings and with buckles on his shoes. He laughed again and called me his little Schätzl and assured me, as if I did not know already, that it was indeed a dream.
I stumbled when my shoe slipped in wet, fallen leaves but he steadied me with his arm and I felt the child within me turn. We saw each other fully by moonlight and I could hear the wind that came from the rise and fall of our breathing as we stepped apart. The moon shivered on the surface of the lake and we returned to the house, reluctant to let go of the past. N.

A Promise

2006-04-21T12:10:00.000+01:00

I made a promise to Katharina Gilowska, who is now thirty-seven years of age and unmarried. Sometimes when I look into her face, I see my own reflection - one or two faint lines around the eyes - the weariness of wear and tear, a thinning of the lips and hair. Well then. I have offered her my second child when it is born and she has accepted, but of course it was a jest on both our parts. N.

My Condition

2006-04-20T09:02:00.000+01:00

I am again with child. I dreamt last night that I was twisting and tossing in my bed, scratching my head as I waited for the nitpicker to arrive. A pair of ducks was nesting inside a periwig that had been snagged among the reeds of a lake. The lake was at the bottom of my bed and a harpsichord without any strings was floating towards a small island in the centre. At my feet, a solitary egg rested on a giant lily pad. I wept until my throat was raw, my pillow drenched. N.

Another World

2006-04-19T18:38:00.000+01:00

I have been neither amused nor amusing of late but am resolved to banish this gloom. I have composed a laugh with a fresh quill and when I read it aloud, my spirits will be transformed.
A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-oh-ho-oh-ho-a-a-a-a-a-a-ha-who-o-o-ah-ha-a-a-a-ha-a-a-a-a-ha-a-a!
Mm-m. That’s a fair composition. N.

In Permanent Motion

2006-04-18T09:12:00.000+01:00

Church, charity and soirees are a piffling distraction from the profoundest grief. No visits from my brother, although we have exchanged cold letters about Papa’s estate. Herr D’Yppold brokered an agreement in monies and I am to keep Mama’s rings and what remains of the Royal snuffboxes. No jeweled toothpicks left and no Papa but one husband, six noisy children and fresh galanteries between the hours of two and four o'clock – my life on the edge of a lake. N.

In Memoriam

2006-04-17T10:24:00.000+01:00

I already scarcely remember what he said to me in all the years of his loving companionship. I cannot now recall what he said to me, even when a short while ago we had exchanged cards in a game of écarté, which he won. All those sensations that had recently been, seem lost, forgotten, at a distance or obsolete. If I remember him, I will be undone because then I will know that I cannot exist without him. N.

My Beloved Father

2006-04-16T10:05:00.000+01:00

28th May, 1787
He complained of indigestion that would not go away. He asked that Leopoldl should lie beside him in his bed. Now Papa is in heaven and I am inconsolable. N.

An Observation

2006-04-15T15:30:00.000+01:00

The art of the successful salon depends on the exchange of abundant praise and a smidgeon of criticism. I have never met a human being who was undone by this discrepancy, nor an event. It is the etiquette of the salonniere, the basis of a bel esprit and the very core of our little café of Saint Gilgen. 'Encore! Bravissima! Let there be more coffee and cake.' Madama Sonnenburg.

Triumph!

2006-04-11T12:47:00.000+01:00

The Sisters of Abundant Mercy took charge of our first supper - thank the Lord. My cousin, Anna Maria Pertl, who studied the art of voice with Madame Weigl at Eisenstadt, agreed to sing for us the day before.
‘Neither the composer nor the performer is obliged to a strictness of time. What you are about to hear are extempore touches in place of any formal effects.’
I bowed solemnly to our audience of intimates and thought I heard a murmur of bees when I sat down to play, though it may have been an air of agreement at the simple lack of requirement.
After a FREE style Preludio, my cousin sang the aria,‘Porgi, amor,’ from Le Nozze di Figaro. She sang with such fluid and beseeching tones that the older women wept while their husbands closed their eyes and smiled at some memory.
At the end of our little concert, three marble cakes and several plates of Viennese pastries with glazed cherries were consumed at a lick. Conversation on the merits of vibrato was so lively between guests that Johannes pronounced the evening a success and Papa said to anyone who would listen, he wished Wolfie had been there. N.

Disaster

2006-04-10T15:09:00.000+01:00

The invitations are dispatched but I am low in spirits. The fortepiano gleams like a Venetian mirror and there is not a speck of dust in the house. For the concert, I am to wear a green silk dress with lace fissure at a cost of sixty ducats. My stepdaughter, Marianna is to turn the pages as I play – that is, IF I play. Our singing cook has been taken severely ill and there are less than ten days in which to find another Prima Donna in the kitchen, not to mention the salon. N.

The Readiness is All

2006-04-09T10:38:00.000+01:00

So much to DO before the concert - Johannes has insisted that the entire house be aired, which means the windows are left open to the icy winds by night and day, the salon curtains taken down and beaten to make sure the moths are NOT hiding in their folds and twenty more chairs with gold tassels and blue velvet cushions are to be borrowed from a rich aunt in Augsburg. Her brother-in-law is a bookbinder and he has agreed to print as many programmes as there are chairs! N.

Plans

2006-04-07T14:52:00.000+01:00

The Widow Von Durst sends advice from Munich but the Abbe Eiberle, Papa and Katharina Gilowska are my committee for the first soiree. It is agreed we must have a balance of sonatas and songs between the cakes and ideas. Who then to sing at our salon - a soprano of my sex or a masculine presence with a feminine grace?
I have heard there is a certain castrato whose legato and messa di voce are celebrated in Upper Silesia, who executes a slow crescendo followed by a slow diminuendo without the least change in his tempo di vibrato. In short, he is a phenomenon. N.

A Change in Plans
I am worried that our primo soprano may hold his breath, sing a thousand notes a minute but neither pronounce the text clearly enough nor understand the emotions he is meant to express. What if there is all the flair of a trapeze artist and none of the poet? Not the castrato then…though I have a cook, who warbles well enough and who has a fullness of body and such heartfelt shrieks when she chops the head off a bird that I think I may have found my Lady Macbeth if not my Cherubino.
"Long live the knife!" is the cry in my kitchen and no longer in the opera house. N.

Soirees

2006-04-05T09:38:00.000+01:00

I have a plan, not a dream. I shall keep a salon in Saint Gilgen – a forum for ideas. I will practise the etiquette of the philosophe as I would a fantasia. My guests from the grandest villas of Germany or the drinking holes of Prague will explore such subtleties of conversation AFTER they have listened to my brother’s music. In short, I shall be a salonniere with an ivory fan and a black spot on my cheek. N.

Rivals of Another Kind

2006-04-04T10:45:00.000+01:00

Aha! And have I ever doubted my father’s sagacity or his ability to foresee events? So it has come to pass that Constanze and Wolfie are planning a tour of Germany followed by a trip to England. They have asked Papa if he will care for their two sons while they are traveling. (It would seem Herr Muller, the silhouette maker, has stirred something of a hornet’s nest by revealing Leopoldl’s whereabouts. And who is his most rapturous audience in all this mischievous blabbing from Salzburg to Vienna? Wolfgang and Constanze.)
‘Basta!’ cries Papa. ‘As if I am NOT already an overworked and exhausted kindergarten!’ (He has quite forgotten that it was HIS idea, HIS wish and HIS insistence that HE borrowed MY son for his entire infancy.)
What to do? I replied in a letter from Saint Gilgen.
‘Asso-luta-menta-niente,’ Papa wrote back and in my mind I could hear him toss his inkpot at the wall. ‘I shall simply say I cannot be a nursemaid to their increasing brood as they may well have such a fine time abroad, they will FORGET to return for another two years. Out of the question and OUT of order, my son!’
Poor Wolfie, named after a lake - but I have read the score of Le Nozze di Figaro and it is perfect – so, not so poor as Salieri. N.

The Marriage of Figaro, 28th April, 1786

2006-04-04T00:03:00.000+01:00

Only those who have never practised a commitment to their ideas can suppose that the pursuit of composition does not require a seriousness of purpose, a resolve to finish what has been started or a particular energy that if lacking or in small supply will prevent that person from completing their work. Such a person could NOT be my brother - nor it seems Salieri, the Emperor’s court composer. They are both pursuers in their different ways.
‘Le Nozze di Figaro’ will have its first performance tonight and friends have informed Papa that Salieri and his friends ‘will move heaven and earth to down his opera.’ The cause of this sabotage? Jealousy. N.

Well At Last

2006-04-03T23:04:00.000+01:00

Leopoldl is again sucking hard at the quaking puddings. The fever has passed and Papa praises the Lord and the gentian violet, which he has used to paint the rash inside his grandson’s mouth. Yellow, sulphurous powders, purple medicine, a pink and white spotted tongue - who would have thought there could be so much colour in one illness? This morning at mass I fell to my knees to thank God for his mercy in the middle of the Kyrie. I collapsed with such a passion that blood trickled onto my shoe. N.

Leopoldl is Unwell

2006-04-03T09:52:00.000+01:00

Papa has written to say he fears the worst. My child's small tongue is smothered in white spots and his body is feverishly hot…It is all I can do to stop myself from taking the next coach to Salzburg and resenting the good health of my five noisy stepchildren. N.

Horticulture

2006-04-02T12:14:00.000+01:00

Papa insists that a babe is like a sapling and requires every bit of one's attention. You feed it, you water it, you watch it grow. He is certain that my son knows his A from his B and his C from his D. It would seem his small fingers curve on the coverlet with all the natural delicacy of a keyboard player and bear little resemblance to a tree. As his mother, I am told to rest assured.
It would seem his uncle - that well tended plant, has found success in Vienna with his subscription concerts and his string quartets. Papa paid a visit to Vienna in time for Lent and reports that Herr Joseph Haydn turned to him at the end of one of these concerts and said: ‘Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me in person or by name.’ N.

Papa's Educational Theories

2006-04-01T10:26:00.000+01:00

‘My Dear,’ he writes the following twice over in case I have not received it first time round, ‘I plucked the strings of a violin from behind a pillar and watched how quickly the boy turned his head to the sound. Quite soon I will teach him the alphabet and wait for him to read aloud to his aging grandfather. When the good Lord sees fit, I will take your son by the hand and we shall walk up the path together and on that day I will bring him safely back to you.’ N.

What to do?

2006-03-31T10:14:00.000+01:00

My thoughts on Leopoldl's future are as clear as mud - I cannot speak for my husband’s opinions as he is still preoccupied with town affairs. When I sat down to extemporise on a figured bass, I realised that I had played for an hour without hearing a single note and it was only when I stopped that I could examine my heart.
The pain of separation from the child is, I believe, a small sacrifice to pay for what will be the greatest gift to Papa. I have been warned that under no circumstances am I to breathe a word of Leopoldl’s whereabouts to Wolfie or he, my father, will be asked to do the same for my brother’s expanding brood! This is Papa’s choice to care for Leopoldl and he does NOT wish to explain HIS decision to either his son or to that woman and THAT is the END of the matter.
So, it is agreed. Leopoldl is to become a second Wolfie. Oh, the bliss of no longer feeling like a stuffed codshead trapped in a quagmire. I polished off a perfect rendition of my figured bass and imagined how Papa would be pleased. N.

Recovery

2006-03-30T09:23:00.000+01:00

Blood was drawn again today and the colour was frank. Since our trip to the spa, my spirits have equally improved. Consumed a bowl of thin soup with the smallest, most delicious dumplings made by Katharina. Found the strength to play through a new sonata by Wolfie prima vista without mistakes. A storm of chords and unexpected rests - I could never write so well! I say it because it is true.
Leopoldl is growing fat and content as he sucks from his nurse’s breast, alas not mine. He behaves altogether as if his head is stuck between TWO quaking puddings and he cannot decide which one he prefers. Papa has asked if he may keep him in Salzburg when it is time for me to return to the twinkling village. Should I weigh my feelings against Papa’s? N.

After the Birth

2006-03-29T09:24:00.000+01:00

I have been taken ill of mind and body, though for how many weeks or days I know not. Every hour that passed was thought to be my last and my blood, which was drawn yesterday, filled several platefuls and seemed tinged at the sides by a strange green colour. I bless God and Papa that despite my distemper I can now make another entry. I am daily steadying. The tumultuousness of feelings is passing off and the craving to walk in the hills at night is not so bad. Sometimes I just stare at the walls around my bed and slowly begin to understand the nature of my gift – this wriggling, living thing that I call my son. He and I will remain in Salzburg for the present and Katharina Gilowska, my very own Schatzl, has arranged to take the waters with me. Papa and the new wet nurse will attend to my sweet boy while we are away. N.

Infant Joy

2006-03-28T08:46:00.000+01:00

With a great, shuddering pain and a cry of rage, my son was born on the 27th July, 1785 and we have called him Leopold Alois Pantaleon Berchtold zu Sonnenburg. I listen to the strange new voice beside me with its tremolo like a protesting nanny-goat. O Nanny indeed. This Nanny is not of right mind for I can only perceive the faults and somehow I do rather wish it had all happened to someone else. I look down at his small wrinkled face and ask myself is this what is past reason wanted, no sooner had, past reason NOT wanted?
Papa scolds me for my unnatural indifference. My husband, Johannes, is absorbed by town affairs and thinks all well. What is natural, I plead with Papa, burying my head under the pillow.
‘My grandson,’ he replies, ‘is a miniature rendition of his uncle. It is natural. My dear child, if we can order the way we think, we can order ourselves and our lives.’
The greatest melancholy inside me gives way to such wild laughter that my father frowns and pokes my invisible head and keeps asking if I am myself. I try to explain that I can see me from above but do not recognise who I am. Leopoldl has fallen asleep and I have now picked up my quill. Papa is watching me from his chair in a corner of the room. N.

A Bond with My Brother

2006-03-27T11:17:00.000+01:00

Today I shut the door behind me to sit down on the stroke of two and practise my very own piano concerto as composed by Wolfie. So vividly did I hear the orchestra, I quite forgot that it was not there or that I was in Saint Gilgen with my solitary pianoforte. ‘More!’ I cried aloud on the final cadence. ‘Again!’
“This is for my own dear sister to play,” Jack Pudding wrote to all who cared to know. ‘For none other than my darling Nan can play it better.’ And so, you understand, I ran it through twice more, at a lick.
‘Bravissima!’ I heard his voice echoing through a mysterious reflection in the mirror next to me. ‘Bravissima sorissima, bravissima.’
The image and the sound vanished when I bowed to the empty chair and the portraits of deadness hanging on the wall. I left the room because I knew I had performed three times well and now my firstborn child is due. N.

Passion

2006-03-25T14:55:00.000Z

It is surely the unreasoning desire for an idea, an object or a person. In its romantic sense, passion is all pursuit. Its excitement lies with the hunting, not the result - and yet, in a piece of music, where the player and the listener are passionately involved in a flight of notes, does this lust of the ear end with the silence? I desire the child that grows within so much that when it is delivered as a small, pink, kicking thing, I will not wish it back inside my womb or believe the yearning I have for it will be spent on its arrival. That would be perverse, would it not? I long to write a perfect aria, full of passion and form that will celebrate the birth of my child. N.
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A Domestic Scene

2006-03-24T11:47:00.000Z

Last night I was so tired from my combined role of stepmother, expectant mother, wife and afternoon keyboard player that I almost fell asleep while standing at the foot of my own bed. N.

A Queen of Hypocrites

2006-03-23T09:52:00.000Z

I have sent the briefest letter to Herr Hofmann, despite my resolve not to write a single word.
Dear Jakob,
Thank you for your kind thoughts on my condition. The country here is not very cheerful and there have been a few deaths over winter, what with the damp air and the loneliness and the isolation from everything that is lively and familiar. The population is of course small, though no doubt I am trying to increase it. I wish you great happiness in your travels and remain your friend,
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart Von Sonnenburg.
His reply, which I received this morning:
My Dear Maria Anna,
There can be no reservations in my devotion to you and if it is a great risk to say such a thing in a letter, then I take that risk willingly. When I am no longer wandering between upper and lower Silesia and have wiped the dust off my violin, I will come to Saint Gilgen for a soiree of Madame Sonnenburg and to admire her entire family.
I am meanwhile, your most obliged friend,
Jakob

Bah! Too late, N.

The Interim

2006-03-22T09:00:00.000Z

I waited and waited and longed for the hour and the arrival of your letter. I pressed my lips to its address without knowing what lay within. I thought of you imagining me in the depths of despair as a result of my marriage and my expectation. I prayed that you might be inconsolable at the news and yet when I DO read it, I discover that your mind is pacified? Does my condition leave you calm and at rest? You sleep well on the receipt of my news? You wish, in between some benign remarks about my latest composition, that my nights be happy? What does this mean? That I lie beside my husband as a spoon, though the lying is done well enough? I despair of ever recovering a peace of mind now I know yours is in such a state that you sleep like a babe! I try hard not to admit how much passion I still feel for you, (and which once you felt for me). I must suppose they are in unequal parts. You advise me to rest on the sofa when I am not watching the children climbing trees, but I cannot tell you that I dare not, or that the moment I am left to my own thoughts they are entirely of you. Dear Jakob, I will not write to you by post and you will never know that I confide my baser thoughts each day to my silent, literary confidante. N.

A Visit From My Father

2006-03-21T12:03:00.000Z

‘Please do not say what you think but remember, I am his wife.’
‘My child, how can I forget?’
Papa’s eyes were drawn directly to my belly as he worked himself into a tin-pot fury. It was time for him to leave.
‘I met the baron,’ he persisted, ‘just after the death of your dear mother and I thought, what a pleasant, reverent person. How sympathetic and not at all a pompous, quasi-ecclesiastical prick. As he was already wed, I could hardly regard him as a future son-in-law. How could I predict that his second wife would have the misfortune to die or that he would set his sights on my only beloved daughter?’
‘Really, Papa, it is your expectation which has changed, not my husband.’ I shut the lid of the fortepiano with a bang.
‘Your husband, my dear, is a penny-pinching pipsqueak with one foot in the grave, the other in this twinkling village and I do NOT feel welcome in his home.’
There was more of this until the wheels of the coach returned him to Salzburg and his lonely bed. As I waved goodbye, I realised for the first time that Papa’s discomfort does not have to be a part of mine. By a miracle, I may have glimpsed another world. N.

Anticipation

2006-03-20T11:56:00.000Z

The Abbe Eiberle always has a good sermon on Sundays –so full of fire and castigation that yesterday, my slippers shook most wildly against the stone floor while I fancied my own inferno. I listened, despite the clatter of my trembling feet or the squawking of a flock of blackbirds in the graveyard outside.
After prayers, with his pinkish eye fixed in my direction, he mentioned my mother’s connection to Saint Gilgen and announced there would be a performance of my brother’s mass in C to celebrate the new organ. As I left my pew, I felt the child inside me turn and was glad of heart. N.

Nitpicking

2006-03-19T13:19:00.000Z

Papa has written to say that 1) I must be careful not to climb trees with the children now that I am enceinte, 2) that I must eat dried figs every day for breakfast and 3) that there has been a plague of nits in the wiggery at the palace.
Many a good fellow in His Grace’s orchestra has been playing molto agitato as a result and at one point, a trombonist lost his wig in the fray. Her Strauss, the nitpicker, so it is rumoured, has become exceedingly rich.
I am quite pleased that I am removed to the damp air of Saint Gilgen where the hungry monster is deprived of a crowd. Today I walked along the water’s edge and the only beast I encountered was a wild boar in the distance on the other side of the lake. N.

Great Expectation

2006-03-16T14:15:00.000Z

The point of a diary is surely that you can say what you like on the page - if you believe that what you write is for your eyes only, or for others who may think this is what you believe.
I am certain you cannot have a good thing without the bad or a state of gloom without an understanding of happiness. If I am not forthright about my new life under the bed linen, it is because I have no desire to recall any of its details. In fact, I have no desire whatsoever in any sense you would expect.
I am either a cold fish or a disappointed creature thwarted in passion, unable to dream of scarlet coats, silver buckles and white silk stockings without dishonour. Nevertheless, another Sonnenburg is on the way... N.

An Enlightenment

2006-03-14T09:04:00.000Z

Of wedding nights may neither man nor woman speak, but marriage brings indeed a flawed bliss and I think that I am now accustomed to the state of it. N.

Well Met!

2006-03-09T22:20:00.000Z

Five well scrubbed children looked at me solemnly as I entered their home. They clapped with their fingers cupped together and bowed politely when Johannes introduced me as their future stepmother.
Marianne, the eldest, is about twelve years of age and very sweet in her expression. The boys – Wolfgang, Joseph, Andra, Karl - I could not tell their ages exactly, were longing to run outside into the garden at the point where it meets the lake. It was still as a duck’s pond.
We watched the two older ones climb trees while the two youngest played hide and seek with Marianne. I think all went tolerably well, but I had no appetite for the feast that had been prepared in my honour. I remember thinking, ‘Heigh-ho. This was my mother’s house when she was a little girl, ’ as I was shown each room and told the history of it. I imagined her as a child of the magistrate, much like Marianne, and when it was time for me to leave, I said truthfully that I looked forward to my next visit. The children smiled back at me and clapped their hands again, making a small fluttering sound like a flock of birds. N.

Past, Present and Future

2006-03-07T11:41:00.000Z

Before Vienna, if Papa, Wolfie and I were alone, we used to argue over principles of composition. The arguments were always noisier than the conclusion. We would take it in turns to rattle out an idea on the harpsichord and when I performed a particularly elegant phrase, I felt the Lord was punishing me for a display of petticoat excellence. Who outside this room, I thought, would PLAY me?
The desolation of my spirit at these times, if I had acknowledged it aloud would have been unbearable. There was no great expectation for my career in a worldly sense, but I did not want to be without private hopes for myself, which is why I continue to write music for the bottom drawer.
When I imagine my future life as a wife and step-mother who must compose as catch can, I feel like Jonah, crying out of the belly of HELL, or the maid trying to cut her way out of the giant’s stomach in a fairytale. I could burn all that I have written, so that no one will ever know what was lost to the world. I could remain the enigmatic sister of a genius...
After Breakfast:
I was in a tiresome spell when I began this entry. Have consumed a quaking pudding with great gusto and feel much better. After this morning’s galanteries, I will take a coach to meet my future family. N.

Too Late

2006-03-03T20:25:00.000Z

Papa kissed me good night and said with a voice full of emotion:

‘If I could make you, my dear child, just reflect for a moment when you are in full heat, it would make you the happiest woman on earth. But nothing comes in advance, except in the matter of your talents. You understand theoretical ideas with ease. And yet you cannot fathom the people who surround you? You open your heart to flatterers who want to use you for your own ends – and when suitors are involved in this vulgar offence, IF you do not resist their wiliness, you will regret it to your dying day.’

I took his hand in mine and told him I was no longer a child and that he was not to worry. For a moment, I thought HE THOUGHT that I was Wolfie...N.

Second Thoughts

2006-03-02T12:17:00.000Z

This morning I awoke to the sound of St Peter’s bells. I am late for mass! The reason? I overslept.
Truly, I am beginning to think I am a humbug and a dunderhead. Why is that? I quite look forward to my marriage after all. The reason? A letter and a poem I have just received from Wolfie.

Ma Plus Chere Soeur!
Pop goes the weasel! I’d better hurry up and write this letter if it’s to arrive while you are still a vestal virgin! A day or so from now, you’ll lose it! My wife, Constanze and I, your loving brother, congratulate you on what will soon be your TRANSFORMED state!

Marriage brings a flawed bliss
And in the mysteries of this,
The arts of Eve
That gave her Cain
Will bring such joy
As mewling girl or puking boy.
Yet nothing is pure harmony –
The counterpoint we surely know
Is there to stop the sickly flow.
Rejoice when ere your husband says
He’s out of sorts!
Just think sister, this is man’s sports,
And say, why then, YOUR WILL by day
And MINE by night I SORELY pray.
Sincerely,
Your devoted, Wolfgangus Amadeo
Indeed…N.

The Baron and I

2006-02-27T09:35:00.000Z

Last night I returned from Saint Gilgen as the future wife of Johann Baptist von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg and step-mother to his five children. I drank three or four glasses of elderflower wine with Papa, who is half-pleased and half-pained that I will be off his hands, no longer to endure a life in service to the Archbishop. We played duets, talked a great deal about the past and all was well until I got to bed, quite swollen and vertiginous.

What caused the commotion was not so much the effect of the wine as the prospect of my life in a different harness. We are drawn together like post-horses from different carriages, the baron and I, obliged to gallop together for the next few miles. No doubt I have delayed this event as if it were a great dessert that will put an end to the merry-go-round inside my head.

I have swallowed the black powder that Papa has mixed for me and said goodbye to the scarlet coat and white silk stockings of my dreams. I have written a letter to my future husband that begins, 'My Dear Johannes,' and ends, 'Your loving, N.'

Revelation

2006-02-26T13:48:00.000Z

I cling to the idea that any serious study of a body of knowledge will yield some secret, even if it is not the original enlightenment that was sought.
I have attempted the study of composition in all aspects of old and fashionable harmony and have come to the conclusion that there is no recipe for perfection in this. That is my revelation, Herr Hofmann, and the secret that I cannot keep.
Since you know I have the perfectionist's capacity for worry, I will put down my quill for today and consider the Baron Sonnenburg's proposal. N.

The Public Secret

2006-02-20T16:41:00.000Z

I have been neglecting my diary of late, but now I have some important news. It seems I am to become an aunt and my sister-in-law has written me a letter, which I received today, saying: 'Dearest Nanny-kin, I will make such a fuss over you when you come to Vienna and stay with my little family,' (clearly her head is not the best developed part of her), 'and I hope,' she continues, 'that I will soon be introducing you to our friends as Frau d'Yppold! Frau d'Ypp - who? This is Papa's unfortunate and misleading gossip to his son, which is wildly out of date. Next, he will be telling the whole of Austria that I am to marry the Baron von Sonnenburg, who has just lost his second wife. Either that or they will wed me to the moon and I will become a very old piece of cheese. N.

At Last I am Alone

2006-02-16T17:59:00.001Z

Papa has gone to the theatre and there is nothing to interrupt my thoughts. They are, dear Jakob, of you and me.

I could never bring myself to confess that you are engraved on my soul, so how can I expect to confide about such feelings with anyone else? Everything I look at is a part of you. You are my scarlet coat and my gold buttons, my white silk stockings and the buckles on my shoes. You are all that I know and dream.

Papa complains that he is growing old, while Wolfie exists in a distant bubble with his new wife and his plans for at least six children. They understand nothing of my desires and yours, but urge me in letters to find a husband and give up the waters.

There seems little point to my life now you are physically removed from it. No more violin lessons with Papa, my friend. No more market days in the square for us to meet without a care. No excuses left for buying another yard of lace. You have chosen to wander between upper and lower Silesia with your box of hose and your instrument.

I must remain an old maid in Salzburg with Papa, practising my galanteries. Either that or I will wed a widower. I am almost thirty-three years old and irredeemably melancholy. I will burn this letter in the stove, together with my songs. Only the memories will remain. N.

According to Papa

2006-02-15T09:23:00.000Z

This was the trick:
Last December, Wolfie signed a contract in which he promised to marry his beloved Constanze within three years from that date or else pay her three hundred gulden a year. Soon after their agreement, the two lovebirds were hounded by the most malicious gossip.

Frau Weber complained to anyone who would listen that the scandal would compromise her daughter’s reputation. Papa is now convinced that Wolfie was pushed into marriage by her skulduggery.

Perhaps, dear brother, you were propelled, not pushed? I can see that it could be so, but I'm afraid Papa won't have it any other way. N.

August, 1782

2006-02-14T10:13:00.000Z

It has happened. They are married, my brother Wolfie and his new wife, Constanze.
‘Tricked by the threat of scandal,’ my father bellowed when he first received the news. ‘We have lost him now, my dear,’ and for once he did not stamp his foot but wept into his handkerchief.
‘The passion will fade soon enough,’ I murmured.
‘Too late, too late,’ he sighed.
‘Does my brother gaze at the moon when he is holding his wife in his arms?’
‘It may be an excellent plan when he is tired of her.’ Papa spoke in a cold voice but when I looked at him again, he was still weeping.

A Living Chronicle

2006-02-11T07:17:00.000Z

Sometimes I am compelled to write down everything that occurs in Salzburg so I may write it out a second time in a letter to tickle Wolfie. Katherl has told me a piece of gossip expressly for his ears.

Last Wednesday, when I was obliged to practise for a concert that evening, there was a handsome youth who was a guest of the Gilowsky’s for their afternoon shoot. He claimed to have an excellent eye for targets and boasted that he could hit the smallest spot from the furthest point. He challenged the party to come up with a suitable mark to test his excellence.

Katherl’s brother exclaimed: “Let’s not hang around for this. Let’s do it now.’
He found some ink and a quill in his travel case and painted a fly’s wing on a soldier’s hat, pinning it to a tree at twenty paces or thereabouts.
‘This,’ pronounced Gilowsky, ‘is the target.’
‘Very well,’ said our hero as he aimed and fired his arrow with a great squinting of one eye.

Oh, cruel fate. It fell wide of the mark and when Katherl turned to examine the handsome youth to see if he was crestfallen, she saw that his open eye was made of glass. N.

Memories

2006-02-10T07:10:00.000Z

Madame X has given another recital with her hapless husband. She is drawing a salary of five hundred ducats from His Grace because she sings her arias an exclamation mark higher than her rivals. This is really a great achievement, for she manages to remain in tune. She has now promised to sing a further half tone higher than her habit, but on condition that she is paid twice as much.

When safely inside our coach, I turned to Papa and announced I would like to compose her a song or two to sing in my new opera.
‘Basta!,' he shouted to the walls. 'Over my ...’ and left the words unfinished.
“Clunk, clunk,’ I replied in tune with the wheels and we laughed so much that he wept as he kissed my hands and whispered into my ear, ‘I wish Jack Pudding were here.’ We were silent for the rest of the way home and did not have to mention Mama for us to think about her too. N.

Resolution

2006-02-09T20:20:00.000Z

‘Believe me, my sole purpose is to make as much money as possible; for after good health, it is the best thing to have.’

I have cut out these sentiments from my brother’s letter to Papa and pinned it with my brooch to the silk tassel on the end of my bed.

Now I am going to talk to you as if we were alone, which in a sense, we are. Papa is convinced that Wolfie will marry Fraulein Weber and have six babies on the trot and they will all starve to death in a garret. Is it not possible for a man to reform? N.

A Shameful Concert

2006-02-03T14:16:00.000Z

Madame X gave a recital at the theatre last night. Papa was moved to turn to me between arias and say, ‘Why?’ with all the passion of a scale in a storm. ‘BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.’

‘Shush Papa,’ I whispered back, ‘X-actly,’ and stifled my laughter by biting the lace of my handkerchief. Her husband, poor man, was afraid to be seen at the end of the concert. It had been his particular misfortune to accompany her on a beautiful, Stein fortepiano and he kept hiding behind the curtain as she took her bows. I felt such relief his wife had not mangled a single note by Wolfie and that her programme was entirely devoted to obscure, dead composers. At least, they will never know she made a loud bellow out of a cat’s purr. N.

Patience

2006-02-02T15:17:00.000Z

When I opened my diary at the page where I made my last entry, I happened to hold it in such a way that nothing but a blank sheet met my eyes. Then I fell upon the words ‘moral force,’ followed by ‘the Weber daughters.’ Indeed. We now know which one.

‘Constanze. Constance. My little Connie, my true, plain dove.’ He cannot sing her praises without also mentioning her deficiencies. ‘Papa dear, she is not exactly beautiful but she has, I tell you now, such fine brown eyes and a selfless heart – you could not fail to admire the way she is devoted to her mother – and her voice, though small, has a distinctive grace’… or words to that effect. Is this passion? Is this love, I ask myself? Can my brother - be taken by a person so ordinary to our minds that she has faults as well as virtues? Ah, Wolfie dear, perhaps I am blind. Think of your next opera. Pazienza. N.

A Moral Force

2006-01-23T12:49:00.000Z

I adore Papa! If he appeared insincere and not above reproach, I would be the first to criticize him - that is because fathers cannot deceive their daughters. Perhaps they can their sons or wives. I cannot speak for them.

And yet I do know that in our family, it is Wolfie who sometimes deceives Papa. For example, my charming brother is less than a moral force when he fails to mention his real reason for wanting to stay behind in Vienna. Forget the Archbishop. His fondness for the Weber daughters keeps him there. Which one now, we wonder?

Papa has got out his paint box again and is putting the finishing touches to the Knave of Hearts. N.

Some Huffing and Puffing

2006-01-21T12:12:00.000Z

I have had a black dress made for concerts at the palace, which cost the best part of seventy gulden. I was hoping until yesterday that the Archbishop would feel obliged to pay for it, but he and Wolfie are in Vienna as I write and Wolfie is reluctant to return to Salzburg with His Grace. This is the gist of their latest spat:
‘Be off with you, you scoundrel, you vagabond, you insolent rascal, THERE is the door! I will have nothing more to do with you.’ That was the archbishop.
‘Nor I with you.’ That was Wolfie.
‘Are you threatening me?’ The archbishop.
‘You will have my letter of resignation tomorrow.’ Wolfie.
As my darling brother was unwilling to return to S. and is now deprived of lodgings with His Holiness, he has moved in with the Weber family. What to think? N.

A Letter from my Brother

2006-01-20T10:02:00.000Z

- the following words from Munich to Papa, more or less:

‘My sister must not be lazy but practise harder than ever as people are looking forward to hearing her play! Give Pimperl a good pinch of snuff and my best wishes to Katherl Gilowsky’s bottom. A thousand kisses on your hands dear Papa and my cordial greetings to Nannykin with the hope that she is feeling better - Your most obedient son.’

It is news to me that I was ill. Papa is too quick to say I have the vapours when he finds me quiet. N.

Time Passes

2006-01-19T13:29:00.000Z

My brother is in Munich putting finishing touches to his new opera, Idomineo, while here in Salzburg, my father has opened up his paint box. This is to stop himself from pacing up and down with worrying about Woferl - but it is also to calm himself generally. Papa is sempre agitato about all things except the art of water colour. He is painting a set of playing cards, which he has said he will give to me on my wedding day. And when will that be, I ask myself inside my head. N.

Katharina's List

2006-01-18T13:50:00.000Z

On the coach journey back from the spa, Katherl confided that last Tuesday, she had been let down badly by an admirer. She would say no more about it, though I tried to draw her out. Instead, she concocted a descriptive list of Salzburg's remaining bachelors to amuse us both. This one is even shorter than the Baron Von Molk, that one is more skilful at sleigh drives, this one nifty at cards, someone else a fine dancer with an excellent leg - or two. Franz d'Yppold may be a fine partner in archery but he is more of a friend. So and so, though devout, is dull. Baron X has grey whiskers growing out of his ears, Herr Z might be rich but he plays the organ abominably and the violin more so. What to do? Remain a spinster and serve the archbishop as a maid, or in my case, take in piano pupils. We laughed away our future for the rest of the journey, being less than thirty years of age. Just. For the moment, I am content to live with Papa and Wolfie, although a short while ago, I was not so calm about my prospects. Now I pray that Papa shall live for a very long time and Wolfie will be exceedingly rich. N.