Benjamin Sanits
Macaulay Honors College Seminar
Mozart’s Letters
Society’s preconceived notions regarding historical figures are not always accurate. Over the years, the reputations of famous figures of the past are often severely misconstrued. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart exemplifies this idea through the collections of letters selected by and edited by Hans Merzman. The letters written for or by friends and family reflected on the side of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that had been obscured by time. Seeing that side of the person I once deemed at almost god-like in his brilliance, I realized that even the most incredibly ingenious have a human side, despite time filing away on that part of his or her legacy.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a talented entertainer. Since childhood, he already played the violin and the keyboard. Soon after, he began composing his own music and even started performing for royalty. Now this is very misleading in that despite being a royal guest, Mozart’s financial issues permeated the span of his life. Anyone would assume that someone talented enough to be deemed worthy of royalty would also be worthy of large sums of money and attention. However, contrary to intuition, Mozart had a tough time dealing with finances, assuming we could even call it “dealing.” Mozart would borrow amounts of money that he could not repay. Then he would prey upon emotion to coax out more loans. He was desperate for finances to run his life and so he learned to beg earnestly to aid his survival.
One very surprising detail about Mozart’s character happened to be his need to please the person he was addressing. He developed a polite and flattering way to compliment the audience of his letter. For someone so influential to humanity and culture as a whole, I hoped Mozart would be more independent and self-sufficient. In “The Great Operas” letter, Mozart calls Herr Geheimrath a “true German” and finished of the letter with “your humble servant.” Also, earlier in the letter, Mozart extensively explained and excused his late response to the original letters, showing that he wasn’t the one in control. It is strange to think the famous all-mighty Mozart couldn’t put his affairs in order.
When Leopold Mozart died, Wolfgang of course mourned the passing of his father. It is evident that his financial ordeals were not in order because his own sister, his flesh and blood, did not trust him with the knowledge of the death of his father right away. Mozart says “I was neither astonished nor shocked that you did not yourself inform me of the sad and, to me, quite unexpected death of our dear father, for I could easily guess the reason.” He seemed notorious for his almost selfish habits for borrowing money. Knowing of the death of his father might attract his attention for the inheritance and so his sister didn’t even want to tell him about Leopold’s death.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has a very different character from the expected persona of the musical prodigy. He, to may despair, seemed to grovel more than I find applicable to someone of such talent. Recognizing the fact that Mozart had such financial instability before his death, I realized that some geniuses are recognized after their deaths far more than before and it is so unfortunate. If he was more appreciated for his talents maybe he would have had a stable income to match what someone of his caliber deserves.
