Mozart: Three Generations

No. 298 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages, which can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast298

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This week’s Blog and Podcast features works by three generations of Mozarts – Leopold, Wolfgang and Franz Xaver (sometimes referred to as “Wolfgang, Jr.”).

Let’s begin our commentary with the middle selection, Wolfgang’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. Prior to his 1778 sojourn in the French capital Mozart had written a few works for multiple soloists, most notably the Concerto in F major for Three Pianos (K. 242) in 1776. Shortly after his arrival in Paris, in April 1778, he composed a Concerto for Flute and harp (K. 299) and is thought to have composed the Sinfonia concertante for wind quartet and orchestra (K. 297b). Back in Salzburg the following winter, he produced the Two-Piano Concerto in E-flat (K. 365) and, in the summer of 1779 the present work, the last of his double concertos and possibly the greatest of all his concerted works up to that time.

The selection of solo instruments in this case had a personal significance for him. While Mozart found his Salzburg duties as violinist distasteful, he discovered a deeper response in himself to the sound of the viola and the spirit it evoked. Possibly, too, the viola represented a softer gesture of independence toward his father. Leopold, renowned in his day as a violinist and pedagogue, frequently nagged Wolfgang about what he might achieve with the instrument if he would only apply himself.

Leopold Mozart's music is inevitably overshadowed by the work of his son Wolfgang, and in any case the father willingly sacrificed his own career to promote his son's. Leopold's Toy Symphony (also variously attributed to Joseph Haydn, Michael Haydn, and Austrian Benedictine monk Edmund Angerer) remains popular; and a number of symphonies, a trumpet concerto, and other works also survive. I retained Die musikalische Schlittenfahrt, (Lit. trans. The Musical Sleigh Ride) a divertimento in F major, premiered in Augsburg in January 1756 - and appropriate for this time of year. In addition to a richly populated orchestra, five tuned sleigh bells and 2 persons with Courrier whips are needed for the performance. The original manuscript was only rediscovered in the 1950s.

Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart was born in Vienna (the youngest child of six born to Wolfgang and his wife Constanze and the younger of his parents' two surviving children) five months before his father's death. Although he was baptized Franz Xaver Mozart, from birth on he was always called Wolfgang by his family.

He received excellent musical instruction from Antonio Salieri, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Beethoven and studied composition with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Sigismund von Neukomm. Like his father, he learned to play both the piano and violin and started to compose at an early age. In April 1805, the thirteen-year-old Wolfgang Mozart made his debut in Vienna in a concert in the Theater an der Wien.

Franz Xaver became a professional musician and enjoyed moderate success both as a teacher and a performer. As a late classical period composer, his musical style was of an early Romanticism, heavily influenced by his father's mature style. His two piano concertos differ somewhat. The first concerto could pass for one of his father's late (K. 550 and above) works, except for a youthful exuberance and the piano's tessitura which had been expanded in 1795, just after Mozart senior died. The second concerto, featured this week,  is more contemporary to the 1810s with a more virtuosic piano part showing hints that the younger Mozart was developing his own style.

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