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In Search of Mozart

A feature-length documentary film by Phil Grabsky to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the composer’s birth (2006)

SYNOPSIS

Neglected genius. Wunderkind. Rebellious superstar. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) has become a series of myths that make it almost impossible for a 21^st century audience to know who the real man was.

 How were these myths created? The legend of the genius composer has undoubtedly been manipulated, even within Mozart’s own lifetime, by those who stood to gain from it. But the myths — like all stereotypes — do contain germs of truth about the man. By asking how the legend was made, this film will tease out those germs of truth.

 This biography of Mozart will be told through a personal search for the man himself. As he goes in search of the real Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, director Phil Grabsky will follow a trail of clues in the places that Mozart himself visited. He will look for the evidence of the man and his music across Europe, and will seek to answer one main question: why is Mozart thought of as one of the world’s greatest musical geniuses?

 Phil will look for Mozart in high and low places. Interwoven with comment from those involved in the Mozart industry that Phil will meet along the way (musicians, record label bosses, classical DJs, Mozart tourists, owners of Mozart souvenirs shops), will be music from Europe’s greatest orchestras, expert interviews, and location filming along the lanes and highways, in the inns and hostelries, the palaces and open houses that Mozart himself visited.

TREATMENT

 Born in Salzburg in 1756, Mozart was an exceptionally gifted child, writing his first piece of music in 1761, aged five. His father Leopold, himself a respected musician, recognised his son’s genius and tried his best to protect it. Leopold made the most of his wunderkind; he offered his son a cultural education by touring the courts of Europe with him from an early age (in June 1763, the whole Mozart family departed for a tour of Europe, visiting Paris, London and the Hague, where Mozart and his sister, Nannerl, were presented as child prodigies). By taking him to the musical centres, and exposing him to the elite, Leopold nurtured his son’s talent. However, Leopold wasn’t above exaggerating his son’s talents for PR purposes. Sometimes he even knocked a year off his age.

 In 1769 Mozart, aged thirteen, was appointed violinist and third concertmaster (without pay) at the court orchestra in Salzburg. But the maturity of his talent wasn’t always reflected in his life. It is true that Mozart’s personal letters betray an obsession with shit and sex. He also didn't have the best of luck with his patrons. In 1772, he was granted an annual salary of 150 florins as Konzermeister to the Prince Archbiship Colloredo. Colloredo had his chamberlain kick the composer up the rear to signal the end of his employment. But Mozart was never a brat. He did not misbehave in polite society, he just expected to be treated as an equal by the aristocracy, and he spent a lot of money trying to keep up with them, purchasing a carriage, renting a luxury apartment, buying fashionable clothes; and he simply couldn’t do without a billiard table… Like most artists throughout history, Mozart’s career was not financially triumphant. He struggled with debt throughout his life, because he refused to compromise his work in order to spend time making money. Rather than be in thrall to a rich patron, Mozart chose to pursue a career as a freelance composer, which took him — against his father’s wishes — to Vienna, where he settled and married Constanze Weber in 1782. The ‘brattish genius’ was, perhaps, really a crusader for the rights of the independent artist.

 Mozart re-wrote and re-worked his music all the time (although he did have a phenomenal musical memory, and was capable of writing things on the spot). He never stopped working, and his work was grounded in the traditions of the period. As with other art of the period, he favoured sobriety and clarity in his music. His greatness doesn’t come from musical innovation, but from taking what was to hand and polishing it — building huge constructions out of little musical clichés.

 Clearly, Mozart was a product of his time. He had good antennae for the uncomfortable questions of 18^th century Europe – all his operas look at how sex fits into the rest of life. In 1771 he wrote to his sister, Nannerl, “above us is a violinist, below us another one, next to us a singing teacher giving lessons, in the room across from ours there is an oboist. That is amusing to compose by! Gives one lots of ideas.” Instead of shutting out the outside world, he absorbed it and used it in his music.

 In July 1782 the first performance of Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (a singspiel: a characteristically German opera in which the dialogue is sung, not spoken) took place at the Burgtheater, Vienna. It was a major breakthrough for the composer.

Mozart’s operas went on, in fact, to be very successful – Die Entfurhung aus dem Serail and Don Giovanni (which premiered in Prague in 1787) were the most performed operas in Europe during his lifetime. And, in 1787, he was eventually made Kammermusicus by Josef II in Vienna: an Imperial post which made him very much part of the establishment. He even joined, and was highly active in, his local branch of Freemasons.

 In December 1791, Mozart died, aged 35. Many theories have been offered about Mozart’s death, from food poisoning (courtesy of bad pork) to murder. There is little evidence that there’s any truth in the rumour that Salieri had Mozart killed (its origin is a 19^th century play by the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin). Mozart’s widow went on to employ Salieri as her son’s music teacher — not something you’d expect if she suspected him of murdering her husband.

The widespread belief that he was buried in some anonymous pauper’s grave is without substance. At the time, lavish funerals were discouraged; and Mozart’s grave, although cheap and unmarked, was not a pauper’s. In fact, many of the myths surrounding Mozart’s death stem from his wife Constanze. She married Wolfgang’s first biographer, Georg Niklaus Nissen, and, when he died, oversaw the completion of the work, which painted Mozart as a neglected genius, buried in a pauper’s grave. Constanze told the biographers that her husband suspected he had been poisoned, and that his last, unfinished work, the Requiem Mass, was created in obsessive preparation for his own demise.

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Last modified: February 27, 2004