Battle in Print: The Battle for the Arts

Colin Lawson, 27 September 2006

Mozart’s 250th anniversary year is a fitting time to reflect on the role of the arts and artists in today’s society. But if we compare the circumstances of his career with the professional profile of today’s artists, we must take pains to disaggregate myth from reality.

As Ulrich Konrad has recently observed, usage of words such as ‘creative’ in connection with the production of musical works of art betrays in itself a tendency to mythologise. The portrayal of composers as creators or musical artists in a categorical sense is really a feature of the modern era; Mozart does not indicate anywhere that he regards himself as a genius or creator, whilst recognising that he has genius, a superior talent for making music. In reality, Mozart’s pragmatism is evident in many facets of his professional life. He remarked that an opera aria must fit the singer like a well-tailored suit of clothes. He would write new arias to match cast changes in his opera productions, when they moved, for example, from Vienna to Prague or vice versa. When Mozart added clarinets to his score of the late G minor Symphony, K550, the two versions surely reflected differing performance situations. He found himself inspired both by singers and by a number of virtuoso instrumentalists, such as the horn player Ignaz Leutgeb and the clarinettist Anton Stadler, whose technique and abilities he quickly assimilated.

Mozart’s own career in Vienna in the 1780s was greatly developed by the series of piano concertos which effectively brought him before the public as both composer and pianist. Nicholas Kenyon asks what the concept of a ‘work’ might have meant to Mozart. It was surely something very fluid and flexible, often changing from one performing circumstance to another. The problem here is that for much of the twentieth century, the late eighteenth century came to provide the ideal of what an artist was. ‘Mozart worked within the conventions of his time, stretching them to their limits, but our view of how far he broke those bounds altogether will depend on how far we want to identify him with the generations that followed, and how far with those from which he emerged.’

In recent years a considerable amount of research has been conducted into Mozart’s overall position in the marketplace. His domicile in Vienna from 1781 was characterised by a rapid rise to fortune until mid-1787, by which time he was suffering from over-exposure. His four final years brought financial pressure that prompted requests for loans from friends and colleagues, along with fear of social and professional censure should his debts become known at court. Mozart’s income from the aristocratic salon cannot even be estimated, such was the variety of conditions, the whim of fashion and the stinginess of many patrons. The income we know about after 1787 seems remarkably similar to that of the earlier period. At least one scholar has proposed that Mozart lost a great deal of money at his favourite game of billiards, a theory that has failed to find widespread acceptance. However, a historical study of economics is fraught with problems; for example, it is clear that clothing and housing prices had a quite different relationship than obtains today. The enormous cost of travel is a recurrent theme in the Mozart family letters.

During his last year, Mozart continued to purchase luxuries that lay well beyond the purse of most Viennese, including capon, sturgeon, coffee, sugar and fine tobacco. Notwithstanding the liabilities of Mozart’s estate, his clothing alone was valued at an amount probably greater than the total assets of at least half the population. Furthermore, he still owned a great deal of expensive furniture. As more than one recent scholar has observed, Mozart was less a victim of poor money management than of a system of musical patronage in radical transition. The innumerable Kapellen that had been employed before the mid-1770s were disbanded over the next 25 years as the aristocracy in smaller courts opted increasingly for a variety of musical entertainment. One effect of Mozart’s freelance position was that he continued to compose prolifically even through the ill-health that dogged his last year.

Much of the reality of Mozart’s compositional life is only now beginning to emerge. But it is clear that his principal focus was on addressing specific situations, such as commissions, concerts and dedications. At the same time he contrived to produce a stream of sublime music that manifestly continues to resonate with today’s tastes and needs.

Colin Lawson is director, Royal College of Music

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