Transcript of 526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory. Com and join the club. That is therestishistory.

Com. Hello, everyone. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and we have two festive treats coming up for you today and on Thursday. These are two halves of a show that we recorded at the Royal Albert Hall on the 18th of October with a full choir, a full orchestra. This is going to be, aside from, of course, those Immortal episodes in which I sang, the first Rest is History episodes with musical accompagnment. The first episode, today's episode is on Mozart Thursday's episode will be on Beethoven. Enjoy.

Good listening.

And welcome to The Rest is History.

Dominic, ladies and gentlemen, I think you'll agree that was quite something. We've had many great musical moments on The Rest is History. One thinks of Dimons are a Girl's Best Friend, sung by me. And more recently, Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, which was also song by me. But I think that wasn't bad. That was up there, wasn't it?

Ladies and gentlemen, please do not indulge him. That was not in that league at all, Tom. I think we can all agree on that. That was Mozart's Symphony number 25. It was played by the brilliant orchestra that I have behind me, the Academy of St. Martin in the Field. We have the Philanthropus Antonia Chorus. And above all, the most important person who's on the stage tonight, the person whose idea for this evening this was, the person who has made it possible, and that is our majestic conductor, Oliver Zephman.

I've been a fan of the podcast since the beginning. Actually, in a past life, I have a history undergraduate degree, but not anymore. I got in touch with Tom and Dominic because actually there are so many interesting, exciting stories in classical music, and people know music a little bit, but actually, if you don't go to concerts or you don't have much exposure to it, how do you get into it? This was a perfect opportunity to talk about two of the most important composers ever, probably two of the most important cultural figures ever, and their lives always found a very interesting point in history, which I'm not going to talk about. So I got in touch. They were Keen and we're here today. So thanks. Thanks for coming. Actually, the piece you just heard now, you might recognize from the opening of Amadeus, the film. Actually, the audience here on stage, and even some of the players on stage were in that recording.

Thank you, Oliver. Thank you. Now, those of you who've seen the film Amadeus will know that it is the story of a brilliantly talented man who is hounded to his death by a mediocre rival. Tom, this is very much the dynamic at Goalhanger Podcasts, is it not?

No, I mean, this is not a dynamic that we have to worry about on the rest of history, is it? Yeah, so we wanted to open with a a tipping of the hat to Amadeus, Because here we are in the Royal Albert Hall, one of the great music festival centers in the whole world. We thought that Mozart and Beethoven would be absolutely ideal themes because they are probably the most celebrated, the most iconic composers in the whole history of music. But I think, as Oliver hinted, they're not just iconic. They are also the embodiments of a particular moment in cultural history. So the key thing about Amadeus is that people sitting down to watch this film, they know that Mozart is a genius. If they don't know that, then the film doesn't work. And the sweep of history that is covered by the lives, first of Mozart and then of Beethoven, it witnesses the onset of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of the romantic movement. Dominic, this is the period that enshrines the idea that an artist can be a genius, isn't it? A genius with a capital G.

Absolutely. That's why the lives of Mozart and Beethoven are a brilliant window onto the world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We'll be exploring in this show the emergence of the idea of the genius and the idea of art with a capital A, and the way in which that reflects political and social change, and also, frankly, the way that people make money. It's a continuous story that we've got for you tonight, but we're going to tell it in two halves. We will be coming to Beethoven in the second half. Now, can I just ask, are there any members here of the Rest is History Club? Very good. You can listen to that second half right away.

Dominic, I think we should say that that joke is made up by our beloved producer, Theo. It is. That is Theo's joke.

Theo is very cross if people tell that joke and they don't give him the credit. So well done, Theo.

Because in his own way, he's a genius.

For now, in the first half, it is the story of Mozart, and that will be told to you by Mr. Tom Holland. Tom, take it away.

Right. So, Mozart. He is born in 1756 in Salzburg, Austria, which is part of the Holy Roman Empire. Ruled by, I guess they're friends of the show, aren't they? The Habsbergs? Definitely friends of the show.

Very much so.

And so he's born into a Europe that is becoming ever more obsessed by music. But if it's an era that loves and values music, it's not a period that necessarily loves and values musicians. If you think of the one other great 18th century composer who can stand on the podium beside Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach. He spends his whole life as an employee. He's not a genius. He's essentially a salaried servant. In fact, when he tried to leave the employ of one of his masters, the Duke of Weimar, the Duke responded by locking him up in prison. So there is no room for playing the genius in the first half of the 18th century. There are, however, growing opportunities to perhaps make money under your own steam. And the person who exemplifies this is a fellow German of Barck's. But rather than staying in Germany as Barck did, this guy, Handel, comes to the richest the most culturally significant city in Europe, the great El Dorado of music, and that city, I'm proud to say, is London. Hurrah. So Handel comes to London and he makes such a success of it that he ends up fabulously rich, and he even has a tomb in Westminster Abbey.

So there you have a tension between the musician as servant and the musician as entrepreneur. And the father of Mozart, Leopold, who will play a key role in story. He has feet in both camps. So on the one hand, he is a violinist in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg. He's essentially one rung up from a footman. But at the same time, he has a secret brooding contempt for aristocratic and indeed Archbishop employers. As time will show, he has a brilliant, brilliant future as an impresario. The reason for that is that his son, Wolfgang Amadeus, turns out to be a genius. Dominic, I think your son, Sandbrooke Jr, is here tonight. Is it he? Yes, he is. Am I not right in thinking you mentioned to me that he won a regional poetry reading competition with the Charge of the Light Brigade? He did.

He did. People laugh, and they shouldn't laugh because it was a sublime performance.

If you had shown a fraction of the entrepreneurial zeal of Leopold Mozart, you could have made an absolute packet by taking Arthur round poetry competitions across the length and breadth of the city, of the country. Now, I don't know when Arthur started reciting Tennison, but young Mozart, his musical career supposedly begins very, very young. It is said that at the age of two, he's picking tunes out on a keyboard. At the age of four, he composes his first concerto. At the age of six, he goes to the Imperial Court in Vienna, where he meets the Habsbourg Royal family.

We've talked about that in the French Revolution series. That's when he meets Marie-Antoinette.

She's very young, isn't she? Yeah, she's just a little girl at this point. Little baby Mozart, he climbs up onto the lap of Marie-Antoinette's mother, the empress Maria Teresa, gives her a big hug, gives her a little kiss. It's all absolutely adorable. Leopold is watching this and he goes, K'ching. We have got a gold mine here. He gets permission from his employer, the Archbishop, to go on tour. They go to all the cities of the Holy Roman Empire. They go to Paris, they go to London, they go to Versailles, and of course, they end up in London. They have a brilliant time here, I'm happy to say. They meet the King and Queen, they hang out in Soho. Leopold becomes so habituated to London life that he catches a very British ailment, which he notes in in his journal, The English call a cold, so he has a terrible cold. It's absolutely brilliant. They make absolute packet. They're not actually generally paid in cash, although there is a bit of cash. It'sny knickmacks and gheeghors, so endless snuff box, silver watches, that thing. One of the markers of how well Leopold is doing is that he can actually complain having eaten four roast chickens on the trot that he is still hungry.

This is very like the scenes at the Northamptonshire Regional Poetry Competition.

Right. Well, you should have thought, if you'd taken Arthur and pushed him in the way that Leopold did, you could have had as much roast chicken as you wanted for the rest of your life. The whole reason that the young Mozart makes Leopold such money is the fact that he is seen by the whole of Europe as being something completely exceptional. Because he is the talk of Europe, people are across the continent are saying, What's going on here? Where has this extraordinary precocious talent come from? There are various theories, and they're not mutually contradictory, but I guess this is a very devout religious age, probably the most popular theory, and it's the one that Leopold himself cleaves to, is the notion that Mozart is a gift from God. This is certainly what he tells the Archbishop. He goes and says, Look, I've been given this miracle by God. I should basically take him out make loads of money because it's what Jesus would have wanted. There are others, however, who slightly cut God out of the equation and say that he's a prodigy of nature. This is a period where the idea that humanity separate from civilization.

The idea of a child being possessed of great quality, it's very, very important.

The Ruso, the innocence of childhood, all that stuff.

Exactly. Mozart becomes an icon for this idea. It's also the enlightenment of course, and there are skeptics. There are people who think that Leopold is writing the young Mozart's concertos for him. And so some of these savant take the little boy and lock him up in a room and tell him to write something, and he does, and they're satisfied. And Satisfied. Actually, the ultimate proof of Mozart's genius is that he is inspected by a member of the Royal Society here in London, and he gives Mozart a clean bill of health as well. It becomes apparent that he is not a He really is an absolute prodigy of nature, a gift of God, whatever you want to call him. But there is, of course, a problem coming down the road towards Leopold. He's got to keep himself in his rose chicken and his snuff boxes. And the problem with a prodigy is that while it's amazing to watch a six-year-old play the violin, it's slightly less amazing to watch a teenager play the violin. What Leopold decides as the the young Mozart is approaching his teenage years is that rather than emphasizing his precocity as a musician, as a player of instruments, which is what he had previously been doing, he's going to focus on the young Mozart's ability as a composer.

To that end, he goes on the most extravagant, the boldest tour of all. It's the equivalent of the Beatles the first time they go to America. Mozart goes to Italy Italy, the home of music. This is an age when Italians would regard the idea that a German speaker could be musically able as comical. But Mozart pulls it off. He dazzles everybody. He lots more snuff boxes, but also lots of Italian maestros going, Wow, this guy is incredible. The ultimate impromator of quality, the stamp of approval from Italy, comes when Mozart is given a commission from the Opera House in Milan. So one of the most famous opera houses in the whole of Europe. He is told, Would you like to write us an opera? And Dominic, when he is given this commission, Mozart is 14 years old.

If you ever wanted to hear a 14-year-old's music, this is your chance. We have for you Mitridate, rei di punto by Wolfgang Amanddeus Mozart. We have Nel Grave Tormento, which I believe means In a Very Grave Torment. It's going to be sung for us by Nardas Williams.

Wow. Thank you, Nardis. That was amazing. And thank you, Mozart. Remember, Mozart was just 14 years old when he wrote that piece.

Yeah, amazing. Everything is going brilliantly for a young Mozart. He's got his GCSE in music. He's got loads of new commissions on the back of Mitra D'Arte. And back in Salzburg, everyone's unbelievably proud of him. The Archbishop, absolutely purring. It all looks superb. Except that there are gathering clouds hanging over Project Mozart. Now, the first of these is what Leopold really wants for his son. He wants to get him long term security. The way he thinks he can best do that is to find his son, a post as a Kappelmeister, which effectively is the head of music at a court. He takes him round various courts, and all the dukes and the counts and so on. I mean, they're impressed. They recognize that Mozart is quality, but they keep saying, he's too young, he's too young. Come back in 10 years time. This is very disappointing for Leopold, but even more disappointing is the fact that there seems to be no interest in Mozart whatsoever from the Imperial Court in Vienna. He's puzzled by this because, of course, as a six-year-old, little Mozart had hugged the empress. But the awful truth is that the empress actually thinks they're a bit vulgar.

She says, They've been going around Europe like beggers. It's very, very undignified. And so she is not interested. Then the worst blow of all, the Archbishop of Salzburg, who'd been such an indulgent patron, he dies and he gets replaced by a new Archbishop who's a very different character, and he rejoices in the splendid name of Count Hieronymus Colorado. Count Hieronymus Colorado, the new Archbishop, he's had enough of the Mozart's gadding around Europe. He wants them to be what they are. He wants them to be essentially his servants. His goal, which he institutes the moment he has been enthroned as Archbishop, is to treat Mozart not as a genius, but as an employee.

Tom, this is very like our situation, isn't it? This is how we are treated. They're in the audience tonight. Our executive producers, Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport. They treat us like employees, don't they? We, like Mozart, feel humiliated, treated like servants. And this is exactly what happens to Mozart when he goes back to Salzburg, right?

Yeah. Well, I don't want to compare us to Mozart. Let's not go down that avenue. But just to say, there are social humiliations. But I think also what oppresses Mozart more than anything else is that he knows how good he is. He wants to test the limits. He doesn't want to be chained up in Salzburg having to compose whatever rubbish the Archbishop wants. He wants basically to do a handle, to go out there and become a freelance. The Archbishop is furious at this. He sees it, I mean, not unjustifiably, as rank in gratitude. Leopold, his dad, is also worried for various reasons, I think. One, he doesn't want his son to end up carving to death in a garret. He knows it's going to be very insecure being a freelance. I think also he's anxious that if his son annoys the Archbishop, then this might end up badly for him. He might get dismissed from his own position. I think also he can't bear the thought of being separated from his son. The relationship between Leopold and the young Mozart, it's the most intense relationship that either of them will have in their entire lives.

The thing that Leopold is becoming increasingly worried about, Mozart's little fellow, as he calls it. Mozart is getting interested in girls. What Leopold is worried about is that Mozart might actually marry. This is the real disaster that he's fretting about. But Mozart, he's 1770, he turns 21, and he decides that he's going to go out into the world and he doesn't care. When Leopold says no, he goes, No, dad, I'm off. Off he goes, and Leopold can't go because he's got to stay behind with the Archbishop. Mozart's much loved mother goes with him, and they head off, and they go to various places across the Holy Roman Empire, not to any It's a great effect, but I think Mozart's having quite a good time. Then they end up in a city on the Rhine called Mannheim. In Mannheim, they stay in a house that is owned by the prompter in the local theater, Herr Weber. Herr Weber has not one, not two, not three, but four gorgeous daughters. Young Wolfie, he falls madly in love with a prano called Aloysia. The news of this gets back to Leopold, and he absolutely blows a gasket. He writes to Mozart and to his mother and says, What are you doing?

Why are you wasting your time mooning over girls in a no-hope place like Mannheim time, go to Paris, go to London. If you want to make a go of being freelance, do it in a place where you can make enough money for it to be sustainable. And so Mozart abays, and he goes to Paris, and it's a disaster. He hates Paris, he hates the French, he hates French music, he hates French taste, he hates everything about it.

That's fair enough, Tom.

I was waiting for the gusts of laughter. I'm glad they finally came. Because we are now, and you'll be ashamed of yourselves for laughing, we're plunging into tragedy because while Mozart is in Paris, his mother dies, and Mozart is prostrated by this. He adored his mother, and he is crippled by grief. Eventually, he leaves Paris, and he crawls back to Mannheim to bury his face in the comforting chest of Aloysia. Only to find that Aloysia has only gone and married someone else. And so what's Paul Wolfie to do? He has to go back to Salzburg.

That must be humiliating, Tom.

Very, very humiliating. Essentially, he knuckles down for several years. He writes the dreary stuff that the Archbishop wants, but all the time he's pulling at his chains, and he still has his dreams. We've got to follow our dreams, Dominic. We've got to follow our dreams, haven't we? I mean, you As a young man, you were an academic. I was. But you had dreams of writing enormously long books about the Wilson government. I did. Recording podcasts about monkeys, and you lived your dream. I have.

A nightmare, I think some people would call it.

Mozart is determined to live his dream. The crucial moment comes in 1781 when he's 25 and he's summoned to Vienna by the Archbishop of Salzburg, who wants to show him off like a performing monkey. This is humiliating for Mozart because he is a figure of great consequence in Vienna, much admired by fellow musicians, by fellow composers. He doesn't want to be at the beck and call of an Archbishop. He says, No go. On top of that, as well as infuriating the Archbishop, he also infuriates Leopold, because when he turns up in Vienna, he finds that the Weber's have moved there. And although the Soprano, Aloysia, she's got her own man, there is another Weber sister available, and this is Constanza. Mozart announces that he wants to marry her, and Leopold hits the roof. He's infuriated both the Archbishop and Leopold. He's summoned to a make or break conference, and it goes so badly that the Archbishop's steward, according to Mozart's own account, kicks him up the ass out of the room, and that is it. That is the end of Mozart's term of employment at Salzburg, and from this point on, he will become a freelance.

He's in a bit of a mess, isn't he, Tom? Because this is all very stressful for him.

It is a mess. I think Mozart's music has such a quality of lightness and often of joy that it can be easy to miss the expressions of stress and unhappiness, but they are definitely there. The piece we're going to hear now is... I'd never heard it played live before. When we walked in here this afternoon for our rehearsal, I heard the strains of it coming from the stage, and I can't wait to hear it again. It's a piece that he wrote in Paris in the days and weeks after the death of his mother, and it is simply sublime.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the violin sonata in E minor, and it is going to be played by Stephanie Gonneley on the violin, and Mich Roshdi Momung on the piano. Enjoy.

Dominic, that was wonderful. That is a reminder that no recording can compare with power of live music. That was amazing. Not at all.

Now, as you have been listening to this episode, you might have noticed that this episode had something a little extra special, didn't it, Tom?

It absolutely did. That's because every piece of music you've heard during this podcast has been performed live by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

If you were there, you will remember how absolutely extraordinary their performance was. We are thrilled to have them featured on this episode. Frankly, we're even more thrilled to be able to make that recording of that event open and free to everybody in the podcast who wasn't able to attend in person.

The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is one of the most recorded orchestras of all time, giving more than 80 concerts a year across the world, including a stunning series in London at the Historic Church of St. Martin in the Fields.

The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is offering an exclusive, complementary, Friends' Membership to all listeners of the Rest is History.

You can attend open rehearsals, enjoy pre-concert talks and meet and greets with soloists, access exclusive digital downloads, and crucially, receive 25% off tickets their London concerts. To claim your complementary Friends' membership and explore all these incredible opportunities, just go to asmf. Org/history. So don't miss out. Visit asmf. Org/history. Forward/history and sign up today.

Tom, Mozart has left Salzburg.

Yeah.

Does his gamble payoff?

Well, Obviously, it comes with costs. Leopold has repeatedly reminded Mozart of these costs. They are above all financial. Mozart is very vulnerable to geopolitical shocks, hitting Austria and affecting the ability of aristocratic patrons to sponsor him. Another risk, of course, is that he might fall ill because then he won't be able to write, he won't make any money. Even though he's left the Archbishop of Salzburg, there are still uncomprehending patrons. The whole point for Mozart to go freelance really is so that he can stretch his wings, he can test the limits of music. I think because of that, he is seen by certain patrons as being difficult, as being challenging.

There's the famous moment for those of you who've seen Amadeus, which apparent is reflected in some of the sources that Joseph II, the Emperor, sees one of Mozart's productions and says, It's great, but there are too many notes.

Yes, so probably apocryphal. But I mean, it has the ring of truth because I think Mozart really is impatient with the the musical Ancien régime, if you want to put it like that. In fact, in 1790s, so when the French Revolution is really kicking off, a fellow composer accuses Mozart of being, in musical terms, a sonculotte, someone who wants to burn down.

Somebody who's wearing trousers rather than breaches.

Well, so We'll see, Mozart is actually quite... He likes his fashion, so he might like a clot, he might like a pair of trousers, but he is pushing at the limits. Then the other problem, of course, that he faces is a more personal and more emotional one, and that is that he has gone through a huge family bust up. So not only is his father alienated, but his beloved sister, Nanael, who's also a brilliant musician, much loved by Mozart, she ends up It's so crossed with him that basically communication between them breaks off. In 1782, when he marries Constanza, neither his father nor his sister is there at the wedding. Although Mozart remains in contact with Leopold, they love each other too much for the break to be total. I think that from this point onwards, the love that they undoubtedly both still feel for each other is massively, massively poisoned by a sense of mutual resentment.

But Tom, let's get down to what really matters. The point of going freelance is often to make more money. Is Mozart making more money?

He is making more money, yes. He has servants. He goes from being a servant to having servants. Like you, Dominic, like me, like Keir Starmer, he loves a suit. He's always cutting a dash. He has an exquisite red coat, which excites much admiration. Actually, when his father comes to stay with him in Vienna, Mozart takes great pleasure in saying, Look at these apartments. These are costing me more than I would have earned in an entire year had I stayed in the service of the Archbishop. Of Salzberg, which is, of course, what his father had done. But you said the most important thing to Mozart is money. I mean, it is important to him, but actually, I think the most important thing to him is that he can test his sense of his own genius to the absolute limits. It is claimed that his reply to Joseph II's comment, Too many notes, my dear Mozart. Mozart replies, There are exactly as many notes as they need to be, your Majesty. If there are Joseph II in Vienna and across Europe, people who don't properly appreciate what Mozart is doing, there are lots who do. It's not just that Mozart is writing masterpieces.

These masterpieces are recognized as such. I think it's from this that you get in the romantic period. Mozart is not really... He's not a product of the romantic period. But going into the 1800s, the 1810s, people look back and they say, actually, he was a romantic figure before romanticism. This is a man who... He defied convention in the cause of following his art. He didn't let anything stand in his way. I suppose the great work that most famously, in the opinion of his romantic admirers, illustrated this was an opera that was premiered in Prague in October 1787, and it was written crucially four months. It was premiered four months after the death of Leopold, so Mozart's father. This opera was called Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni told the story of a man who cared nothing for convention, who seduced, who committed adultery, who killed people, and he never apologizes. But Don Giovanni has serious daddy issues. The daddy is a figure called the Commendatore, whom Don Giovanni had killed in the opening moments of the opera, and who he then sees a statue of, and in a foolish moment, invites the supper, and is absolutely He's stunned.

He's sitting down to his meal when there's a great hammering on the door and in strides, the statue of the Commendatore. The Commendatore points at Don Giovanni and he sings, Don Giovanni, a ce nateko.Shameless. I've now tongue up for her on the stage of the Albert Hall. Don Giovanni still refuses to apologize. The Commendatore urges him to repent. Don Giovanni won't. He reaches out, takes his hand. You're going to take your hand? Then the Commendatore drags Don Giovanni down to hell, and the last you hear of Don Giovanni, you go, And that's the story.

Now, in a nutshell, you don't need to see it now.In.

A nutshell, you never need to see it now. So is Mozart Don Giovanni? I don't think so. I think that is a romantic overreading. And I think actually, if you want an opera that gives you a sense of where Mozart is coming from, the sense of frustration that he feels as someone who is beholden on the sponsorship of aristocratic patrons, much better to look at the opera he wrote the previous year in 1786. This is the marriage of Figaro, an absolute smash hit. I think it's the oldest opera to have been permanently on the repertoire. This is based on a very controversial French play which has been banned in Vienna because it is seen as being offensive towards the aristocracy. The marriage of Figaro, Figaro himself is a servant to a count, and he wants to marry the maid of the countess. The maid is called Susanna. But the count wants to claim the droit de seigneur, the right to take Susanna to bed before she marries Figaro. Figaro is furious about this, understandably, I think. The plot of the opera, there's loads of jumping out of windows, swapping clothes, all this thing. It ends up with the count humiliated in a garden.

This moment of humiliation is then transformed into a moment of the most exquisite reconciliation. The countess who has been wronged by the count forgives him. Susanna, who's been wronged by Figaro, forgives him. I just want to pay tribute to my beloved uncle, who's no longer with me, who, when I was about 13 or 14, gave me a box set of cassettes of the marriage of Figaro and talked me through this moment, gave me love, not just for Mozart, but for opera, full stop. It would be Desert Island is that moment. But it's not the moment, I think, that best conveys the sense of frustration that Mozart felt with the social setup that he was involved in, because there is a better aria that does that. This is the last aria that Figaro the Servant, sings. It's a moment where he thinks that Susanna has betrayed him, and he's so upset, he's so angry that he breaks through the fourth wall, and he addresses the men in the audience directly. He says, Aren't women awful? They're always betraying us. Of course, he's wrong. But those in the know, those who are familiar with the original French play, would know that this aria is in the place that in the play has Figaro complaining about the aristocracy, addressing the count, saying, You think you're so wonderful, but you're not wonderful at all.

The only reason that you can do what you do is because you were born into it. If you want to have a sense of not just Figaro, but Mozart speaking truth to power, this aria we're about to hear now, this is the one.

The wonderful news is that Tom will not be singing that aria. It's going to be song by William Thomas, Thank God. The aria is called, which means, I believe, open a little bit your eyes. William.

I'm dark in the night.

And I begin today to do my scimmonetish job as a husband, ungrateful. In the moment of my ceremony, he was enjoying me reading, and when he saw me, he laughed about me without seeing me. Oh Susanna, Susanna, quanto appena mi costi con quell'ingenuo

I have a reason. I have a reason. They are witches that enchant them to make them suffer. They are sirènes that enchant them to make them drown. They are girettes that allet them for making them plume. They are girettes that shine for gold and plume. They are roses, spinoses, they are voles, vezzos, they are oses, benignes, colome, malignes, maestri, ghani, amiche, refanni, that winger, wender, more than sent.

I don't I'm pieting, I'm not seeing pieting, I'm not seeing it anymore.

The rest, the rest, I'm not telling you. Everyone already knows. Open your little eyes. Homes, coosy, sceptch. Look at these females, look at those eyes.

Homies, cooze, scioci, guardate, questi femmini, guardate cosa son, cosa son, cosa son.

Son streghe che chiantano, il resto non dico. Sirene che chiantano, il resto non dico. Civette che al dette, il resto non dico. Comete che brillano, il resto non dico. Son rose spinosi, son colpi vezzose, colombe benedico. Colombe benigne, colombe benedito. Colombo, il baile, il maestro, infanni, amiche, neofranni, che figo, non mettono amore, non sento, non sento pietà, non sento pietà, non, non, non, no, il resto, il resto non dica.

Tom, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say it, but that is how a professional does it.

Got to start somewhere.

Well, so thank you very much. That was wonderful. Tom, marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni are both great successes. Obviously, the image that we often have of Mozart is this ludicrous spendthrift But don't they show that actually he's an extremely capable entrepreneur as well as a magnificent composer?

Yeah, I think it does. I think the idea of Mozart as a spendthrift, as a a genius who in money matters is just a child, I think that that's in large part a reflection of the impact of Leopold's letters in which he's cast as exactly that. But it is true to say that by 1789 and 1790, things are starting to go slightly downhill. And of course, these are the years that sees the French Revolution breaks out. And Austria is very much impacted by this. Marie-antoinette, of course, is a Habsbourg. And on top of that, on the Eastern flank of the Habsbourg Empire, a war has broken out with the Turks. This is not good news for someone who depends essentially on stable conditions, conditions of peace, to get commissions. But there are also more domestic, more personal reasons for the turn in Mozart's fortunes. His wife, Constanza, falls very seriously ill. He has to spend lots of money on medicine, packing her off to spars, all the stuff that happens in the German-speaking world when you fall ill. Mozart himself then falls ill. This is the real calamity because, of course, when he's lying in bed, he can't work.

If he can't work, he's not making any money. He does recover, but he's really short of And so 1790, 1791, his correspondence is full of, frankly, embarrassing, cadging letters, trying to get money out of his rich friends. Then in the summer of 1791, there comes a fateful commission, a commission to write a requiem.

The traditional version of this story is that it's a very strange and eerie and haunting moment in his life, isn't it?

Yeah, I think the the eeriest, the most haunting story, perhaps in the whole of classical music. It derives from reminiscences from Constanza in the wake of Mozart's death. She spoke to the man who would then go on to write the first biography of Mozart. And according to Constanza, the Commission to Write the Requiem, it's anonymous. It comes from an unknown messenger. Mozart starts writing it and he falls ill, but continues He continues working on it. As he works on it, he becomes convinced that he is writing the Requiem for himself. Not only that, but that he is being poisoned. Now, he never finishes it because on the fifth of December 1791, just after midday, he dies. He is buried in a common grave. Almost no mourners attend the ceremony. And after he is buried, there is no memorial, no headstone to mark the place where his body lay. It's from this that you get, again, the romantic myth that Mozart died, forgotten, unknown, a pauper. It's very powerful, and this is why people believe it. However, in the main, it's not true. Sorry. We've told it, and now we're going to debunk it. We're going to have our cake and we're going to eat it.

We know exactly who commissioned the Requiem. It was an eccentric count who enjoyed employing musicians to write pieces for him, and he would then pass them off as his own. He was essentially employing Mozart to be a ghost writer. Mozart was not poisoned. He seems to have died of rheumatic fever. He was not forgotten. When the news spread across Vienna that Mozart had died, huge crowds gathered outside his house to mourn him. He was cherished and admired. And maybe because of that, he wasn't really a pauper either. He was still in financial trouble, but he was starting to recoup his losses. An opera that he wrote in 1791 and got put on, the Magic Flute, absolute smash, probably his most lucrative opera of the lot. There were signs that he was hauling himself back from the financial brink. And although it is true that he had a very spare funeral, that people didn't go to the ceremony, that there is no headstone, I think this reflects more than anything his personal piety, his sense that possibly as a reaction to the excesses of the Baroque, that an overly flamboyant funeral would be disrespectful to God.

But even so, Tom, this is surely the most tragic moment in the history of classical music, of music generally.

I do find it upsetting to ponder the death of writes Art so early. He dies when he's 36. You think of all the music that he could have written if he'd survived. He kept a journal, and in it, he was working out things that he might do in the future, and he would write up the date through the 1790s into the 1800s. So he was contemplating living certainly into the 19th century, and of course, he doesn't. It's hard not to feel that as a terrible tragedy. But I think also the impersonality of that funeral It is upsetting. The scene in Amadeus where he's chucked into the grave and then lime is thrown over it and they just wander off and there is Mozart's body. I do find that upsetting. I think the reason for that is that in his lifetime, Mozart was loved, but in the wake of his death, he became even more loved, and he has remained loved to this day. There is a sorrow about his death, I think.

All right. Well, thank you, Tom. That was dare I say, a tour de force. Now, to say goodbye to Mozart, there is no better piece than Mozart's great Requiem. For my money, one of the very best pieces of music ever written. We're now going to have the introitus and the curie, and that's going to be with the Philmonia chorus and the Return of Nardis Williams.

'suspect' is 's 's 's 's 's 's 's '

Thank you for listening.

I hope you enjoyed it. We will be back on Thursday in 2025, our first show of 2025, with the second half of that show that we recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. The focus of that show will be Beethoven. I hope you enjoy it. Bye-bye.