Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters Read Online Free Page A

service in 1781. Their daughter Maria Anna Felicitas (1741—64) was married to the Bavarian ambassador at Paris, Count Maximilian van Eyck; she died while the Mozarts were staying at her house during their visit to Paris in 1763—4. Another daughter, Antonia Maria, was married to Count Lodron (see below).
AUERNHAMMER, JOSEPHA BARBARA (1758 —1820) A Student of Mozart’s in Vienna in the early 1780s and a fine pianist, judging bycontemporary accounts; the Viennese musician Benedikt Schwarz described her as ‘a great dilettante on the pianoforte’, while Mozart admiredher ‘enchanting’ playing but noted that ‘in cantabile playing she has not got the real delicate singing style’. Mozart and Auernhammer are known to have performed together on a number of occasions. He dedicated the accompanied sonatas K296 and K376–380 to her. Auernhammer fell in love with Mozart in 1781, but he did not reciprocate.
BULLINGER, FRANZ JOSEPH JOHANN NEPOMUK (1744–1810) Tutor to the Arco family, he settled in Salzburg between 1774 and 1776 and became the intimate friend and confidant of Leopold Mozart, loaning him a substantial sum of money when Mozart resigned court service in 1777 and set out on his travels with his mother. Wolfgang turned to Bullinger for help when he had to tell Leopold of Maria Anna Mozart’s death in Paris in July 1778.
COLLOREDO, HIERONYMUS JOSEPH FRANZ DE PAULA VON (1732–1812) Prince-archbishop of Salzburg from 1772 to 1803. Educated in Vienna and Rome, Colloredo became a canon of Salzburg cathedral in 1747. His election as prince-archbishop on 14 March 1772 was bitterly controversial. Although a reformer who created at Salzburg an intellectual environment attractive to artists and thinkers alike, both Mozarts were unhappy in his service, complaining that travel leave was difficult to obtain, that extra presents of money for compositions were stingy and that Italian musicians were promoted over Germans. Colloredo is generally condemned for his insensitive and mean-spirited attitude towards the Mozarts, but there is blame to be apportionedon both sides. His father, Rudolf Wenzel Joseph, Count Colloredo-Mels und Wallsee (1706– 88) was imperial vice-chancellor in Vienna and met the Mozarts there in 1762; his sister, Maria Franziska, Countess Wallis (1746– 95), was the most influential woman at the Salzburg court.
DA PONTE, LORENZO (1749–1838) Italian librettist and Mozart’s collaborator on
Le nozze di Figaro
(1786),
Don Giovanni
(1787) and
Così fan tutte
(1790). Exiled from Venice (where he had been a friend of Casanova), Da Ponte worked briefly in Dresden before moving to Vienna in late 1781, where he attracted the favour ofEmperor Joseph II. When in 1783 the emperor abandoned his pursuit of German opera and revived the Italian company at the Burgtheater, Da Ponte was appointed chief poet; his subsequent involvement in the remarkable flowering of
opera buffa
in Vienna between 1783 and 1790 made him the most significant librettist of his generation. Mozart was suspicious of his arrogance and penchant for intrigue, while Da Ponte was ambivalent about Mozart in his memoirs, recognizing his genius but doubting his stage skills.
DUSCHEK FAMILY Czech musician Franz Xaver Duschek (1731– 99) settled in Prague about 1770 and was influential there as a music teacher and pianist; he was also a successful composer of instrumental music. His wife Josepha (née Hambacher, 1754–1824), a singer, had been his pupil before they married in 1776. Josepha’s maternal grandfather was the merchant Ignaz Anton Weiser, mayor of Salzburg from 1772 to 1775 and author of the text of the oratorio
Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots.
The Duscheks first met the Mozarts in Salzburg in August 1777, when Mozart wrote the scena
Ah, lo previdi – Ah, t’invola agl’occhi miei
K272 for Josepha. He stayed at their summer home, the Villa Betramka, when he was in Prague for the premiere
of Don Giovanni
in 1787, on this occasion