J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

1796 had a substantial article on her sister Aloysia: ‘Woe the good reputation of our
taste and knowledge that such a great virtuoso should live among us as an amateur!
And woe if she has finally to seek her bread abroad! …Vienna searches all of Italy for
singers and keeps such a paragon idle within its walls. Any composer whose work she
performs will gain immeasurably…’ 32 and so on for several more paragraphs. Of
Constanze, it says: ‘Plays the piano and sings quite nicely.’ 33 That is the entire entry.
Constanze herself had no great pretentions about her gifts as a performer. She must
have had some merit as a singer—no amateur could possibly have managed passages
such as the ‘Laudamus te’ from the C minor mass Mozart wrote for her (were
expectations different in the eighteenth century? Anyone who could handle these
passages would today be regarded as a very considerable singer indeed). But there is
nothing about her background to suggest a particularly cultivated musical education,
which is why her sudden enthusiasm for fugal writing is so unexpected. We want to
read sociological or demographic significance into her response, to infer general
conclusions from a particular, idiosyncratic response. All we know is ‘suddenly she
wanted to hear only fugues, thought them the “most artistic and beautiful” music—
indeed, she craved them the way a pregnant woman craves certain foods.’ 34
Leopold and Nannerl had always been suspicious of Constanze. They had
never approved of the rather dubious Weber family, and Wolfgang’s hairbrained
scheme of eloping to Italy with Aloysia and establishing her there as a operatic star
would not have helped matters. At the start of the letter, therefore, Mozart is rather
anxiously acting as intermediary: ‘My dear Constanze has at last summoned up
courage to follow the impulse of her kind heart—that is, to write to you, my dear
sister! Should you be willing to favour her with a reply (and indeed I hope you will
do, so that I may see the sweet creature’s delight reflected on her face), may I beg you
32 E. Sisman, Haydn and his world (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p.306.
33 Ibid., p.308.
34 W. Hildesheimer, Mozart, tr. M. Faber (London: Dent, 1983), p.246.
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