Mozart’s Journey to Prague (1856 and reprinted in 1997 by Penguin Books) is a briefly written novella of 91 pages. German composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, living in Austria, is on his way from his home in Vienna to Prague with his wife Constanze in September 1787. At the age of 31, he is about to stage the first production of “Don Giovanni.” In Vienna audiences thought his production of “Il Seraglio” was delightful; “Cosa rara” was charming; and “The Marriage of Figaro” was an unexpected and lamentable failure. But the people of Prague loved Figaro. He returned their praise with a composition written specifically for Prague.
On the way to Prague in a horse-drawn carriage he stopped not far from Schrems in the Moravian mountains of Austria, 30 hours driving from Vienna. During the respite, he takes a walk by himself and plucks an orange from a tree. He is caught in the act by the estate’s gardener. Mozart admits his guilt and pens a note to the lady of the house, who subsequently welcomes Mozart and his wife into her home. There he plays one of his own concertos at the piano and regales her family with stories. In turn, the Countess tells her guests about the orange tree.
The fictional Count and Countess have a betrothed daughter, Eugenie. She and her beau are smitten with the composer’s performance and she is enchanted with his stories. But she is silently shocked that Mozart had mentioned his own forebodings, similar to hers – premonitions of his early death. Later, as she recollects his hands running over the piano keys, her conviction “grew upon her that here was a man rapidly and inexorably burning himself out in his own flame.”
The German author, Morike, best known for his poetry, writes a psychologically revealing expose of the composer’s problems in a society unaccustomed to the temperament and talent of a true artist. He writes of Mozart that “despite his passionate nature, his susceptibility to all the delights of this life and all that is within the reach of the human imagination, and notwithstanding all that he had experienced, enjoyed and created in the short span allotted to him, had nonetheless all his life lacked a stable and untroubled feeling of inner contentment.” Mozart never declined a social invitation, would bring guests straight off the streets into his home unannounced, played billiards in coffee-houses, adored dancing and riding, and would devote his evenings to creativity – composing scores of music. Throughout his creative endeavours, Morike foreshadows Mozart’s fits of melancholy and his premonitions of his own death. Premonitions that came true: he died four years later, at the age of 35, in Prague.
Morike presents the 'darker side' of the gregarious portrayal of Amadeus, but not in an intense exposition. On the other hand, it is rather humorous. And while the focus is on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his wife Constanze is the strong heroine in the novella.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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