Wolfgang’s Italian Connection

Mozart’s parents, in search of fame and fortune, began taking their prodigy on tour through Europe in 1762, even before he had reached his sixth birthday. There were visits to Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. They sojourned to Italy three times in the early 1770s.At a preconcert lecture at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival last week, musicologist Peter A. Hoyt reminded us about just how treacherous travel could be at that time. On land, there were “impassable roads, uncomfortable carriages, wretched accommodations, avaricious innkeepers, corrupt customs officials, and marauding highwaymen.”Travel by sea offered other dangers: One of Mozart’s compatriots, Giuseppe Maria Cambini (whom Mozart was said to have offended through an impromptu imitation at the keyboard – a scene vividly recaptured in the film “Amadeus”), claimed to have been kidnapped by Barbary pirates and then ransomed by a Venetian patron. Nevertheless, the great courts and cultural centers of the world held out the irresistible promise of rewards for a child of Mozart’s abilities.Perhaps unexpectedly for his father, those rewards sometimes came in a non-material form. We often think of the young Mozart as fully formed, flouting the music of his contemporaries, but in his early years he was something of a musical sponge, taking in styles along with the local sights. Nowhere did he learn more than during his journeys to Italy, which will be the subject of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival offerings on August 14 and 15, with performances by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Petra Mullejans.For Mozart, Italy was the scene of great successes but also of meetings with musicians who became enduring influences. Barrymore Laurence Scherer, who will deliver the preconcert talk on August 14, sums up the situation: “When he sets out on his travels, Mozart is a little boy. Italy is where he matures. When he returns it’s almost as if he has been baptized: a new kind of sunshine permeates his music.”In Rome, Pope Clement XIV bestowed on the teenage Mozart the cross of the Order of the Golden Spur (for having “excelled … in the sweetest sounding of the harpsichord”). And he was only 15 when commissioned to write music for the marriage of Empress Maria Theresa’s son, Archduke Ferdinand to Beatrice d’Este, Princess of Modena in Milan (this despite the fact that the Empress was highly suspicious of the Mozart clan’s vagabond ways).This event called for, in addition to the performance of Mozart’s commissioned serenata, “Ascanio in Alba,” horse races, nuptials for 150 young couples – with dowries supplied by the royal twosome – and an opera by leading composer Johann Adolph Hasse. By this time, Hasse was a bit out of step with artistic trends (he had of late been staying away from the theater, he explained in a letter, because it was now a place where “strange things hold sway”).His opera seria style was more emotionally controlled and less overtly dramatic than that of the newcomer. And so, although Mozart thought well of Hasse’s opera – he wrote to his sister that he knew all of its arias by heart – the younger composer captured the day. Hasse later declared, “This boy will consign us all to oblivion.” The overture to Hasse’s opera for the occasion (his last) will be on the August 14 program.Yet Mozart had things to learn from the likes of Giovanni Battista Sammartini, Milan’s most famous composer, whose Symphony in G will also be featured on August 14. Sammartini, said Mr. Hoyt, who teaches at the University of South Carolina, “translated the operatic style into an instrumental medium. Avant-garde composers of the 18th century all began taking comic opera style, with its quick changing moods, and integrating it into other forms.”Mozart’s exquisite early Piano Concerto, K. 271 (on the August 15 program), written after he had returned from Italy to Salzburg, exhibits this element, explained Mr. Hoyt, in “the sparkling array of witty ideas in the outer movements. But the real influence of Italian opera can be heard in the slow movement, where you have the suggestion of a vocal recitative.” For the rest of his life, whether writing concertos or solo or chamber works, Italian comic opera would permeate Mozart’s conceptions.Perhaps the most significant influence during Mozart’s early Italian trips, though, was the tutelage of Padre Giovanni Battista Martini, who also taught J.C. Bach. In order to join the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna, Mozart was given a test piece to compose. Martini perused his first attempt and made important suggestions. The “before” and “after” manuscripts survive, and, according to Peter Hoyt, there is a new richness of counterpoint in the second attempt.“Later,” he explained, “in pieces like the Jupiter Symphony, in which seven themes are playing at once, this aspect of his skill is what made Mozart famous.” The composer’s ease in producing gorgeous counterpoint remained a constant throughout his short life. Years later, the 20-year-old Mozart would express grief in a letter to Martini at being “far away from that one person in the world whom I love, revere and esteem most of all.”It is these relationships, as well as Mozart’s amazing gift, that will be celebrated at these Mostly Mozart performances.The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra will perform at Alice Tully Hall on August 15 at 8 p.m. (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).

Wolfgang’s Italian Connection

Wolfgang’s Italian Connection

More from the New York Sun

As 2028 Olympics Approach, Los Angeles Grapples With Cleaning Up America’s Open-Air Asylum

Vital American Military Upgrades Face Years of Chronic Delays

A Ghost Court From 1996 Awakens To Try To Deport an Alleged ISIS Matriarch

How Winner of Refugee Award Came To Be Charged in Medicaid Fraud Ring Linked to Sex Trafficking

As Film Industry Looks Beyond Hollywood, Los Angeles Feels More Like Detroit. What Went Wrong?

Haiti’s Gangs Turn Churches Into Battlegrounds Denying Residents Their Last Refuge

AfD Poised for Electoral Romp in What Could Be Triumphal March for German Far-Right

Trump’s Price Relief on Beef Imports Is Overshadowed by New Wave of Tariffs on Canadian Goods

More from the New York Sun

As 2028 Olympics Approach, Los Angeles Grapples With Cleaning Up America’s Open-Air Asylum

Vital American Military Upgrades Face Years of Chronic Delays

A Ghost Court From 1996 Awakens To Try To Deport an Alleged ISIS Matriarch

How Winner of Refugee Award Came To Be Charged in Medicaid Fraud Ring Linked to Sex Trafficking

As Film Industry Looks Beyond Hollywood, Los Angeles Feels More Like Detroit. What Went Wrong?

Haiti’s Gangs Turn Churches Into Battlegrounds Denying Residents Their Last Refuge

AfD Poised for Electoral Romp in What Could Be Triumphal March for German Far-Right

Trump’s Price Relief on Beef Imports Is Overshadowed by New Wave of Tariffs on Canadian Goods