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Part 8

Mozarts and the Grand European Tour / 3 London

From Paris to London 475 Km

London (from 23 April 1764 to Tuesday 24 July 1764) – Lodged the first night at the White Bear Inn and then moved to Cecil Court in an apartment located above a barber shop.

Some information about London...

Origins: inhabited in pre-Roman times by scattered tribes, the territory of present-day London did not have permanent settlements until the arrival of the Romans who built a castrum (military camp) on the banks of the Thames, calling it Londinium. In the 2nd century AD. Londinium became the capital of Roman Britain with around 60,000 inhabitants. After the Roman era the city declined and was later subjected to various dominations (Britons, Saxons, Vikings) until the emergence of the English dynasties starting from the 11th century.

During the Mozart's times: London, from 1707 the capital of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (after unification with Scotland) grew in population and commercial activities that produced wealth and well-being. In 1750 the city had its second bridge, Westmister bridge, which together with the older London bridge, allowed a better connection between the two banks of the Thames.

Leopold does not document the intermediate stages of this transfer between the two capitals, traveled quickly and without significant events, limiting himself to mentioning the towns of Calais (on the English Channel on the French side) and Dover (on the opposite English side). In Calais, due to the strong headwind, they were unable to embark immediately. Apart from seasickness, Leopold was struck by the sight of the sea and by the alternation of the tide in the ports of Calais and Dover, by the ships and by the porpoises (dolphin-like mammals) that they saw emerging from the waters to dive immediately afterwards. What thrilled him most, however, were the English horses ("But the horses! The beautiful horses!”). Beautiful, elegant and strong, so much so that he thought that, having a hundred of them available to sell in Europe, he would be economically settled.

Even the city of London struck Leopold Mozart for its vastness ("London is made up of three cities with different names, Westminster, London and Southwark...closely linked together as one monstrously large city"), for the commercial traffic on the Thames ( "If you look at the quantity of boats that are moored along the Thames, you get the impression of seeing a dense forest ... of trees") for the very large and beautiful buildings ("one of the most beautiful is the Royal Exchange or stock exchange ... a large palace whose central courtyard is larger than that of Mirabel Castle in Salzburg") and for the city lighting system ("the lighting is the most beautiful and largest I have ever seen ... in the main streets every house has a lamp and every house of wealthy people has two. Most of the lamps have two lights and the houses of the nobility and public buildings have 3,4,5 lights per lantern"). Much of the information about London that he will send through letters to his friends in Salzburg, in addition to being the result of his observations and experiences, came from publications (guides, descriptions, etc.) that Leopold consulted in public libraries or from friends, or that he bought for personal culture. The Mozarts then arrived in London on 23 April 1764, in spring, when the winter season (the most profitable because more concerts were organized and the whole Court with nobility was present in the city) was now over.

In the summer, the aristocracy, as was the custom throughout Europe, moved to country residences so Leopold absolutely had to take advantage of the spring months to introduce the two child prodigies and collect as much as possible from their performances. The first letter from London to Hagenauer begins with the usual complaints about travel costs:

- 4 Louis d'or in Calais, despite having had a free lunch at the home of Pierre Bernard Carpentier, Attorney of the King of France, to whom they had been recommended. At Carpentier's house Leopold left his carriage in storage with the idea of saving on the costs of the crossing and counting on not needing it in London;

- 3 Luigi d'oro for the crossing with a private boat (during which the whole family paid for not being used to traveling at sea with frequent seasickness). In reality the cost of the boat was 5 Luigi d'oro but Leopold also loaded four other passengers who paid him 1/2 Luigi d'oro each for the passage;

- 3 Laubtaler (also known as Federtaler, a French 6 livre coin circulating with that name also in Germany) for the transfer from the steamer to the Dover shore by means of lifeboats. Each person paid 1/2 Laubtaler and, in addition to the four Mozarts, there were two servants following them: the French Jean-Marie Potevin and the Italian Porta, a veteran of the Paris-London trip (he had already done so eight times) and hired in Paris as an organizer and travel guide.

The first short letter from London ends with the observation that the British seem "all dressed up in masks". Evidently the fashion was very different from both German and French and Leopold, as a good provincial tied to his lifestyle, immediately gave a negative opinion. Despite his conservative ideas in terms of clothing Leopold Mozart did not hesitate, as soon as he arrived in London, to have clothes made according to the local taste for the whole family, including the large wide-brimmed women's hats for Nannerl and his wife. He spent 12 Guineas.

London: a "new" world

When the Mozarts arrive in London they find a totally new and different world than they had encountered in the rest of Europe until then.

The Industrial Revolution had started in England, in advance of the rest of the Continent, at the beginning of the 18th century thanks to the engineer Coke, who invented the distillation process of fossil coal to obtain the fuel that took his name and which, thanks due to its high calorific value, it allowed the birth of the modern steel industry (and, later, the power supply of steam engines).

The Industrial Revolution changed social relations on the one hand by breaking down the historic barriers between the aristocracy and the rampant rich bourgeoisie, on the other by creating a mass of urbanized labor (driven out of the countryside as a result of the privatization of common land in favor of the aristocracy) rich only in children: the birth of the proletariat.

English society had thus changed, in parallel with the way of thinking: nobility and the rich bourgeoisie were no longer separated by an impassable wall but the bourgeois began to conquer ever larger spaces by virtue of the concept that culture and wealth could make even those who were respectable even to he had no "blue blood" in his veins.

The term "snob", which still today indicates those who imitate the ways of upper social classes by posing in a refined and haughty manner, is paradigmatic of this change of mentality. The definition seems to derive from the inscriptions at the University of Oxford, where the nobles were indicated in the lists by preceding the name with the word NOB, while the bourgeois who could afford to pay the expensive university fees, had the same opportunity as the aristocrats to receive the higher education, with the only difference that the suffix attributed to them was SNOB (in Latin Sine nobilitate, without nobility).

A second explanation of the etymology Snob, in some way connected to the first, would instead derive the term from a word of a Scottish dialect that indicated the cobbler and which was used, by noble students, to indicate a person out of place (i.e. the bourgeois at Oxford who posed imitating the ways of the aristocracy).

Parallel to the changes in the economy and society, scientific thought was also making great strides towards modernity.

We have already talked about the mass curiosity towards scientific experiments (such as the experiment of the bird in the glass bell from which the air was subtracted until it led to death, to demonstrate the existence of air and its necessity for living being). Or for the most recent inventions related to the experimental method, which also involved the Mozart family in Salzburg both in terms of attendance of lectures open to the public at the local university and on the occasion of the demonstrations set up during the main city fairs.

Among the things deposited he lists the many gifts received and the purchases made: all the snuff boxes, two watches and other precious objects including two beautiful new atlas dresses (thin fabric similar to satin and silk), one ruby colored with white opals for his wife, a blue one with white opals for Nannerl, a gold watch and a fruit knife with a mother-of-pearl handle set in gold and two blades, one in gold and the other in silver (gifts from Baron Grimm for the two sons). In addition, in Paris, against the payment of 200 Luigi d'oro to the bankers Tourton and Baur Leopold, he obtained a Letter of Credit for a value of 1,800 livre. He then turned over the 200 Luigi d'oro to Hagenauer in exchange for 2,250 Florins at 3% interest and deposited 100 Guineas with the London bankers Loubier and Teisser (with the possibility of adding another 40 or 50) to be used, through Hagenauer, for any German commercial correspondents who need English currency for their transactions (naturally with a percentage of profit for Leopold).

On May 19, the Mozarts were again received from 6 to 10 pm in a limited audition to the King, the Queen and their respective brothers during which Wolfgang performed at first sight on the harpsichord music by Wagenseil, Bach, Abel and Handel submitted to him by the King. He also played on the organ of the King, accompanied an aria sung by the Queen and a solo performed by a flutist and improvised a melody on a simple bass line. "What he knew when we left Salzburg is only a shadow of what he knows now" writes Leopold proudly.

This performance also yielded 24 Guineas, received upon leaving the palace. To get an idea of the value of the gifts received in relation to the cost of labor in England, consider that the salary of a servant in a house ranged from 4 to 6 guineas per month + clothes and tips (but excluding the food that had to be paid by the worker). A hairdresser earned 2 Guineas a month (starting work at 6 am) while more skilled workers could earn 4 Guineas a month. The 24 Guineas received by the Mozarts therefore corresponded to six months' wages of a qualified worker.

Having absolutely to make himself known in London, Leopold decides to organize a "benefit concert" (ie for his own benefit) although the risk of a flop was quite high because the aristocracy at that time lived in the country residences.

Cunningly, however, Leopold chooses the date of June 5, the day after the King's birthday, counting on the fact that the nobility would return to London to pay him homage. In winter, he calculates, a similar event could have attracted even 600 people who, with a half-Guineas ticket, would have yielded the tidy sum of 300 Guineas from which to deduct 40 Guineas for expenses. In reality, the choice of the date turned out to be right and the concert, despite the few days available for the sale of tickets, was attended by about 200 people, not many but all belonging to the high English aristocracy. For the sale and distribution of tickets Leopold could count on Lord March (who distributed 36) and on a friend who sold 40 out of town (for the rent of the hall and the lecterns, for the rent of two harpsichords, to pay two singers, the first violin and the orchestra instrumentalists, many of whom did not want to be paid).

As London was empty in the summer and the aristocrats left for the countryside, Leopold planned a short trip to the spa town of Tunbridge, some fifty kilometers from the capital, in early July, where many members of the nobility gathered. "Nobody with the time and money stays in London," he writes. The hope was to be able to organize exhibitions and concerts and obtain new economic profits. However, the project ended due to an illness, a severe cold with infection in the throat, which struck Leopold in July, forcing him to rest and move to the then suburb of Chelsea. This cold, according to Leopold, was a kind of "country disease" which could be dangerous for people of weak constitution who, in order to recover, had to leave England and return to the Continent by sea.

Here is how Leopold tells his friend Hagenauer about the disease and the remedies, in several rather incongruous cases: the origin of the cold came from the fact that, having to go to Lord Thanet's house for an evening, being Sunday 8 July and not in the square carriages available, loaded the two children on a sedan chair, Leopold followed them on foot (to save the expense of a second sedan) given the beautiful and warm day. The fast pace of the porters and the length of the route made the Salzburger sweat who, having reached his destination and being a cool evening, immediately felt ill. At the end of the evening, around 11 pm, to go home, due to illness, he also rented a sedan chair for himself. For a week Leopold was plagued by fever, sore throat, and inflamed tonsils which he cured himself by sweating (hoping to lower the fever), taking a laxative, gargle and bloodletting. After a week, however, he called a doctor.

Leopold's medical prescriptions

We have already seen how the habit of self-healing, at least for less serious ailments, was consolidated in Leopold Mozart as in his contemporaries and how remedies were often more dangerous than evils.

Among the ingredients of the mouthwash used for gargling against inflammation in the throat there was the Rose tincture (from petals and rosewood) mixed with Vitriol Elixir (at the time this was called sulfuric acid), with honey rose, sulfur spirit and a few drops of barley water. As food he took broth and a barley tea with the addition of sweet potassium nitrate. To lower the fever he self-prescribed some hallensis antispasmodic powder which contained pulverized oyster shells mixed with potassium sulfate, potassium nitrate, potassium antimonoltartrate (a salt of tartaric acid, antioxidant) and cinnabar (mercury sulfide given by union of sulfur and mercury, the latter, as we know today, toxic to the body).

Since the previous remedies did not give satisfactory results, a doctor was finally called to prescribe a potion prepared with wormwood salt (obtained from the ashes of flowers and leaves of Artemisia Absinthium), lemon juice, cinnamon water, spirit of Minderer (distillate of vinegar with ammonia carbonate obtained from the distillation of deer horn), sweet nitrate spirit (ethyl nitrate mixed with alcohol).

To the previous potion, to promote sleep, thebaic tincture (water of barley cinnamon, alcohol, ordinary opium and jugs of carnation, all macerated for five days) and the powder of contraierva root had to be added. At night he had pains and insomnia, so the doctor additionally prescribed Aqua alexiteria simplex (infusion of angelica leaves and top of sea wormwood in ordinary water), nutmeg, Thebaic tincture and balsamic syrup.

Leopold, however, continued not to sleep, feeling extremely dazed (given the doses of opium contained in the various potions).

Finally, thanks to a musician friend who had a medical cousin, he was prescribed rhubarb powder and a drink to be prepared fresh every day (he does not specify the ingredients) which allowed him in a few days to get his stomach back in good condition and to allow the normal power supply. In a letter to Hagenauer, Leopold finally asks him to send him the prescriptions of the pharmacopoeia of Vienna and Augsburg, since the London pharmacopoeia had not helped him, in particular he asked for recipes for pectoral decoctions and laxative waters.

In London, the Mozart family took up residence in a small three-room apartment in the Westminster area, above a barber's shop, at a cost of 12 shillings a week (about half a Guinea). However, needing more space, for people and for the two harpsichords necessary for the children's exercises, he thinks of moving to a larger and more decent apartment, also in consideration of the fact that often receiving visits from people of rank it was necessary a home of expected standards. Moreover, more space would have allowed a healthier life in a city so populated and, even then, polluted by steam, smoke, dust and fog. Returning to the city from the then outlying neighborhood of Chelsea, where they had moved to treat Leopold's cold, at the end of September the Mozarts rented an apartment in the central district of Soho, full of theaters and concert halls and near the homes of two prominent musicians who will decisively influence the musical evolution of young Wolfgang: Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel.

Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)

Eleventh son of the great Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena, his second wife. At the age of 15, on the death of his father, he was sent to Berlin with his older brother Carl Philip Emanuel to complete his musical training.

He then moved to Bologna, Italy (where he studied with the famous Father Martini) and to Milan (where he became a pupil of Giovanni Battista Sammartini). In Milan, he converted to Catholicism abandoning the Lutheran faith and was appointed organist of the Duomo in 1760. In 1762 we find him in London, where the following year he will be appointed Queen's Music Master and later Chapel Master. The influences of Italian music, in particular the singability and melodic sensuality partly absorbed by the Neapolitan opera school, made him a leading exponent of that style, simpler and more sentimentally expressive, called "galant style".

His compositions for keyboard, vocals and for orchestra (where he was among the first to introduce clarinets and gave greater dignity and characterization to wind instruments) greatly influenced the very young Wolfgang Mozart, who frequented him in London, absorbing many of his stylistic characteristics.

In addition to being a musician he was also an impresario and music popularizer organizing in London, together with Carl Friedrich Abel, the first subscription concerts on English soil (known as Bach-Abel Concerts) during which he proposed, in addition to his and Abel's music, compositions by Haydn and other musicians he deemed deserving.

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787)

Composer and virtuoso performer of the viol, after his studies in Leipzig (probably in the Thomasschule conducted by Johann Sebastian Bach) he played in the orchestra of the Prince of Anhalt-Kothen conducted by J.S. Bach himself. Later he moved to Dresden, where he played for ten years in the court orchestra conducted by Johann Adolf Hasse (another German musician with important Italian influences).

He moved to London in 1759 and at the same time as Johann Christian Bach became the Queen's music teacher and with him, to whom he was bound by an ancient friendship and family attendance, he organized the famous Bach-Abel concerts of which we have already mentioned.

In addition to the knowledge of the two most important and influential musicians present in London in those years, who welcomed the young Wolfgang with sympathy and influenced him in terms of musical style, in particular JC Bach had a number of encounters with the little boy from Salzburg and welcomed him to his home to play with him. There is no doubt that in these meetings Wolfgang learned from the then thirty-year-old Bach essential teachings to make his compositions more structured under the compositional and formal profile but also more in step with the evolution in progress and with the feeling of the more refined public. If in Paris Wolfgang had assimilated a more modern style for harpsichord sonatas, in London he approached the Symphony and the world of vocal composition, in particular of opera arias in the Italian style.

His first Symphony was K16, followed by K19, K19a and K19b, all composed in the first half of 1775 and directly influenced in the formal and stylistic structure by the 6 Symphonies composed by J.C. Bach the previous year, which Wolfgang had the opportunity to study. Speaking of London learning we cannot underestimate the singing lessons that Wolfgang received from two Italian castrati active in London at the time: the famous and highly paid Giovanni Manzuoli and Ferdinando Tenducci. Of Manzuoli the music lover Charles Burney wrote: "Manzuoli's voice was the most powerful and voluminous soprano voice that had ever been heard on our stage since Farinelli's time; and his singing was great and full of dignity". Those lessons, in addition to developing the vocal and expressive skills of the boy, put him in a position to penetrate deeply into the stylistic world of singing in general and of opera singing of Italian origin specifically. As an exercise in approaching the operatic arias, Wolfgang composed fifteen of them, only one of which, unfortunately, has come down to us: the aria "of furore""Va, dal furor porta!", based on a text by Pietro Metastasio (pseudonym of Pietro Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi 1698-1782), Caesarean poet of the Austrian Court and literary point of reference for every European librettist of the '700. Wolfgang met Manzuoli again in the following years, in Milan in 1771, where the castrato sang in the Serenata Ascanio in Alba, composed by Wolfgang on the occasion of the wedding of Archduke Ferdinando (son of the Empress Maria Teresa of Austria) with Maria Ricciarda Beatrice d'Este.

But what was life like in London at that time? We hear his impressions from Leopold Mozart's voice. The day of a bourgeois (who, Leopold argues, is always a wealthy person) begins in the morning by drinking very strong and bitter tea with the family with the addition of milk or cream and accompanied by a large quantity of sliced and buttered bread. During the day, beer is drunk, which exists in three types: strong-beer or porter (strong beer that takes its name from porters, the dock workers who used it extensively), ale (light beer with high fermentation with yeasts) and purl, which Leopold calls vermouth beer (actually an ale beer flavored with herbs). The British ate around 2 pm with roasted leg of mutton or roast beef accompanied by potatoes or beans boiled and garnished with melted butter, but they also eat onions. The children and the servants drank light beer while the hosts drank strong beer: no one here, says Leopold, drinks water. At 5 pm tea is drunk again and at around 8 pm the cold food left over from lunch is served again (on Sundays the food is also reheated for dinner).

The more affluent bourgeois add coffee and chocolate, hot wines with cinnamon, rosolio, ice cream and other delicacies. At the end of the meal, wines from the Rhine, Spain and apple cider (which Leopold did not know and appreciate for its healthy characteristics) are drunk and ends with punch, a hot alcoholic digestive flavored with citrus peel. For the aristocracy, meal times, of course, were different since no one worked and the day could be spent between visits, pastimes, carriage rides and music listened to or performed. The dinner for the nobles was not arranged before midnight or one o'clock, since concerts and theatrical performances began at 7.30 pm. Of course, they slept until noon and beyond. The cheapest wine (I remember that Leopold prefers it to beer, which according to him harmed his health) was the one from Tuscany: 2 shillings for a flask with the lower part wrapped in straw, as in the Chianti tradition (but Leopold defines them di Montepulciano) which lasts one day, with a monthly expense of 3 Guineas.

The lunches were consumed around 3 pm, in a restaurant at a cost of 4 shillings (he tried four different ones to try to spend less but it was not possible) and dinner, when not invited, consisted of a simple soup or a bit of veal cooked. To these expenses were added those for sugar, coffee, milk, bread, coal for heating (wood was not used) candles and night candles (candles with wick in use instead of oil lamps typical of other European countries), clothes, laundry. Then it was necessary to provide for a budget for the entertainment: in good weather, in fact, we left the city to breathe fresh air in the royal parks of St. James, Green Park, Hyde Park or in the "amusement gardens" a few kilometers from the center. The prices of the rental carriages were high and Leopold, who lived in the center, rented them as little as possible.

The "amusement gardens" impressed Leopold very much who, to describe them, also proposes to bring to Salzburg copper reproductions of the two most famous ones (those of Ranelagh and Vauxall) as well as of other English and French places and monuments (he had already bought them in Paris for the value of 2 Louis d'or). Ranelagh was not large but delightful, open and illuminated on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, it had a large round room that could hold 3,000 people in which music was played for three hours, from 7pm to 10pm. At the entrance each person paid 2 and a half shillings and received in return abundant tea, coffee, bread and butter. In the pavilion with the organ of the garden, Ranelagh also had Wolfgang perform on the organ and on the harpsichord, during a fundraising concert for the construction of a hospital for new mothers. This move by Leopold was not accidental, in fact he writes that he wanted to perform an act as a good English patriot hoping to win the affection of Londoners in this way. To attract the public (and to market for future paid concerts), Wolfgang was described in advertising flyers as "the acclaimed and amazing Master Mozart, a Seven Year Old Child, rightly esteemed as the most extraordinary prodigy, and the most amazing genius who has ever appeared at any age ". Apart from the pompous publicity, it should be noted that also in this case, the age of the child was reduced by a year to impress the public more.

The Vauxall garden was open every day and was very large with, at its the center, a summer pavilion equipped with an organ where music with orchestra was performed: the entrance ticket cost 1 shilling, to walk and listen to music, but the orders were paid. In a letter dated 27 November 1764 in which he confided to Hagenauer that he hoped for good earnings in the following weeks (the nobles were returning to London and Parliament had its first meeting on January 10, 1765) Leopold communicates that he had spent the previous five months of stay in London about 170 Guineas (he had collected about 150 from the two performances for the royals and from the concert under subscription on 5 June).

In addition to the expenses for the stay in London, Leopold also invested in the engraving and printing of 6 Sonatas for harpsichord, violin (or flute) and cello (signed as Opus 3 in the press and classified in the Kochel catalog as K 10-15) composed by Wolfgang and dedicated to the Queen of England Sophie Charlotte. For this the Queen dedicates 50 Guineas to Wolfgang. As was his habit, in London as well as in Paris and in the preceding stages, Leopold sought to profit from the goods he could broker on behalf of Salzburg acquaintances or traders who were connected with Hagenauer. In a letter of November 1764 he refers to the spread of German violins in Paris and London and points out to the court violinist Johann Sebastian Vogt (who evidently planned to build and sell them in those cities) that customs duties were very high (unless he could find some loopholes, as Leopold sets out to do) and that the French and English tunings were different from the German ones. Watches too were among the objects of interest to Leopold in the merchant version that he wrote to Hagenauer about the quality of the English ones: "They are extraordinarily expensive but also extraordinarily good ... you cannot see anything more accurate and beautiful than watches, for mostly in gold, which cost 20 Guineas each and whose balance wheels and mechanisms are mounted on diamonds ”.