Mozart's Story

Most prodigious of all musical prodigies was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Heifetz Hofmann and Yehudi Menuhin showed a early genius for playing music that others had written but Mozart at four was composing a concerto, spilling ink all over himself. He was not quite six when his father, a Salzburg violinist, bundled him and his sister Nannerl into a coach, started showing them off to the rest of Europe.

Marcia Davenport, daughter of Soprano Alma Gluck, stepdaughter of Violinist Efrem Zimbalist, in a notable book published last week tells Mozart's story.* The elder Mozart stalked patrons for his son until he was grown. The family needed money but rings and snuffboxes often paid for 18th Century music. Little, bewigged Mozart sat on the Empress Maria Theresa's ample lap. Once he was permitted to watch Louis XV eat. But with all his genius he never found one large-hearted patron on whom he could depend. He married an amiable, unpractical creature, pregnant or convalescent from childbirth for six years out of their union of nine. He went deeper & deeper in debt. Figaro earned him $200, Don Giovanni about $225. A grey-clad stranger knocked at his door one day, asked him to narrow his price for writing a Requiem March. The stranger turned out to be steward to a count who wanted to be known as a composer but Mozart, worn out at 35, took him to be Death. He died before he could finish the Requiem, had a five-dollar funeral, an unmarked grave.

Marcia Davenport tells all this in a manner vital and direct. Her descriptions are authentic. She trekked all over Europe visiting the places Mozart visited. Her facts are sure but they are for laymen to read. No cross-references speck the pages. The sources, most of them original, are tucked neatly away in the back of the book.

*Mozart (Scribner's, $3.50).

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