Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/160

 31C ARTISTS AND AUTHORS permission to travel, and, as on his exertions depended the support of the whole family, he remained behind, while Frau Mozart, the mother, accompanied young Wolfgang. In 1777, now a young man of twenty-one, he set out upon his second great artistic tour, buoyant with hope, and with all the beautiful audacity of young genius determined to conquer the world. This time it was not the infant prodigy whom men listened to, but the matured musician and the com- poser of melodies sweeter than men had ever listened to before. But the tale is changed now. True, there are triumphs to be spoken of, flattery from the great, and presents sent in recompense for his marvellous playing (he tells one day of his chagrin in receiving from a certain prince a gold watch, instead of money that he sorely wanted — and, besides, he had five watches already !) ; but rebuffs, intrigues, and all sorts of petty machinations against him, make the tale a sadder one ; and so it continued to be to the end. From Munich — where it had been hoped that the elector would have given him an appointment at court, but he was only told to go to Italy and become famous, "it was too early yet to think about becoming a Capellmeister " — he went to Augsburg, spending some pleasant days there in the society of a cousin, Marianne, nicknamed by him Basle, a merry, open-hearted girl of nineteen. Thence, he went on to Mannheim, a town that is memorable as the place where he first met the Webers, and made the acquaintance of Herr Cannabich, the director of the music at the elector's court, and one who proved a stanch friend through everything to the young composer. Cannabich had a daughter named Rosa, a girl of thirteen, exceedingly pretty and clever, and Wolfgang ap- pears to have admired her very much, and perhaps for a time to have flirted and been in love with her. He wrote her a sonata, and was delighted with the way in which she played it ; the andante, he said, he had composed to represent her, and when it was finished he vowed she was just what the andante was. But this lit- tle love affair, if it existed, soon was forgotten in a more serious one with Aloy- sia Weber. Her father was a theatre copyist in poor circumstances. There were a number of children, and she was a beautiful girl of fifteen, with a magnificent voice. She was cousin, by the way, to Weber, afterward composer of the " Freischutz." Mozart was so charmed with her voice that he undertook to give her lessons, and we soon hear of him composing airs for her and meditating a concert tour in Italy in company with her, and her father and sister. In writing of it to his own father he sets out the advantages to be gained by co-partnership, and very prosaically says : " Should we stay long anywhere, the eldest daughter [Josepha, afterward Frau Hofer, for whom Mozart wrote the part of Astrafiam- mente in the " Zauberflote "] would be of the greatest use to us; for we could have our own manage, as she understands cooking." But papa Mozart decidedly objected. four proposal to travel about with Herr Weber — N. B., two daughters — nas driven me nearly wild," and he straightway orders his son off to Paris, whither, with a parting present of a pair of mittens knitted for him by Mile. Weber, he reluctantly sets out in company with his mother. His stay in Paris during the next year was not very eventful, and a sym-