Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/216

204 violinists: Nardini, Baglioni, Lolli and Ferrari. "Jommelli," writes Leopold Mozart, "is taking all imaginable pains to close the Court to Germans. … In addition to his salary of four thousand florins, the upkeep of four horses, lighting, and fuel, he has a house in Stuttgart and another at Ludwigsburg. … Add to this that he has unlimited power over his musicians. … Would you like a proof of the degree of his partiality for people of his own nation? Just think of it—he and his compatriots, of whom his house is always full, have gone to the length of declaring, in respect of our Wolfgang, that it was an incredible thing that a child of German birth could possess such passion and animation."

Augsburg, which had never ceased to be in touch with Venice and Upper Italy; Augsburg, where Italian influence had permeated architecture and the arts of design in the time of the Rennaissance—Augsburg, which was the native city of Hans Burgkmair and the Holbeins, was also the cradle of the Mozarts. Leopold Mozart had, it is true, settled at Salzburg, but in 1763 he made a journey to Augsburg, with his little boy, aged seven; and Teodor de Wyzewa has shown that it was there, in all probability, that Mozart "began to initiate himself into the free and majestic beauty of Italy."