Mozarteum at Salzburg

(This very informative and insightful entry came about as a stimulated response from Agnes Selby to my post  entitled  "International Mozart Foundation" dated 21 Sept 2006.  Mrs. Selby is author of Constanze, Mozart's Beloved.)

Dear Tel,

I am most grateful to you for mentioning the year 1841 in your Classical Music Lounge for this is when the Mozarteum was really founded. It is such a long time ago that it is rarely associated with the present International Mozart Foundation which is a non-profit organisation, just as you said in your article. A non-profit organisation allows financial contributors to deduct their contributions from their taxes. Hence the change to the Mozarteum's structure which existed since 1841.

The original Mozarteum was founded when Salzburg's city fathers began to notice the influx of visitors who came to pay homage to Mozart's widow,  Constanze.


After the Napoleonic wars, Salzburg, as an administrative city for its region, ceased to exist and all administrative offices were moved to Linz. The visitors to Mozart's home town had difficulty finding accommodation  and many wrote that Mozart's music was never heard in Salzburg. Vincent and Mary Novello, who came to Salzburg to visit Nannerl and Constanze bearing a gift of money for Nannerl from English Mozart lovers, found a dilapidated  city in great need of restoration.

The city fathers suddenly realized that with Constanze in their midst, a Mozart revival would benefit their city - as it still does. 

Constanze was active in the formation of the Mozarteum. She had hoped that her son, Wolfgang Mozart (Franz Xaver) would become the first director of the Mozarteum but this was not to be. Wolfgang was ailing and preferred to live a trouble-free life with his great love, the Countess Josephine Cavalcabo.

The first director of the newly founded Mozarteum was Alois Taux, a young man with a burning ambition to bring Mozart's music back to Salzburg. He was the first organiser of what is known  today as the Salzburg Festival. It was not a Festival on the scale as it is today but a festival nonetheless, with notable musicians and singers keen to appear to honour Mozart.

The Mozarteum today is not only a repository of Mozartean information but it has a romantic history itself. For instance, when in 1855, in order to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mozart's birth, Taux organised a Mozart Festival, it was found that Constanze's grave in St. Sebastian's cemetery had crumbled. Her son, Carl Mozart arranged for a new monument to replace the old one so that the visitors to the Festival could pay homage to his mother and to Leopold Mozart both buried in the same grave.

Mrs. Taux, the wife of the director of the Mozarteum planted the first flowers on this grave. The Mozarteum maintains the grave to  this day and every year Mrs. Taux's choice of flowers are replanted on the grave.

Also of interest is the fact that Mrs. Taux had her husband's body as well as those of Aloysia and Sophie Weber exhumed when St. Sebastian closed its doors to further funerals. The two Weber sisters now rest with the Taux family in a grave in Salzburg's Communal Cemetery. Mrs. Taux planted a blossoming cherry tree over the grave. 

I do not think the original cherry tree still shades this grave but a cherry tree is flowering there to remind us of the Mozarteum's efforts to preserve what they quietly consider part of the Mozarteum's history.

Regards,

Agnes.

September 22, 2006