<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side two <&>0:42 mozart's talents as a keyboard player and composer were recognised at a very early age <,> his skills as a string player were even then less well known mozart was in fact a fine violinist <,> we know a great deal about his grounding on the instrument the violin on <&>1:00 which he played as a child still survives a three quarter size instrument made by a local salzburg maker andreas ferdinand meyer his teacher was of course his father leopold leopold's views on violin technique and style are very clear indeed since in seventeen fifty six <,> the year of wolfgang's birth he published his treatise on violin playing <,> mozart clearly made exceptional progress at the age of thirteen he was appointed third concertmeister of the salzburg court orchestra ahead of players with many years' experience in seventeen seventy four he was promoted to the position of second concertmeister the first concertmeister was the much respected michael haydn <,> mozart's attitude to violin playing was however always rather ambivalent at the age of fourteen in a letter home to his sister written from bologna he wrote my fiddle has now been restrung and i play every day but i add this <&>2:00 simply because mama wanted to know whether i still play the fiddle while the anxieties about practice here will sound familiar to many a parent almost everything emanating from the mozart family about wolfgang's abilities as a violinist indicates that he himself would rather have concentrated his energies as a performer into keyboard playing <,> we hear most about his violin playing during his travels of seventeen seventy seven to seventy eight just as wolfgang and his mother left munich leopold voiced the same old worries about practice and at the same time tried to encourage him by passing on the praise of antonio brunetti the salzburg court orchestra's first violinist he wrote when you were in munich you probably did not practise the violin at all but i should be sorry to hear this brunetti now praises you to the skies and when i was saying the other day that after all you played the violin passibilamente he burst out WHAT NONSENSE why he could play <&>3:00 anything <,> it turned out that mozart had been playing the violin in munich in a letter which must have crossed with leopold's he talks about a private concert given to celebrate the name day of his music loving inn keeper <,> mozart took part in two michael haydn quintets performed three piano concerti and then as a finale he says took up his violin again to play the divertamento in b flat k two eight seven a work which contains a first violin part of considerable virtuosity he reported to his father they all opened their eyes i played as though i were the finest fiddler in all europe <,> a number of mozart divertamenti or serenades written at about this time are multi movement works which enclose as it were a violin concerto <,> here's an allegro from the serenade in d k two oh four played by jaap schroeder with the smithsonian chamber orchestra <&>4:00 <&>five seconds music has been cut from tape <&>4:05 leopold responded to his son's report of the munich divertimento performance with a characteristic blend of anxiety about his son's behaviour and more particularly pride <,> you yourself do not KNOW how well you play the violin he wrote if you will only do yourself credit and play with energy with your whole heart and mind yes just as if you WERE the first violinist in europe you must not play carelessly or people will think that from some foolish conceit you consider yourself to be a great player seeing that many people do not even KNOW that you play the violin you have after all been known from childhood as a clavier player so whence could you draw the grounds for such conceit and presumption say these words first i really must apologise but i am no violinist then play with your whole mind and you will overcome all difficulties oh how often you hear a great violinist play <&>5:00 who has a great reputation and feel very sorry for him <,,> between munich and mannheim mozart visited leopold's home city of augsburg where he played the violin in one of his own symphonies with an orchestra which he said was enough to give one a fit a few days later at the holy cross monastery he performed a van heil violin concerto and one of his own <,> he reported in spite of their poor fiddling I prefer the monastery players to the augsburg orchestra i performed a symphony and played van heil's violin concerto in b flat which was unanimously applauded in the evening at supper i played my strasbourg concerto which went very smoothly everyone praised my beautiful pure tone <,,> no one is quite sure what mozart meant by his strasbourg concerto probably the concerto number three in g or number four in d in any case it is clear that mozart played all five of his own <&>6:00 violin concerti here with jaap schroeder again as soloist is the rondo from the second concerto in d k two eleven <&>6:08 <&>nine seconds music music has been cut <&>6:18 just before mozart's report of his augsburg concert leopold had written from salzburg that antonio brunetti had also played the strasbourg concerto most excellently but in the two allegros he played wrong notes occasionally and once nearly came to grief in a cadenza the comparison suggests that mozart could have held his own with some of europe's leading violinists <,> brunetti had arrived in salzburg in seventeen seventy six to take up a position as concertmeister in such a role his responsibilities included not just playing the violin but directing orchestral performances in the light of what happens next in mozart's own violin playing career this is worth noting <,> during mozart's stay in paris one of the <&>7:00 most important musical events for him was the performance of the symphony he had written especially for the orchestra at the concert spirituel <,> mozart was not at all happy with the way the single rehearsal of this work had gone under the direction of pierre lahoussey a tatini pupil <,> mozart was in fact so depressed after the rehearsal that he considered not going to the concert but in the end as he wrote to his father he decided to go <,> i at last made up my mind to go determined that if my symphony went as badly as it did at the rehearsal i would certainly make my way into the orchestra snatch the fiddle out of the hands of lahoussey the first violin and conduct myself <,> the performance was in fact a tremendous success with the audience bursting into spontaneous applause during the opening movement <,> leopold who was delighted to hear about this was nevertheless HORRIFIED when he read of his son's plan to intervene if <&>8:00 things had not gone well in july seventeen seventy eight he wrote back to wolfgang <,> i congratulate you on having got through the concert spirituel so successfully with your symphony i can imagine your nervousness <,> your determination to dash off into the orchestra if the performance had not gone off well was surely only a wild idea GOD FORBID you must put all such fancies out of your head for they are wholly injudicious such a step might cost you your life which no man in his senses risks for a symphony such an insult and what is more a PUBLIC insult not only a FRENCHman but everyone who values his honour would and OUGHT to avenge sword in hand an italian would say nothing he would lie in wait for you at a street corner and shoot you dead <&>8:48 <&>seven seconds music music has been cut from tape <&>8:55 brunetti and lahoussey were both violinists who by virtue of their skill as players had <&>9:00 risen to positions where they directed orchestral performances in other words they combined the roles which we now associate with leader or concertmaster and conductor the concertmeister was subordinate only to the kapellmeister who might be a violinist or more likely a keyboard player <,> leopold and wolfgang mozart both had a clear sense of the desirability of such a position leopold hoped himself to be appointed kapellmeister in salzburg but never quite made it thanks largely it seems to the long absences he took with his talented children <,> even more than for himself leopold hoped for such a position for wolfgang the mozart correspondence quite often shows one or other of them casting a jealous eye at the success of others when in seventeen sixty three leopold saw the conditions which nicolo jommelli enjoyed in ludwigsburg he could scarcely contain himself he wrote jommelli is doing his best to weed out <&>10:00 the germans at this court and put in italians only he has almost succeeded too and will succeed completely for apart from his yearly income of four thousand gulden his allowances for four horses wood and light a house in stuttgart and another one in ludwigsburg he enjoys to the full the favour of the duke of wurttemburg and his wife is promised a pension of two thousand gulden after his death what do you think of THAT for a kapellmeister's post furthermore he has unlimited control over his orchestra and that explains its excellence <,> in fact jommelli's conditions of employment were not quite as advantageous as they seemed to leopold his description though conveys a vivid picture of the desirability of such a post in mannheim wolfgang had witnessed the fine musical results which christian kanopic was able to achieve as kapellmeister he was impressed by the mixture of respect and fear with which the mannheim instrumentalists <&>11:00 regarded their director <,> by october seventeen seventy eight leopold was anxious to have his son back in salzburg we learn that he was doing his best to negotiate very favourable conditions for wolfgang with the archbishop but violin playing became something of a sticking point <,> he wrote to wolfgang thanks to my perseverance the archbishop has agreed to everything <,> but his son's response was less than excited <,> mozart wrote <,> but there is ONE more thing i MUST settle about salzburg and THAT is that i SHALL not be kept to the violin as i used to be i will no longer be a fiddler I want to conduct at the clavier and accompany arias <,> at the end of the same letter <,> mozart returns to emphasise this point please see that everything the archbishop has promised you is absolutely assured and also what i asked you for that is that MY place should be at the clavier <,> what followed this bombshell was a very fraught <&>12:00 correspondence leopold replied in high dudgeon i must now urge you most insistently to abandon all your high flown ideas which are too exalted for our salzburg orchestra YOU say i will no longer be a fiddler why formerly you were nothing BUT a fiddler and also incidentally concertmeister but now you are concertmeister and court organist and your main duty WILL be to accompany at the clavier as a lover of music you will not consider it beneath you to play the violin in the first symphony any more than does the archbishop himself and also the courtiers who play with us and i wager that rather than let your own composition be bungled you will prefer to take part in the performance it does not follow however that you will be regarded as a fiddler while others enjoy themselves and that you will have to play THEIR trios and quartets not at ALL <,> this letter tells us quite a lot about musical life <&>13:00 in salzburg playing the violin in the first symphony reminds us that symphonies at this time were thought of as having an overture like function something with which to start a concert mozart and more especially haydn were to change all of that leopold's apparently positive attitude here towards the archbishop's OWN violin playing was unlikely to have cut much ice with wolfgang shortly before this leopold had written with amused contempt about the music making of noble salzburg amateurs <,> he himself regarded it as something of a penance to have to play with him nobody he wrote at the time could tell whether the music was scraped or fiddled <,> not surprisingly mozart was not reassured by his father's attempts to reconcile him to employment as a violinist in salzburg his protesting reply makes it clear that it is in fact a matter of status rather than an antipathy to violin playing which is the problem <&>13:55