MOZARTHAUS Mozart and the Masons

MOZARTHAUS;  Mozart and the Masons

How not to be fascinated by the craziest composer of all centuries?!???

Let's not beat around the bush. I arrived at Mozart's house in Vienna on a sunny day. While I was queing to buy the ticket, I was thinking " What to expect by him? I mean... Mozart?"

Well...in the three years he lived in Vienna, he lived in an elegant 3 floors building, behind the famous Stefanplatz. He went to Vienna because he wanted to escape the Salzburg Archbishop, who he coudn't stand, and he tried to become a freelance composer/musician. Mozart didn't want to be owned.

This is the entrance inside the building. 

My visit started backwards, on the third floor where you get the usual information about Mozart...you know...the usual stuff about the child prodigy, his father and bla bla...

After this, on the second floor, you get a special information that stroke me.

MOZART AND THE MASONS

OK, in every music history book it is said something about his links to masons and about the compositions he wrote for them, BUT this time, in this touristic visit I found something completely different.

There is a full gallery dedicated to this relationthip and everything is documented with objects and letter of certificates that really belonged to Mozart. I want to be clear. I didn't discover anything, but the way in which the audioguide explain the Mozart-Masons links are VERY different from what it is said in history books. It is much better explained in the audioguide. History books say something very ambiguous and never describe anything very deeply. It seems almost that there is a metropolitan myth about lodges, but in the end they are all old funny people (grandpas) that want to play cricket and be left in peace. Nothing more wrong.

And suddendly you understand a lot more about Mozart, history and the present too.

Why to know more about this makes you understand more the present? because you understand the mechanism. Mozart and his father had revolutionary ideas that brought them to be part of two different lodges. Mozart started working hard, but to be finally at court of the Emperor he had to be initiated and had to get lodges permission. There are several lodges and they speak one to another, to make somebody rise or fall, they have to agree about it. Or nothing.

These are objects Mozart used during his sessions among masons.

Let's go back to UNDERSTANDING the present...why? Because nowadays it happens exactly the same. You don't need to be a genious to understand that if the principal boss of RAI channel in Italy (the example is not referred to reality) finishes his working periode there and then he/she appears again as a boss, but this time in ENEL...then you suspect somebody is playing at Monopoli.

Anyway...Mozart went to the summon of success and his lifestyle was very hectic and luxurious. It's strongly likely that he lost everything gambling.

As regarding his personal life he strongly loved his wife and they had 6 children whose only 2 survived.

This is the cradle of one of his children. In the letters he wrote to his father he says his life was happy with his wife and family, but I couldn't help shivering when I knew about his children's death. To be there in front of a cradle...it was hard. I am a mother and I became deeply sad. I also wondered how was this fact combining with his reputation of man of success interested in parties, money, gambling, games, women (as always his wife was very patient....but because she wasn't Italian).

Was it normal for them to lose those children? were they hiding the sorrow? I don't know.

As regarding his death there isn't a clear diagnosis. Doctors that were caring of him wrote about different diseases, they started wondering about poison effects. In the end they started curing him so intrusively that they couldn't save him. It is written in a document that at 2'o clock in the afternoon Mozart,feeling he was going to die, he wanted to listen to his own unfinished Requiem, then started crying and 11 hours later he past away. 

Now, the last sentence you read before leaving Mozart's house is ( I don't remember it literally): The mission of brilliant Spirits is to leave human beings with more questions then answers. And so it was also for Mozart. I visited his house to know him better, his music is very clear, but his life was kind of leaving me a bitter taste in my heart. So know, I know many more facts about him, but I know him less than before.