Father Mozart Fires Back

. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had written to his father Leopold in Salzburg, enthusiastic about works he planned to compose for performers in Mannheim. Young Mozart reported that he might even be appointed to an important position. Leopold replied in a pointed letter on November 19″, 1778:

“Really, I simply don’t know what to say to you. I’m going to go mad or shrivel up and die. Just remembering all of the projects you’ve dreamed up since you left Salzburg is enough to drive me crazy. All of them have amounted to proposals, empty words, resulting in nothing whatsoever.

“During your stay in Nancy you were playing ducks and drakes with your money, when — instead of squandering it away — you might have invested it in transportation of your own and getting to Strassburg more quickly. Then you plunked down in Strasburg until the heavy rains came, even though I had already told you that — if there was no profit to be made — you should depart right away and not waste your money. You yourself had told me that things there were in a sorry state and that you would depart immediately after the little concert you were giving on the seventeenth.

“But people praised you! And that was enough for you! There you sat, not writing me so much as a line. Had you left Strasburg on the 19th or 20th, you would have arrived in Augsburg before the floods, relieving us of our anxiety, with the wasted money still in your pocket

“The main thing is that you must now return to Salzburg. I do not want to hear another word about the forty gold pieces that you might earn Your entire purpose seems to be to ruin me, just to go on building your castles in the-air.”