Franz Xaver Mozart (1791-1844)
- Concerto (C-Dur) pour le Piano Forte, Op.14 (c.1809)
Performers: Henri Sigfridsson (piano); International New Symphony Orchestra; Gunhard Mattes (conductor)
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Austrian composer and pianist, the sixth child and younger surviving son of
Wolfgang Amadeus and Constanze Mozart. He received his first piano
instruction in 1796 from František Xaver Dušek in Prague, where he lived
with the Dušek family. In Vienna he continued his studies under
Sigismund Neukomm, Andreas Streicher, J.N. Hummel, Antonio Salieri, G.J.
Vogler and J.G. Albrechtsberger. His first compositions, which include
the Piano Quartet op.1, appeared in 1805. On 30 March 1807 Salieri
declared his pupil to possess ‘a rare talent for music’, and prophesied a
career for him ‘not inferior to that of his celebrated father’. On 22
October 1807 Franz Xaver went to Lemberg (now L'viv). In Podkamien he
accepted a post as tutor in the home of Count Viktor Baworowski, a
position he held until December 1810. In 1811 he became a music teacher
in the home of the imperial chamberlain, Janiszewski, in Sarki (near
Lemberg). He gave up that post in 1813 and lived as a freelance musician
in Lemberg, where he supervised the training of Julie Baroni-Cavalcabò.
From 1819 to 1821 he undertook an extended concert tour during which he
played in Kiev, Warsaw, Copenhagen (where he saw his mother and his
stepfather, Georg Nikolaus Nissen), Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden
(where he visited his cousin, Carl Maria von Weber), Prague, Vienna,
Venice, Milan (where he visited his brother Carl), Zürich, Berne,
Frankfurt, Mannheim, Augsburg, Munich and Salzburg (where he visited his
aunt, Maria Anna).
In 1822 he returned to teach in Lemberg; in 1826 he went to Salzburg to
see his mother. In the same year he renewed his studies in counterpoint
with Wagenseil’s pupil, Johann Mederitsch, who bequeathed him all his
compositions. Also in that year he founded the Cäcilien-Verein in
Lemberg, but in 1838 he left Lemberg and settled in Vienna. In 1841 he
was made honorary Kapellmeister of the Dommusikverein and the Mozarteum
in Salzburg, and in 1842 he stayed with his brother there during
celebrations on the unveiling of the Mozart memorial; at the festival
concert he played his father’s D minor Piano Concerto k466. In December
of the same year the Congregazione ed Accademia di S Cecilia in Rome
named him maestro compositore onorario. In his will Franz Xaver
stipulated, among other things, that any of his father’s autographs
found in his papers, his father’s portrait and piano, as well as his own
library, should be given to the Dommusikverein and the Mozarteum as a
lasting memorial to his father. This Mozart-Nachlass passed partly to
the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum and partly to the consistorial
archive in Salzburg. The brilliant pianistic figuration prominent in
Franz Xaver’s music reveals the particular influence of his teacher
Hummel. The more relaxed quality and richer sonority of his piano
writing, as reflected especially in his Second Piano Concerto (1818),
however, hint at the characteristic piano style of Chopin and Liszt.
