Who's Who - Constanze Mozat

Constanze (Weber) came from a family which music was in their genetics  had two older sisters,  and one younger one, all were trained as singers, her older sisters Josepha and Aloysia both went on to distinguished musical careers, performing later on in the premieres of a number of Mozart's works.


Originally Mozart fell in love with  her sister Aloysia, but  she rejected Mozart. 4 years later, while Mozart was staying with the Weber family, it became apparent that he was courting the then 19 year old Constanze.


Surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlor game


His father thought Constanze was below his brilliant son.


She gave birth 6 times in the 9 years they were married, only two survived childhood.


Constanze was a trained musician and played a role in her husband's career. Two instances can be given:


The extraordinary writing for soprano solo in the Great Mass in C minor (for example, in the "Christe eleison" section of the Kyrie movement, or the aria "Et incarnatus est") was intended for Constanze, who sang in the 1783 premiere of this work in Salzburg.


Mozart wrote in a letter to his sister:
"... When Constanze heard the fugues, she absolutely fell in love with them. Now she will listen to nothing but fugues...Well, as she has often heard me play fugues out of my head, she asked me if I had ever written any down, and when I said I had not, she scolded me roundly for not recording some of my compositions in this most artistically beautiful of all musical forms and never ceased to entreat me until I wrote down a fugue for her."


The experience of writing in Baroque style had an important influence on Mozart's later work, in the C Minor Mass as well as in later secular works, such as the opera The Magic Flute.


 Mozart's died in1791, leaving debts and placing Constanze in a difficult position. A single parent to two boys, it was only then that Constanze's business skills became apparent: she obtained a pension from the Emperor, organized profitable memorial concerts, and embarked on a campaign to publish her husband's works. These efforts eventually made Constanze financially secure, even well-off.


She eventually remarried a Danish diplomat and writer  Georg Nissen who worked with Constanze on a biography of Mozart; which she eventually published it in 1828, two years after her second husband's death.