by Stephanie Manning
EVENTS TODAY:
The Chamber Round of the Cleveland International Piano Competition continues tonight at 7:00 pm with Session 2. Finalists Lovre Marušić & Martín García García will both perform Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in g, Op. 57 with the Escher String Quartet. Tickets available online both for the in-person concert (in the Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art) and the live stream.
Also at 7:00 pm is an online concert from the Cleveland Composers Guild. Small chamber music groups made up of wind players, string players, pianists, and a vocalist from the Guild will present works by Ty Alan Emerson, Larry Baker, Karen Grieblin, William Rayer, Dolores White, & Maxwell Lowery. Click here to view. Freewill offering accepted online.
Tonight at 8:00 pm, catch a radio broadcast from Apollo’s Fire on 104.9 WCLV. The program, Virtuosity: Fireworks from J.S. Bach, includes the Brandenburg Concerto no. 3, the Violin Concerto in d Minor with Alan Choo, and “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” featuring acclaimed soprano Amanda Forsythe and virtuoso trumpeter Steven Marquardt.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this day in 1782, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married his wife Constanze, née Weber (pictured). One of four daughters, all of them singers, Weber was a musician in her own right and would later go on to inspire some of Mozart’s most renowned compositions.
Intelligent and musically trained, Weber made a great match for Mozart. The composer wrote the soprano solos in his Mass in c minor for her, and she sang them in the premiere of the unfinished work. Additionally, her love for Baroque counterpoint influenced many of her husband’s works in that style.
“My dear Constanze is really the cause of this fugue’s coming into the world,” Mozart wrote to his sister Nannerl, attached to a copy of his Fantasy and Fugue, K. 394. “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.”
When Mozart died in 1791, his 29-year-old widow stepped up to save herself and their two children from financial ruin. Proving herself to be a shrewd businesswoman, Weber paid off Mozart’s debts and became quite wealthy by obtaining a pension from the emperor, organizing memorial concerts, and publishing many of her husband’s works.
Mozart’s connection to the Weber family extended beyond his wife. Years before falling in love with Constanze Weber, he became smitten with (and was rejected by) older daughter Aloysia Weber, who later became a renowned singer and performed in multiple Mozart operas. The eldest daughter of the family, Josepha Weber, became Mozart’s first Queen of the Night.
When it came to his marriage to Constanze Weber, Mozart was hesitant to tell his father, who often disapproved of his romantic affairs. Eventually, however, Mozart wrote him a letter announcing his intentions.
“But who’s the girl I love? Well, don’t blow your top. ‘Surely not one of the Webers?’ Yes, actually, one of the Webers. Not Josepha, not Sophie… Constanze!”
