After several months in Mannheim, I found myself genuinely enjoying life in the city. I formed friendships with local musicians, began teaching, and received commissions for both performance and composition. For the first time, independence felt not only possible but promising.
During this time, I became enchanted by Aloysia Weber, a gifted soprano from a family of four daughters. Her presence and charm provided a perfectly reasonable excuse to delay anything else.
Despite my optimism, a permanent position failed to materialize. My purse grew lighter by the day, while Father’s letters grew longer and more pointed. So, when the Weber family invited me to accompany them on their travels to Italy and France, I accepted without hesitation.
Father objected immediately and declared that I could not be trusted to conduct myself responsibly on my own – a fair judgement if one defines “responsibly” as “without joy”. He insisted that Mother join me as a travelling companion. She agreed, as she always did.
We arrived in Paris hopeful and short of coins. I managed to find work composing a symphony for the Concert Spirituel[i], which was gratifying but insufficient. Paris was dazzling, but not generous. We struggled to gain access to the refined circles of high society, watched our finances slowly dwindle, and eventually had to move to a rather rundown hotel in the second arrondissement, with faded wallpaper and beds that offered little comfort.
During this time, Mother’s health began to fail. At first, I attributed her fatigue to travel. Then the fever came. She grew quieter, weaker, and one day, she did not recover. Mother died in Paris at the age of fifty-seven[ii].
What followed was silence of a different kind.
I sat by the window and contemplated how to tell Father. I knew what he would think – that I should have protected her, that I had failed both her and our family, and that my independence had come at too high a cost. Perhaps he was right, in part. Paris had promised fame. Instead, it gave me grief. With teary eyes I wondered whether I would ever find the strength to make music again.
[i] K 297 composed for the Concert Spirituel was a brilliant D Major work in which Mozart met the taste of the Parisian public (and musicians) for orchestral display without sacrifice of his integrity.
[ii] Anna Maria Walburga Mozart died on July 3rd, 1778, of sudden, undiagnosed illness and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Eustache, Paris.