Listen to the Morgan’s music curator Robinson McClellan describe a translation of a 1778 letter from Paris, written by Mozart’s Mother Anna Maria, with excerpts read by actor Carolyn Bost.
In 1777 Mozart traveled with his mother via Munich, Augsburg, and Mannheim to Paris. In letters home they reported on all the details of the journey. The letters reveal that Anna Maria Mozart was an educated woman who, like her husband, was interested in art and science. The first page, seen here at the right, is written by her (“My dear husband”), followed immediately by Wolfgang’s text (with his signature at the bottom of the left page). At the end of her part, Anna Maria sends “many thousands of kisses” to her husband and daughter, then stops writing “because my arm and eyes hurt.” She died three weeks later, likely from an infection and heart failure.
Anna Maria Mozart, 1778 (Age 58)
Autograph letter with autograph postscript by WA Mozart (1756–1791)
Paris, June 12, 1778
International Mozarteum Foundation, DocBD 453, L2026.98.27
Between 1777 and 1778, Mozart and his mother, Anna Maria, undertook an extended journey to Paris in search of employment opportunities for him.
Displayed here is her final letter to her husband. She begins:
“Your letter of 28th May reached me safely on 9th June, and I was pleased to read of your good health. I and Wolfgang, thanks be to God, are well; yesterday I had my blood let, so will not be able to write much at all today.”
Anna Maria was unwell, and a physician had been called to bleed her, a standard medical treatment since antiquity. The therapy was frequently harmful and was almost certainly detrimental in Anna Maria’s case.
She closes her letter in worrisome fashion:
“The day before yesterday I dined at Herr Heina’s and in the afternoon went for a walk … and came home astonishingly tired….
“Adio, keep well, both of you, I kiss you many 1000 times and remain your true Frau Mozart; I must finish, for my arm and eyes are hurting.”
After a brief illness, Anna Maria died in Paris on July 3, 1778, at age fifty-seven.