Listen to the Morgan’s curator Robinson McClellan describe Mozart’s letter to his father Leopold, with an excerpt read by actor Christopher Inman.
After telling his father about the birth of his first child, Raimund Leopold, Mozart noted, “I want the child to be brought up on water, like my sister and myself.” This was a widely held belief regarding nourishment at the time and likely contributed to the high infant-mortality rate— nearly 50 percent. Of the six children born to Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart, only two survived beyond infancy. Raimund died at two months while his parents were visiting Salzburg. They did not learn of his death until their return home in November.
WA Mozart (1756–1791)
Autograph letter to his father [Leopold Mozart] in Salzburg,
Vienna, June 18, 1783
The Morgan Library & Museum, Cary 118813, MFC M9397.M9393
[excerpts interspersed with with narration]
In this letter to his father, Mozart joyfully announced the birth of his first child, Raimund Leopold:
Congratulations, you are a grandpa! Yesterday, the 17th, at half past six in the morning
my dear wife was safely delivered of a fine sturdy boy, as round as a ball.
…I want the child to be brought up on water, like my sister and myself.
After much planning and some delay, Mozart and Constanze finally set off in July 1783 to visit Leopold and Nannerl in Salzburg, leaving their newborn in the care of a wet nurse. When they returned four months later, tragically, Raimund had died at two months old; they reportedly did not learn of his death until their return home.
Infant and child mortality in late eighteenth-century Austria was extremely high—often approaching 40–50 percent in urban areas—with infants at greatest risk. Of Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart’s seven children, only Wolfgang and Nannerl survived beyond six months; likewise, only two of the six children born to Wolfgang and Constanze lived past that age. The precise causes of these deaths are unknown, but Mozart’s remark about raising children “on water” suggests that nutritional deficiencies, combined with the poor sanitation of the time, likely contributed.