A long journey from obscurity - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for long time was not appreciated in Spain and Latin America - Mozart and the Enlightenment: The Mystery of Genius - Cover Story

In 1791, the year of Mozart's death, a little-known musician of Salamanca in Spain published a pamphlet ranking the composers of his day in order of merit. The hit parade he produced says much about the tastes and prejudices of the time. In it one can read: "If Apollo, noted among the gods for the beautiful music of his lyre, was to come down among us, what eulogies would he not deliver for the celebrated Antonio Lolli, Manuel Carreras, Melchor Ronci or Jaime Roquillas? Let him hear the compositions and concerti of the great Joseph Haydn and Ignaz Pleyel, or of our own countryman Josef Castel . . . not to mention the works of Paesiello and Cimarosa for the theatre."

Antonio Lolli often toured Spain as a standard-bearer for Italian violin music, which no doubt explains his presence on the list. Josef Castel was a Spaniard who belonged to the world of the theatre, of the musical interludes known as tonadillas and of the opera, where Paesiello and Cimarosa were also noted figures. Haydn and Pleyel, great names both, represented instrumental music.

Mozart's name, however, is conspicuous by its absence. And the same neglect is evident in another contemporary source, Tomas de Iriarte's poem La Musica, in which Haydn is frequently praised.

There are indications of the same attitude in paintings of the time. When Goya portrayed the Duke of Alba, he chose to exalt his patron's musical talents by showing him leaning on a piano on which rests a violin, an instrument the Duke played with a virtuoso's skill. In his hand he holds a conposition bearing the name of Haydn.

The passion for Haydn was shared by those well-informed music-lovers the Dukes of Benavente, who were also at the time supporting Luigi Boccherini, without doubt the most important composer resident in the country. In October 1783 they signed a contract at the palace of Esterhazy that entitled them to take to Madrid all the works of the master that were not already covered by copyright.

Yet it was not only in the Spanish capital that Haydn was glorified and Mozart ignored. When Haydn died in 1809, he was accorded the honour of a state funeral, and Napoleon's army escorted him to his final resting-place. The composer of The Marriage of Figaro, however, ended up in a pauper's grave.

Yet tastes were already starting to change. Notwithstanding the profound admiration felt by the aristocracy for such masters as Haydn and Boccherini, whose music graced many a stately home, a new vogue was emerging. Romanticism was about to explode on the world, and the theatre was to be the place where the new sensibility would find its fullest expression.

At the time no one realized that the struggles of Victor Hugo and Berlioz, the battle of Hernani and the scandal caused by the Symphonie Fantastique, were signs of a revolution whose roots could be traced back to such works of Mozart as Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and the last symphonies of 1788.

Rossinimania

In Latin America in the closing years of the eighteenth century, just before the struggle for independence began, theatrical fashion followed that of Madrid. Tonadillas were still in vogue. These Spanish equivalents of the operetta featured overtures, duets, choruses, and ballets. Their libretti had literary pretensions, but the inspiration was clearly popular, as indeed was the music.

It was the vogue for Italian opera that spelled the end for the tonadillas. Initially, from around 1810 to 1820, the new form was introduced piecemeal. Arias and duets, sometimes even whole scenes, were played on the Latin American stage, but rarely entire works. The situation changed after 1825, the year when the great Spanish singer and teacher Manuel Garcia arrived with his company in New York. This was an important date in the development of attitudes to opera throughout the american continent. Garcia's production of The Barber of Seville sparked off a movement, best described as Rossinimania, that would only subside a quarter of a century later when the work of the young Verdi came into fashion.

After two successful years in New York, Garcia moved to Mexico City, where he performed the same repertoire. Meanwhile further south two Italian singers, the Tanni brothers, were staging the first Italian opera ever performed in Buenos Aires, doubtless Rossini's Barber. In 1830, three years later, Teresa Schieroni and Margarita Caravaglia took the new mode to Chile. Their only innovation was to substitute another Rossini opera, L'inganno felice, for the ubiquitous Barber.

In Lima, Caracas and Rio de Janeiro the same tunes were being played--the roles and thrills of the ever-popular Rossini. Mozart in no way benefited from this growing enthusiasm for Italian opera.

In spite of the omnipresence of Italian bel canto Mozart's music was occasionally performed. Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia (1767-1830), a native of Rio De Janeiro, performed Mozart's Requiem there as early as 1819. Introduced to music by his mother, Nunes Garcia had been ordained a priest in 1792 and became choirmaster of Rio's cathedral six years later. Given the overwhelming preference for Italian works shown by both the city and the court, the knowledge of German music displayed in his work is truly surprising.

Another early champion of Mozart in Latin America was the Milanese baritone Michele Vaccani. Born in 1770, his American career was to take him the length of the continent, following the standard itinerary later taken by the young Toscanini. He made his debut in Rio in 1822, at a time when the presence of the Portuguese court lent great cultural prestige to the city, still basking in the glory of the Braganza dynasty's baroque heritage. In 1827, he and his wife Maria Candida played Leporello and Zerlina in Don Giovanni in Buenos Aires. In February of that year, Angelita Tanni sang the role of Donna Anna.

These isolated performances were too exceptional to threaten Rossini's operatic primacy. But tastes were to change. It was a sign of the times that, when the San Felipe theatre opened in Montevideo in 1880, there was a place on the facade for Mozart's name.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, instrumental music began to play an increasingly important part in Latin American cultural life, on a par with opera and the theatre. As in Europe, musical societies and enthusiastic amateurs were active in taking instrumental music out of the constricting world of the salons and into the concert hall. At first the two genres were juxtaposed, with instrumental works and arias often featuring on the same programme.

One sign of this change in taste can be traced as far back as 1850, when Camilo Sivori, a virtuoso trained by Paganini, gave a recital in Montevideo which was interrupted to allow the orchestra of the Casa de Comedias to play the overture to The Magic Flute. And in Santiago de Chile in 1869, the band of the local philharmonic society played a Mozart symphony in C, perhaps the Linz (K. 425) or the Jupiter (K. 551).

The half century from 1880 to 1930 saw an increase in the number of concerts and the appearance of the first philharmonic societies in Latin America. The growing interest in classical music was also served by new means of communication, notably the radio and the gramophone.

Europe remained the great provider, both of the musical compositions themselves and of the means of appreciating them. Yet even Europe took time to rediscover Mozart. Otto Jahn's great biography--the first to really do justice to the composer's genius--did not appear until almost a hundred years after his death, and it was not until 1912 that the initial tomes were published of the monumental five-volume critical and biographical study by Theodore de Wyzewa and Georges de Saint-Foix. Alfred Einstein's republication of Kochel's thematic catalogue dates from 1937. All of which suggests that the belated appetite for Mozart in Latin America merely reflected his gradual rediscovery in Europe.

Mozart in the twentieth century

In musical terms, the dark years of the 1930s and the catastrophe of the Second World War were beneficial for Latin America. Among the artists who fled from racial and political persecution in Europe to find a haven across the Atlantic were many musicians seeking a place of exile where they could exercise their profession. Such was the case of the distinguished German conductors Fritz Busch and Erich Kleiber, both eminent Mozartians, and also of Bruno Walter, who chose to settle in the United States for similar reasons.

Busch is particularly associated with the Glyndebourne Festival in England, where he made recordings of Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi fan tutte which are sublime examples of Mozart interpretation. But, like Kleiber, he also directed brilliant performances of the composer's works at the Colon Theatre in Buenos Aires.

Both Busch (from 1935 to 1948) and Kleiber (from 1938 to 1951) chose to pursue their careers in Latin America. Chile, Brazil and Argentina all benefited from their refined art, dedicated notably to the service of Mozart. The two masters bequeathed their passion to many Latin American disciples, thereby doubly enriching the cultural life of the continent.

At first Mozart's music encountered the same indifference in Latin America as it had in late eighteenth-century Europe. The wheel turned full circle with the arrival of these illustrious representatives of the culture of the old continent who went on to put down new and vigorous roots for Mozart's music in the New World.

HUGO GARCIA ROBLES, Uruguayan musicologist, is a music critic in his country and also works with Italian Radio and Television in the fields of music and literature. His publications include El cantar opinando (1969), an essay on songs with a social and political message in Uruguay.

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