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In September 1765, the Mozart family set foot for the first time on Dutch soil. It was the final stage of their 'Great Western Trip' and was expected to last for just one month. It ended up becoming a much longer stay and the nine year old Wolfgang was lucky to escape with his life.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been travelling with his family from the age of six. So, by the time he'd reached Holland his fame as a musical wunderkind was already widespread. He'd been fed titbits by the French queen and lauded as a genius by the Court of St. James in London. He could play the piano brilliantly and compose sonatas and symphonies with consummate ease.
Dutch detour
The family had been in London for more than a year and father Leopold had planned to take them directly to their Salzburg home. So why did they decide to go to Holland? Musicologist Bastiaan Blomhert has the answer:
"Well, it seems that the Dutch princess offered a huge fee. The Dutch ambassador came from London to see them in Canterbury and even then they had no idea to go to the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands. And then Leopold had a sort of excuse, and he said you cannot deny the wish of a pregnant woman because Princess Caroline was pregnant at that moment. So they made a sort of Dutch detour."
And so winter clothes were sent on to Paris and the Mozart family made the arduous journey through the lowlands, a difficult and time-consuming trip across a swampy landscape.They arrived in The Hague on 19 September 1765, full of ideas of how to impress the royal court which was based there, but within two days Wolfgang's sister Nannerl had contracted typhoid and fell dangerously ill. Musicologist Nancy van der Elst explains how bad her condition was:
"They prepared her that she probably would die. She was so ill that they gave her the last communion. She was skin and bones."
Near DeathIt was only the late intervention of the retired royal physician, Dr Schwenke, that saved her life. However, it wasn't long before he was called back to the Mozart household once again. This time it was Wolfgang himself who had come down with the disease. He drifted in and out of consciousness for a whole week and apparently didn't speak a single word. He survived, but the disease had taken its toll. He had also been reduced to skin and bones and had to learn to walk again.
So the Dutch detour had almost ended in disaster and by the time both children had recovered, a harsh winter had set in and the Mozart family resigned themselves to remaining in the Netherlands until the spring thaw.
Dutch tunes
They didn't finally leave until mid-April, six months longer than they had expected. But there were dividends. It meant they travelled to Amsterdam a couple of times to give sell-out concerts and they were also present in The Hague in March during the massive celebrations for the inauguration of the 18-year-old Prince of Orange as Willem V. It was the perfect opportunity for Wolfgang - then aged 10 - to show off his considerable talents and he composed a number of pieces for the occasion, including two sets of variations for piano based on popular Dutch tunes. Pianist Bart van Oort gives his opinion on the music Mozart wrote in Holland:
"They are extremely well written, brilliant, cheerful. It really shows a pianist who can play and for all means and purposes it is absolutely of the standard of what you would see in those days. They are not extraordinary in invention. Some of the techniques are rather novel but nothing is extremely new or deep. It is exactly what you would expect of a brilliant ten year old. But the composing is perfect and the piano technique is well, suave."
ImprovisationWolfgang even got the chance to go to Haarlem to the west of Amsterdam where he was invited to play the famous Muller organ in the main church there. At that time it was one of the largest organs in the world measuring an extraordinary 30 metres in height. There is now a plaque in the church commemorating that visit. The current organist is Jos van der Kooy and he has his own theory as to what Wolfgang would have played for the hour he was allowed on the instrument:
"I think he might have been improvising. And you might know some of the big works by Mozart which were composed in the last year of his life. They were written in commission for musical clocks. Mechanically played organs with very small pipes. So they sounded rather whistling and when you see the big structure of especially the F minor fantasy it makes me always think that he thought back to those days when, as a ten year old, he played St. Bavo's organ. I think it's really been written for this instrument."
And so perhaps the Mozart's Dutch detour wasn't considered an irrelevance after all. Perhaps it left an impression on Wolfgang to the last days of his 35 years. His father Leopold though certainly had a different idea. The last thing he wrote about the Netherlands was:'The biggest impression the country made on me is, above all, how one must learn to be selfish'.
