I picked up this novella, first published in 1855, solely because the author, Eduard Moerike (1804-75) -- and it's actually Morike with an o-Umlaut, but I can't do accents -- was connected to Stuttgart.

And in a few weeks' time, we are going to be travelling, we hope, via Stuttgart to Italy...

Now, I'm pretty confident I owned this book as an undergraduate. It was one of my vast collection of little yellow books (the ones published cheaply and cheerily by the Reclam Verlag). But I have no recollection of it whatsoever... So either it has been buried in the depths of my memory, resolutely refusing exhumation, or it was one I acquired but somehow avoided reading. I found the German surprisingly tough. Not an easy read.

It's a strange book. Ethereal, almost. As the title suggests, it is indeed the account of part of a journey, made in 1787, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) and his long-suffering wife, Konstanze, from Vienna to Prague, with the purpose of producing the opera Don Giovanni.


Us on the journey from Bratislava to Ljubljana, earlier this year

A superficial glance would decide there's nothing to it. The couple travel, they stop in a wood, they travel further. While waiting for lunch to be prepared at an inn, Mozart wanders off, enters the beautiful garden of a neighbouring noble, absentmindedly plucks an orange -- and gets into terrible trouble with the gardener ("These oranges are counted, and I am responsible"). But all is well. The lords of the manor know Mozart's music, and the niece whose engagement they are about to honour that day is an accomplished musician, so nothing could delight her more than a meeting with the famous composer. There's a big party. Wolfgang Amadeus plays some of his new music. He is feted. And the Mozart couple leaves the next morning in the new coach their host has gifted them.

So much for the "actual" events (there's a historical basis for the journey, but not for the interlude at the castle).

But so much is communicated within this slight framework:

-- The couple's money problems, which are exacerbated by Mozart's generosity and extravagance.

-- The tendency of his eye to rove, where women are concerned.

-- Mozart's personality, which sounds as though it borders on the bipolar (rambunctiously high spirits alternate with depression and lethargy); he is sociable to a fault, obviously extravert, and oblivious to limits either in his pleasures or his work; when he is tired, he seeks not rest but further stimulus, which eventually leads to exhaustion-driven melancholia.

-- The personality of his wife. Konstanze is lovely. It's tough being married to Mozart, and she has to expend a lot of energy attempting to keep the household on track, and her husband above water, but she continues to be playful, funny, whimsical, and loving.



-- The vagaries of the creative process (the orange desecration, Mozart tells his hosts, was unconsciously prompted by the recollection of a journey he undertook with his father to Italy in 1770; they watched a troupe of Sicilian comedians, who did a kind of balletic performance involving the skilful throwing of fake "oranges"; the atmosphere remained with him, was conjured up anew by the sight of the real oranges -- and turned itself into further inspiration for Don Giovanni).

-- The professional jealousy and trickery that Wolfgang Amadeus always has to watch out for (of which more might have been made over the years than actually existed).

-- The history of which we are all part (the orange tree originates from Madame de Sevigny in the Count's grandparents' time, and recalls both the glories and the terrors of France: "Apart from its personal value, it was to the family a symbol of the allure and sophistication of an age which they almost idolized; in which, however, we see today nothing truly laudable, and which carried within itself a calamitous future, whose world-shattering onset was not far distant at the time of our innocent little tale").



-- And finally, and perhaps most creepily, there's the shadow that hangs over him.

The tone is largely light-hearted, warm, amusing, and affectionate. But dark tones regularly come to the foreground, and it's worth quoting some of these passages at length (from the translation by Leopold von Loewenstein-Wertheim):

These are the reflections imputed to Mozart as he realizes how much his frenetic lifestyle makes him miss out on:

"Truly the earth is beautiful... and we can blame no one for wanting to remain on it as long as possible... It hardly bears thinking of, what one misses, postpones or leaves undone -- without even mentioning our duty towards God and man -- simply in the way of enjoyment and of those little, innocent pleasures, which are spread out before us every day... Have I ever enjoyed the company of my children even for as much as an hour?... And all the while, faster and faster, life goes by. Good God, if one stops to think, how terrifying it really is!"

And Eugenie, the sensitive, talented niece in whose honour the castle party is being held, has a strong impression of mortality where Mozart is concerned: "She had a conviction, an absolute conviction, that this man would rapidly and inexorably be consumed in his own flame, that his presence on earth was fleeting and ephemeral because this world was, in truth, not capable of enduring the overwhelming riches which he would lavish upon it."

The novella closes with a mournful little poem. It's said to be a Bohemian folk-song, but it's actually by Moerike himself. It talks about the constant presence of death in life: An anonymous little fir tree or rosebush might be destined for your grave; the two little black horses who prance jauntily into town will pace much more slowly when they draw your coffin...

Moerike was a morning person, and "An hour before the day" -- in this lovely translation -- is a beautiful little representation of how you can pack ever such a lot into a few very simple lines.

Definitely worth a bit more investigation, then (as is, it goes without saying, the work of Mozart).