St. George Cathedral is the residence of the metropolitans of the Greek Catholic Church, a well-known monument of the late Baroque era (second half of the XVIII century). A few years ago, a memorial plaque in English, German and Ukrainian at the Cathedral of St. Jura in honor of Franz Xaver Mozart, the son of a prominent composer, was installed. The table recalls the “historical” performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in the church on December 5, 1826 and claims that his son lived in Lviv in 1808-1838.
Larry Wolff wrote a lot about Franz Xaver in his recent book “The Idea of Galicia. History and Fantasy in the Habsburg`s Political Culture” (2012). Detailed biography of our hero also includes English, German and Ukrainian versions of “Wikipedia”. After all, Franz Xaver is well known among experts.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had six children, four of whom died in infancy. Franz Xaver Wolfgang was born on July 26, 1791 in Vienna, just five months before his father’s death. Constance, the composer’s widow, decided to give her sons musical education. At the age of six, she introduced Franz Xaver to the Prague public (Wolfgang Amadeus’ greatest triumph was in the Czech capital), before which he performed an aria from his father’s opera “The Magic Flute”. Thus began his son’s musical career. Franz Xaver wrote his first piano concerto in 1805. When he turned seventeen, he moved to Galicia, where he first taught the daughter of Count Victor Baworowski – a famous philanthropist – in the count’s estate Pidkamin’ (now Ivano-Frankivsk region). “Your brother was invited to Poland,” Constance wrote her eldest son, Karl. Thus, the Galician enlightened public knew about Mozart’s fame, while his widow did not yet know about the “Galicia”.
Franz Xaver did not stay long in Pidkamin’ and the following year he moved to Burštyn, where he taught piano to the daughters of Count Janiszewski. The next two years F. X. Mozart spent in Lviv, where he received the patronage of Baroness Josephine Cavalcabo. Then, for the twenty years, Mozart Jr. continued his career as a private music teacher (in the Pogocki, Czartoryski, Sapieha families, etc.) and gave concerts with great success. On December 5, 1826 his performance of the Requiem in the Cathedral of St. Jura on the thirty-fifth anniversary of his father’s death gave impetus to the establishment of the Society of St. Cecilia. Actually it was a choir of 400 amateur singers led by the composer. The Society of St. Cecilia is considered to be the first professional music school in Lviv. It is worth noting that this event of historical significance (as it turned out later) could not have happened without the consent of Cardinal Mykhailo Levyc’ky, Metropolitan of Galicia in 1815-1858.
“The style of Mozart Jr. fits perfectly into the fashion of the time and, although based on the classical basis, still indirectly embodies the features of early romanticism, – says musicologist Lyubov Kyjanovska.- This is most noticeable in the developed, cantilena melody, exquisite virtuoso texture. He is already quite decisively moving away from the classical style, most fully represented in his father’s work, and, although it adopts certain principles of classical composition in harmony, form, still adapts them to the needs of modern times. F. X. Mozart also successfully toured Europe in 1819-1821, he performed in Warsaw, Gdańsk, and Elbing.
In 1838 Mozart Jr. moved to Vienna and then to Salzburg (his father’s hometown), where his mother founded the Cathedral Music Association and the Mozarteum to “improve musical tastes with a special emphasis on sacred music and concerts” (1841, now the University of Music and Dramatic Art “Mozarteum”); Franz Xaver was a conductor. He died on July 29, 1844 from cancer in Carlsbad (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) where he was buried. The administrator of the composer’s will was his Lviv patroness J. Cavalcabo who ordered to write on the composer’s tombstone “Let his father’s name be his epitaph, because his father’s admiration was the meaning of his life.” Franz Xaver was so fond of his father’s music that he developed a complex of inferiority underestimating his talent and believing that against the background of his father’s legacy, his own work was insignificant.
So, Franz Xaver Mozart spent most of his life in the Galicia as a private music teacher (he once wrote to his mother that he was the only music teacher in all of the Galicia!) teaching children of the wealthy nobility to play the piano, composer and accompanist. L. Wolff also pointed out that among the legacies of Franz Xaver – six polonaises (one of them is dedicated to Countess Rzewuska, two – Countess Glogowska). Thus, the younger Mozart was ahead of F. Chopin, who adapted the polonaise to the musical culture of the Romantic era and popularized it. Mozart Jr. was also influenced by Ukrainian folklore, among the composer’s creative heritage is a work called “Duma on a Ruthenian theme”.
