Komm Lieber Mai und Mache...My First Encounter with Mozart

 When I was a child, I was gifted a picture book about the life of Mozart: Komm Lieber Mai und Mache. It referenced a popular German song about the spring and the flowers and birds. In a few colorful pages Mozart’s life was described and follows quite accurately the well-known details of his life. His father, Leopold, as teacher, his sister Nannerl, a companion and his mother, his champion.

                      

The story chronicles Mozart's talent for the piano; his early attempts at composing; the travels by horse-drawn coach across Europe, the performances for royalty.

The piano they take with them on the road;

               From the book:   

               

                         Mozart's road piano in the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest:

                                                     

                                                                                             

When he had scarlet fever:

And other well known moments: playing the piano with the keys covered, improvising variations on a theme. Professing his love for Marie Antoinette.

Then he dies. The end comes pretty fast. I remember feeling an unbearable sadness that this celebrated child, a child like I was, died at the end of the book. I was face to face with the arc that spans a life for the first time. Characters don’t usually die in children’s books.

Komm Lieber Mai und mache, die Bäume wieder Grün. Come dear May and make the trees green again.

Mozart wrote this song on January 14, 1791. His birthday would have been coming up. (January 27). The author stresses his poverty and poor health and yet he wanted to bring joy through his music. His melodies, wonderful melodies that bring us joy. He composed this piece in the winter, near the end of his life. Hear, how he longs for warmth:

Komm, lieber Mai, und mache die Bäume wieder grün, und lass mir an dem Bache die kleinen Veilchen blüh’n! Wie möcht’ ich doch so gerne ein Veilchen wieder seh’n! Ach, lieber Mai, wie gerne einmal spazieren geh’n!

Come, dear May, and make the trees green again, and by the brook, let the little violets bloom for me! How I would love to see a violet again - ah, dear May, how gladly I would take a walk!

 

For him, the spring would not come again. He, who shared his gifts with us all, died young and poor, in the ungrateful,  Emperor's City (my translation). The city was Vienna. This book was written in the DDR in 1971. Anti-western sentiments ran deep. There may well have been a rule to slip some anti-western ideas into a children’s book.

            Credit where credit is due:

Mozart died on December 5, that same year. Age 35. That would make this song, one of the last pieces of music he wrote. He would have been working on his Requiem Mass. Wrestling with all those themes of death and torment. January – we all know how that feels. It is a plea founded in a dark winter’s night in Austria. Sitting at his writing table and staring down the Requiem Mass. Everything will be better in the spring.

          The house where Mozart died:                             The view from his window:

               

I read this book over and over. I identified with this boy, born in the middle of winter in Salzburg, Austria. We were both German and winter babies. And I had recently started piano lessons. (I still despair at how difficult Mozart is to play. I thought my early connection with him would make playing his music a breeze.)

In 1971 I was seven years old. I practiced on a cardboard keyboard from the back of the Leila Fletcher Book 1 for piano. I took piano lessons at school, at lunch hour, in a group. We each had a short lesson with the teacher while the rest of the group scratched out key signatures and intervals in those tiny, multi-colored Rudiments of Music books.

The arrival in our home of the Heinzman Upright Grand piano was met with great excitement. We all took turns tapping and pecking at the keys. My father could play some melodies, his fingers rippling up and down the keyboard. No music in front of him, everything in his head.

My musical journey began at home, listening to my Uncle Peter and my father play Russian and Ukrainian folk songs on the piano and mandolin. My father did not read music, but he played both the piano and the mandolin without effort. Uncle Peter was accomplished on the piano. Uncle Peter loved a grand flourish, and my dad would strum the mandolin in equal measure. The impact of watching and listening to them play music together for the sheer joy of it was not immediately apparent to me, but it proved to be most profound.

I continued with piano and then the violin. I learned some Mozart. I’m still at it! Stay tuned...

If you want to hear German pop sensation Nena sing this song, it is here: