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16.04.2008
In honour of his Bäsle (cousin) – The 2008 Augsburg Mozart Festival
The focal point of the 2008 Mozart Festival is Mozart’s so called “Bäsle” from Augsburg. The person behind this nickname is Wolfgang Amadeus’ cousin (Bäsle in Swabian), Maria Anna Thekla Mozart according to her birth certificate. Born in Augsburg on September 25, 1758, she grew up in the street called Jesuitengasse, just behind the cathedral. There, her father, Franz Aloys, Leopold Mozart’s brother, owned a small publishing house, where he printed devotional Catholic literature. In addition, he worked as a caretaker at the Jesuit college of St. Salvator.
When Wolfgang Amadeus and Maria Anna Thekla Mozart met, music was probably a minor matter. Wolfgang got to know his cousin when he was still a child and came to Augsburg for the first time in 1763. The “key encounter“, however, was in 1777 when 21-year old Wolfgang came to Augsburg on his own, without his father accompanying him. From Augsburg, he sent his father a letter, and wrote "that our cousin is beautiful, sensible, adorably practical and funny. We get on really well together. In addition, she is also a little badly behaved."
The two young people spent a lot of time together during the two weeks Mozart spent in Augsburg and it is most probable that they then discovered their affection for each other. The so-called “Bäsle letters“, which Wolfgang Amadeus wrote to his cousin after having left Augsburg, can be seen as an evidence of this flirt. Those written pieces are partly full of dirty puns and a very rude language. The letter Wolfgang sent to his Bäsle on November 5, 1777, for example, ends as follows: "Now I wish you a good night, shit into bed until it breaks, sleep well and raise your ass towards your mouth. I will now go to the land where milk and honey flow and have a little sleep...".
In total, Wolfgang Amadeus sent nine letters to his cousin, which she carefully stored – the letters she wrote went missing.
As time passed by, his Bäsle became less and less important to the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one reason probably being his marriage to Konstanze Weber, whom he married on August 14, 1782 in Vienna. But what did the cousin do in the meantime? In 1784 she gave birth out of wedlock to a girl named Josepha (* 1784) and in 1805 moved with her daughter and her son-in-law, a stage coach expeditor, into a house on Klinkertorstrasse. In 1812 she moved to Kaufbeuren and two years later settled in Bayreuth together with her family, where she died in 1841.
To commemorate the 250th birthday of Maria Anna Thekla Mozart in 2008, Augsburg, Germany’s City of Mozart, follows the tracks of the liaison between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Bäsle. Female artists of our times are invited to answer the letters, the great musician and composer, the “old young pigtail“, wrote to his cousin by presenting new pieces of music and literature.
The 2008 Augsburg Mozart Festival combines rarely heard works from the 18th century with the music, thoughts and the language of female artists from the 21st century. During the five days of the festival, which not only celebrates the 250th birthday of Maria Anna Thekla Mozart but also the works of female composers from Mozart’s time and today, will focus on a hardly approached aspect in music history and provide numerous links to the early music events in Germany’s City of Mozart. Artists from different parts of the world will present their works, focusing on original performing style and featuring the unique concert venues in Augsburg, which reflect the glamour of Mozart’s times.
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