If you've followed The Mozart Minute podcast, then you know that Wolfgang Mozart had a tough time convincing his father, Leopold Mozart, that a) at 26 years old, he was fit to be married, and b) Constanze Weber would make a suitable bride. In addition to having to deal with his oppressively clingy father, Mozart had to convince others that he wasn't a scoundrel. Writing from Vienna on Dec. 22, 1781, Mozart revealed to his father that he had been essentially forced into stating his good intentions toward Constanze in a written marriage contract. According to Mozart, Johann von Thorwart was the villain. He became guardian of Constanze and her sisters upon the death of their father, Fridolin Weber. Thorwart had apparently heard unsavory rumors about Mozart and, as Constanze's guardian, spread his protective wings over his ward. "Certain busybodies and impudent gentlemen," Mozart wrote his father, "must have shouted in the ears of this person (who doesn't know me at all) all sorts of stories about me - as, for example, that he should be aware of me - that I have no settled income - that I was far too intimate with her - that I should probably jilt her - and that the girl would then be ruined. [...] All this made him smell a rat ... " Thorwart had shared his concerns about Mozart's character with Constanze's mother. Frau Weber asked Mozart to speak with Thorwart directly. That conversation led Thorwart to forbid Mozart to have anything to do with Constanze until he and Thorwart had come to a written agreement. "What man," Mozart wrote his father, "who loves sincerely and honestly can forsake his beloved? So I drew up a document to the effect that I bound myself to marry Mlle Constanze Weber within the space of three years and that if it should prove impossible for me to do so owing to my changing my mind, she should be entitled to claim from me three hundred gulden a year." Mozart went on to write that, when Frau Weber showed Constanze the document, Constanze told Mozart, "'I need no written assurance from you. I believe what you say,' and tore up the paper." "This action," Mozart wrote to Leopold's certain displeasure, "made my dear Constanze yet more precious to me."
Jennifer Hambrick unites her extensive backgrounds in the arts and media and her deep roots in Columbus to bring inspiring music to central Ohio as Classical 101’s midday host. Jennifer performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago before earning a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.