Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)


(born Salzburg, 27 January 1756; died Vienna, 5 December 1791). Son of Leopold Mozart.
He showed musical gifts at a very early age, composing when he was five and when he was six playing before the Bavarian elector and the Austrian empress. Leopold felt that it was proper, and might also be profitable, to exhibit his children's God-given genius (Maria Anna, 'Nannerl', 1751-1829, was a gifted keyboard player): so in mid-1763 the family set out on a tour that took them to Paris and London, visiting numerous courts en route. Mozart astonished his audiences with his precocious skills; he played to the French and English royal families, had his first music published and wrote his earliest symphonies. The family arrived home late in 1766; nine months later they were off again, to Vienna, where hopes of having an opera by Mozart performed were frustrated by intrigues.

They spent 1769 in Salzburg; 1770-73 saw three visits to Italy, where Mozart wrote two operas (Mitridate, Lucio Silla) and a serenata for performance in Milan, and acquainted himself with Italian styles. Summer 1773 saw a further visit to Vienna, probably in the hope of securing a post; there Mozart wrote a set of string quartets and, on his return, wrote a group of symphonies including his two earliest, nos.25 in g Minor and 29 in A, in the regular repertory. Apart from a joumey to Munich for the premiere of his opera La finta giardiniera early in 1775, the period from 1774 to mid-1777 was spent in Salzburg, where Mozart worked as Konzertmeister at the Prince- Archbishop's court; his works of these years include masses, symphonies, all his violin concertos, six piano sonatas, several serenades and divertimentos and his first great piano concerto, K271.

In 1777 the Mozarts, seeing limited opportunity in Salzburg for a composer so hugely gifted, resolved to seek a post elsewhere for Wolfgang. He was sent, with his mother, to Munich and to Mannheim, but was offered no position (though he stayed over four months at Mannheim, composing for piano and flute and falling in love with Aloysia Weber). His father then dispatched him to Paris: there he had minor successes, notably with his Paris Symphony, no.31, deftly designed for the local taste. But prospects there were poor and Leopold ordered him home, where a superior post had been arranged at the court. He returned slowly and alone; his mother had died in Paris. The years 1779-80 were spent in Salzburg, playing in the cathedral and at court, composing sacred works, symphonies, concertos, serenades and dramatic music. But opera remained at the centre of his ambitions, and an opportunity came with a commission for a serious opera for Munich. He went there to compose it late in 1780; his correspondence with Leopold (through whom he communicated with the librettist, in Salzburg) is richly informative about his approach to musical drama. The work, Idomeneo, was a success. In it Mozart depicted serious, heroic emotion with a richness unparalleled elsewhere in his works, with vivid orchestral writing and an abundance of profoundly expressive orchestral recitative.

Mozart was then summoned from Munich to Vienna, where the Salzburg court was in residence on the accession of a new emperor. Fresh from his success, he found himself placed between the valets and the cooks; his resentment towards his employer, exacerbated by the Prince-Archbishop's refusal to let him perform at events the emperor was attending, soon led to conflict, and in May 1781 he resigned, or was kicked out of, his job. He wanted a post at the Imperial court in Vienna, but was content to do freelance work in a city that apparently offered golden opportunities. He made his living over the ensuing years by teaching, by publishing his music, by playing at patrons' houses or in public, by composing to commission (particularly operas); in 1787 he obtained a minor court post as Kammermusicus, which gave him a reasonable sa

The Pendle Witches: A true story of murder, witchcraft and revenge.
The Pendle Witches or Lancashire Witches were the most famous witches in English legal history
The Lancahire Witch Trial
In the year 1612, at Lancaster gaol, in the English county of Lancashire, ten men and women were hanged for the crime of witchcraft.

The Pendle Witches, as they became known, were believed to have been responsible for the murder by witchcraft of seventeen people in and around the Forest of Pendle.
Thirteen Witches in Pendle
There were in total thirteen Pendle Witches: Alizon Device, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Whittle, alias Chattox, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock & Isobel Robey were the ten hanged at Lancaster gaol.

Elizabeth Southerns, alias Demdike, died in Lancaster Gaol awaiting trial, but was nevertheless considered to be a witch on the basis of evidence already given. Jennet Preston, who lived just over the Lancashire border, was tried in Yorkshire and hanged at York in 1612. Finally, Magaret Pearson was found guilty of witchcraft at Lancaster, but not murder, and received a sentance of one years imprisonment.

Murder by Witchcraft
The Pendle Witches were accused of selling their souls to familiar spirits or devils who appeared to them in human and animal form. In return for their souls, it was believed that the witches received the power to kill or lame who they pleased.

The usual method of murder, descirbed in Demdike's confession, was to make an ethigy of the intented victim, known as a 'picture of clay'. The image was then crumbled or burned over a period of time, causing the victim to fall ill and die.
The Witches of Malkin Tower
The family at the centre of the witchcraft allegations: Alizon Device, James Device, Elizabeth Device and Demdike lived at a place called Malkin Tower. Demdike, who was in here eighties, was the head of the family and was rumored locally to be a very powerful witch.

An important meeting took place at Malkin Tower on Good Friday in 1612. The meeting, believed to have been a witches sabbat, was described to the authorities by James Device. Many of those who attended where later hanged.
A Witches Feud
Demdike had once been a close friend of another reputed witch Chattox, but they fell out and then feuded bitterly. The dispute between Demdike and Chattox was probably a reason why they and their respective families were willing to make incriminating statements against one another.

When Demdike died in gaol, Chattox changed here story, claiming Demdike was responsible for inticing here into witchcraft.

The Wonderful Discoverie...
So much is known about the Pendle Witches because the proceedings of the Lancashire trial where recorded by the clerk of the court Thomas Potts and published in the book: The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.

The majority of the evidence came from the confessions of just four of the accused: Alizon Device, her brother James Device, their grandmother Demdike, and their enemy Chattox.
Witchcraft: fact or fiction?
Nobody knows what possesed Alizon and James Device, Demdike and Chattox to make the extrodinary statements that they did. Torture was not used in England to extract confessions from witches as it was on mainland Europe. Towards the end of the trial the prisoners would have confessed in the hope of receiving mercy, but the most important confessions were given pre-trial and seemingly under very little duress.

The Pendle Witches incriminated each other, perhaps in the hope of saving themselves, but also gave remarkable accounts of their own activities. Had they remained silent there would very probably have been no trial and no executions.

Alizon Device gave here first damning account of witchcraft quite voluntarily, and seems to have genuinely believed in her own guilt and that of her family's.

Some suspected witches did protes

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediments. Love is not Love
which alters when it alteration find
or bends with the remover to move
O no ! it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and never shaken
it is the star to every wandering bark
whose worth unknown, although his height be taken
loves not times fool,though rosy lips and cheeks
within his bending sickles compass come:
love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
but bears it out even to the edge of doom
if this be error and upon me proved
i never writ, nor no man ever loved.