![Common starling in london](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Common_starling_in_london.jpg)
For about three years, the composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...
kept a pet
starling
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The Sturnidae are named for the genus ''Sturnus'', which in turn comes from the Latin word for starling, ''sturnus''. Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, ...
. The starling is remembered for the anecdote of how Mozart came to purchase it, for the funeral commemorations Mozart provided for it, and as an example of the composer's affection in general for birds.
Purchase
The first record of the starling is the entry Mozart made in his expense book when he bought it on 27 May 1784:
:''Starling bird 34
Kr.
:
\relative a'
:''That was beautiful!''
The music Mozart jotted down in the book is fairly close to the opening bars of the third movement of his
Piano Concerto No. 17 in G,
K. 453, which Mozart had completed a few weeks earlier (12 April). Presumably, Mozart taught the bird to sing this tune in the pet store, or wherever it was that he bought it.
According to Mozart's transcription, the starling incorrectly inserted a
fermata
A fermata (; "from ''fermare'', to stay, or stop"; also known as a hold, pause, colloquially a birdseye or cyclops eye, or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) is a symbol of musical notation indicating that the note should be pr ...
on the last beat of the first full measure, and sang G instead of G in the following measure. Correcting for those, the tune would have been:
:
\relative a'
Mozart probably was not joking when he made the transcription, because starlings are known to have a very strong capacity for vocal mimicry.
To the ears of West and King, many elements of Mozart's ''
A Musical Joke
''A Musical Joke'' (in German: ') K. 522, (Divertimento for two horns and string quartet) is a composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the composer entered it in his ' (''Catalogue of All My Works'') on June 14, 1787. Commentators have opined tha ...
'' (1787) also "bear the vocal autograph of a starling".
Demise
The bird Mozart brought home lived as a pet in his household for three years and died on 4 June 1787. Mozart buried the creature in the garden with (as contemporary biographers observed) considerable ceremony. The notes taken by
Georg Nikolaus von Nissen
Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (sometimes Nicolaus or Nicolai; 22 January 1761 – 24 March 1826) was a Danish diplomat and music historian. He is the author of one of the first biographies of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, still used today as a s ...
(the second husband of Mozart's wife
Constanze) for purposes of writing his
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...
of the composer described the ceremonies thus:
When a bird died, he arranged a funeral procession, in which everyone who could sing had to join in, heavily veiled – made a sort of requiem, epitaph in verse.
The same event is described by
Franz Niemetschek
Franz Xaver Niemetschek ( cz, František Xaver Němeček, links=no; pl, Niemeczek, links=no) (24 July 1766 – 19 March 1849) was a Czech philosopher, teacher and music critic. He wrote the first full-length biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Moz ...
, who had also interviewed Constanze:
He often wrote verse himself; mostly only of a humorous kind. n.:This was the case, among others, at the death of a much-loved starling, which he had given a proper gravestone in his hired garden, and on which he had written an inscription. He was very fond of animals, and – particularly – birds.
Mozart's funeral poem is translated by Robert Spaethling into vernacular English as follows.
Hier ruht ein lieber Narr,
Ein Vogel Staar.
Noch in den besten Jahren
Mußt er erfahren
Des Todes bittern Schmerz.
Mir blut't das Herz,
Wenn ich daran gedenke.
O Leser! schenke
Auch du ein Thränchen ihm.
Er war nicht schlimm;
Nur war er etwas munter,
Doch auch mitunter
Ein lieber loser Schalk,
Und drum kein Dalk.
Ich wett', er ist schon oben,
Um mich zu loben
Für diesen Freundschaftsdienst
Ohne Gewinnst.
Denn wie er unvermuthet
Sich hat verblutet,
Dacht er nicht an den Mann,
Der so schön reimen kann.
—June 4, 1787. Mozart
Here rests a bird called Starling,
A foolish little Darling.
He was still in his prime
When he ran out of time,
And my sweet little friend
Came to a bitter end,
Creating a terrible smart
Deep in my heart.
Gentle Reader! Shed a tear,
For he was dear,
Sometimes a bit too jolly
And, at times, quite folly,
But nevermore
A bore.
I bet he is now up on high
Praising my friendship to the sky,
Which I render
Without tender;
For when he took his sudden leave,
Which brought to me such grief,
He was not thinking of the man
Who writes and rhymes as no one can.
West and King note, based on their extensive experience, that starling pets interact closely with their human keepers, often causing their owners to bond with them. Thus, Mozart's expression of sorrow, though comic, is likely to have been quite sincere. Spaethling offers further background:
Mozart's poem on the death of his beloved pet bird ... is humorous, bittersweet, and self-reflective at a time of great loss and grief. His father had passed away, a close friend had died young, and he himself was deeply involved with ''Don Giovanni
''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanis ...
'', his darkest comedy.
Other birds
There is evidence that the starling Mozart acquired in 1784 was hardly the only pet bird whose company he enjoyed.
At age 14, Mozart wrote home from Naples to his sister
Nannerl
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart (30 July 1751 – 29 October 1829), called "Marianne" and nicknamed Nannerl, was a musician, the older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and daughter of Leopold (1719–1787) and Anna Maria Moz ...
in Salzburg (19 May 1770) when he was on
a journey
''A Journey'' is a memoir by Tony Blair of his tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Published in the UK on 1 September 2010, it covers events from when he 1994 Labour Party leadership election, became leader of the Labour Party (UK), ...
with his father
Leopold
Leopold may refer to:
People
* Leopold (given name)
* Leopold (surname)
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Leopold (''The Simpsons''), Superintendent Chalmers' assistant on ''The Simpsons''
* Leopold Bloom, the protagonist o ...
:
Write me, how is Mr. Canary? Does he still sing? Does he still pipe? Do you know why I am thinking of the canary? Because there is one in our anteroom that makes the same little sounds as ours.
A later letter, written by Nannerl to her mother at home in Salzburg as she visited
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
in 1775 with Wolfgang and Leopold, indicates other birds in Mozart's childhood home:
Thank God we are quite well. I hope that Mamma too is very well. A propos, are the canary, the tomtit
The tomtit (''Petroica macrocephala'') is a small passerine bird in the family Petroicidae
The bird family Petroicidae includes 51 species in 19 genera. All are endemic to Australasia: New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and numerous Pacific ...
s, and the robin redbreast still alive, or have they let the birds starve?[Translation from Emily Anderson (2016) ''The Letters of Mozart and his Family'', new edition updated by Stanley Sadie and Fiona Smart. Springer, p. 263.]
A sad tale from 1791 is told by Mozart's biographer
Hermann Abert
Hermann Abert (; 25 March 1871 – 13 August 1927) was a German historian of music.
Life
Abert was born in Stuttgart, the son of Johann Josef Abert (1832–1915), the ''Hofkapellmeister'' of that city.
From 1890 to 1896 he studied classical ...
, concerning another canary that might been a successor to the starling, being in Mozart's family when the composer lay on his deathbed.
It was with great reluctance that he agreed to have his pet canary removed, first to the adjacent room, then even further away, because he could no longer bear the sound of its singing.
See also
*
List of individual birds
This is a list of well-known real birds. For famous fictional birds, see list of fictional birds.
* Águia Vitória, a bald eagle who serves as the mascot for Portuguese football club S.L. Benfica
* Albert Ross, an albatross believed to have been ...
Notes
References
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{{Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sturnidae
Starling
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The Sturnidae are named for the genus ''Sturnus'', which in turn comes from the Latin word for starling, ''sturnus''. Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, ...
Individual songbirds
Bird sounds