Constanze Mozart

Snapshot

Mozart’s wife. Daughter of Fridolin Weber. Sister of Aloysia, who was Mozart’s first love. Married Wolfgang in Vienna in 1782. After his death, spent decades securing his legacy, his manuscripts, and his reputation. Died in Salzburg in 1842. Buried at Sebastiansfriedhof.

The Story

Constanze Weber grew up in a musical household. Her father Fridolin was a violinist and copyist; her sister Aloysia was the soprano Mozart fell for first, in Mannheim in 1778. By the time Constanze married Wolfgang in Vienna in 1782, she was the third Weber daughter to enter his orbit. Leopold opposed the match and demanded a written pledge before consenting.

Their marriage was brief. Mozart died in December 1791, leaving debts and six children, two of whom survived. Within days of his death, Constanze was already moving. She petitioned Emperor Leopold II for a pension, organised memorial concerts with Haydn and Salieri, and began managing the manuscripts Mozart left behind. She refused quick sales to publishers, held out for fair prices, and used the proceeds to pay debts and fund her children’s education.

What the early biographers missed, or ignored, was how much of Mozart’s legacy survives because of her. She arranged for Franz Xaver Sussmayr to complete the Requiem. She organised a concert tour in 1795 and 1796, singing the soprano parts herself alongside her sister Aloysia. She sold the manuscript collection to publisher André in 1799 for a considered price, not a fire sale. And she co-authored, with her second husband Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, the first serious Mozart biography, published in Leipzig in 1828.

Constanze returned to Salzburg in her later years and died there in 1842, having outlived Wolfgang by fifty years. She is buried at St. Sebastian’s Cemetery beside Nissen.