Josef Mysliveček (9 March 1737 – 4 February 1781) was a Czech composer. He contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music. Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant compositional models in the genres of symphony, Italian serious opera, and violin concerto; both Wolfgang and his father Leopold Mozart considered him an intimate friend from the time of their first meetings in Bologna in 1770 until he betrayed their trust over the promise of an operatic commission for Wolfgang to be arranged with the management of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. His closeness to the Mozart family resulted in frequent references to him in the Mozart correspondence.
Biography
Mysliveček was born in Prague, one of twin sons of a prosperous mill owner, and studied philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University before following in the footsteps of his father.A comprehensive treatment of Mysliveček's life and works is found in Daniel E. Freeman, Josef Mysliveček, "Il Boemo" (Minneapolis: Calumet Editions, 2022) . No documentation exists to support claims that he was actually born in Horní Šárka, a rural district to the north and west of Prague in the early eighteenth century.The background of the Mysliveček family of millers in the Prague region and the circumstances of the composer's birth are documented in Freeman (2022), 9-13, with many references to findings reported in Jaroslav Čeleda, Josef Mysliveček, Prague 1946, a biography mainly devoted to the composer's roots in the city of Prague. He achieved the rank of master miller in 1761 but gave up the family profession in order to pursue musical studies. In Prague, he studied composition with Franz Johann Habermann and Josef Seger in the early 1760s.The events of Mysliveček's youth and early adulthood are documented in Freeman (2022), 13-25. His ambitions led him to travel to Venice in 1763 to study with Giovanni Battista Pescetti.The date of Mysliveček's departure from Prague and study with Pescetti are recorded in the first biography of the composer, František Martin Pelcl, "Joseph Misliweczek: ein Tonkünstler", Abbildungen bömischer und mährischer Gelehrter und Künstler, Vol. 4, Prague 1782, 189-92. A transcription and translation of Pelcl's biography is provided in Freeman (2022), 565-69. His travel to Italy was subsidized in part from family wealth, in part from the Bohemian nobleman Vincenz von Waldstein. In Italy he became known as Il Boemo ("the Bohemian") and also Venatorino ("the little hunter"), a literal translation of his name. Reports that he was known as Il divino Boemo ("the Divine Bohemian") during his lifetime are false.Freeman (2022), 100. The nickname originated from the title of a romanetto about the composer by Jakub Arbes that was first published in 1884. He was made a member of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna in 1771.The peak of Mysliveček's professional success in Italy in the period 1768-1776 (of which one of the greatest achievements was his admittance into the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna under the sponsorship of Giovanni Battista Martini) are detailed in Freeman (2022), 45-66. Mysliveček prized freedom of movement and was never employed directly by any noble, prelate, or ruler, unlike most of his contemporaries. He earned his living through teaching, performing, and composing music, and frequently received gratuities from wealthy admirers.Pelcl (1782), 190-92.
After his arrival in Italy in 1763, Mysliveček never left the country except for a visit to Prague in 1768, a short visit to Vienna in 1772,Charles Burney reported Mysliveček's presence in Vienna in September 1772 in his The Present State of Music in Germany, The Netherlands and United Provinces, Vol. 1, London, 1773, 364-65. and an extended stay in Munich between December 1776 and April 1778.Freeman (2022), 42-44, 57-58, 67-85. His return to Prague led to the production of several of his operas. He was invited to Munich by the musical establishment of the Elector Maximilian III Joseph to compose an opera for the carnival season of 1777 (Ezio).
Mysliveček's first opera, Semiramide, was performed at Bergamo in 1766 (there is no evidence that a putative production at Parma of an opera titled Medea ever took place).Mysliveček's operas are discussed in detail in Freeman (2022), 135-213. His Il Bellerofonte was a great success in Naples after its first performance at the Teatro di San Carlo on 20 January 1767, and it led to a number of commissions from Italian theaters. Ever after, his productions would almost always feature first-rate singers in the leading roles. Almost all of his operas were successful until a disastrous production of Armida that took place at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan for the carnival season of 1780. One of the many honors that came to him for his talents as a composer of opera was a commission to provide the music for the opening of a new opera theater in Pavia in 1773 (his first setting of Metastasio's libretto Demetrio).A collection of essays centered around the Pavia performance of Mysliveček's Demetrio of 1773 is found in Mariateresa Dellaborra, ed., "Il ciel non soffre inganni": Attorno al Demetrio di Mysliveček, "Il Boemo" (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2011).
Other than a reputation for promiscuity recorded in the Mozart correspondence,Harsh insinuations about Mysliveček's sex life expressed by Leopold Mozart and Wolfgang's explicit condemnation of his womanizing in a letter to his father of 22 February 1778 are discussed in Freeman (2022), 71-79 and 82-83. nothing is known of Mysliveček's love life. The composer never married, and no names of lovers are recorded. There is no documentation to support reports of romantic liaisons with the singers Caterina Gabrielli and Lucrezia Aguiari; no mention of love affairs with these singers pre-dates the publication of the fifth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1954).These putative love affairs are mentioned only in the article about Mysliveček in the Grove Dictionary of 1954; the articles devoted to Gabrielli and Aguiari make no mention of them at all.
Financially irresponsible throughout his life, he died destitute in Rome in 1781. He is buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where a memorial placed by latter-day Czech admirers can be seen. No trace has ever been found of a memorial in marble supposedly erected shortly after his death by James Hugh Smith Barry, a wealthy English student of Mysliveček who paid for his funeral expenses.The circumstances of Mysliveček's death were originally described in Pelcl (1782), 191-92. A greatly expanded summary is found in Freeman (2022), 94-98.
Relationship with Mozart Mysliveček first met Mozart in March 1770 in Bologna, as confirmed in the Reisenotizen (travel notes) of his father Leopold.These are translated in Emily Anderson, ed., The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985) , along with all of the correspondence with the Mozart family known to the translator as of the time of the publication in 1938 of the first edition of her collection. At the time, Mozart was only 14 years old. Soon after, Mysliveček became one of the composers most frequently mentioned in the Mozart family correspondence.All 28 of the letters in the Mozart correspondence that mention Mysliveček are collected and transcribed with commentary in Bohuslav Bohadlo, Josef Mysliveček v dopisech, Brno 1988. The only composers in the Mozart correspondence mentioned more frequently than Mysliveček were members of the Salzburg court music establishment, for example Michael Haydn, with whom Wolfgang and his father Leopold had daily contact over periods of many years. Mysliveček encountered Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart during all three of their trips to Italy between 1770 and 1773 and were especially close during the first one.Many insights into Mysliveček's rapport with the Mozart family during their trips to Italy are presented in Giuseppe Rausa, "Mysliveček e Mozart: stranieri in Italia," in Il ciel non soffre inganni (2011), 45-82. Throughout this period of acquaintance, the Mozarts found Mysliveček's dynamic personality irresistible. Sadly, contacts were broken off in 1778 after Mysliveček failed to make good on a promise to arrange an opera commission for Mozart at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.
Many important details about Mysliveček's character traits and personal affairs are found in a letter of Wolfgang Mozart to his father written in Munich on 11 October 1777, which documents the aftermath of an operation performed by an incompetent surgeon that resulted in Mysliveček's nose being burned off as part of treatment for a mysterious chronic illness.The letter of 11 October 1777 that confirms Mysliveček's facial disfigurement is translated in Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 302-6, and is discussed in Freeman, Josef Mysliveček, 73-78. A letter of Leopold Mozart to his son of 1 October 1777 refers to the illness as something shameful for which Mysliveček was deserving of social ostracism. Mysliveček's reputation for sexual promiscuity, Leopold's insinuations, and the reference to facial disfigurement in Wolfgang's letter all suggest symptoms of tertiary syphilis. Mysliveček's explanation for his condition to Wolfgang – bone cancer caused by a carriage accident — seems preposterous. The concern Mozart revealed to his father at this time for Mysliveček's sufferings was very touching indeed. In the entire Mozart correspondence, no individual outside the Mozart family was ever the cause for as much outpouring of emotion as what is found in Wolfgang's description of his visit to Mysliveček at a hospital in Munich:When he came up to me, I took him by his hand and he took mine, in friendship. "Just look," he said, "how unfortunate I am!" His words and his appearance...touched me so deeply that I couldn't say anything, except, half crying: "My dear friend, I feel for you with all my heart." If it were not for his face, he would be the same old Mysliveček, full of fire, spirit and life, a little thin, of course, but otherwise the same excellent cheerful fellow.Quoted by Wakin (2007).
Mozart's mother, who was in Munich accompanying her son on a lengthy trip through Europe in search of musical employment, met Mysliveček for the first time and completely fell under his spell, totally convinced of his devotion to her son and the progress of his musical career. Neither she nor Wolfgang would ever see him again.
Throughout his career as a composer, Mozart made a habit of picking up melodic ideas from other composers to enrich his own creations, thus it is only natural that he used Mysliveček's works as a source of motivic material. At the time of their first meeting in 1770, the most significant use of such borrowings is found in Mozart's opera Mitridate, re di Ponto, of 1770, the first of the composer's three operas written for Milan. It was only natural for Mozart to turn to the work of a more experienced (and quite successful) composer whose company both he and his father had found irresistibly agreeable, as a model for compositional procedures and melodic style. It was Mysliveček's opera La Nitteti, which had been performed in the spring of 1770 in Bologna, where the two originally met, that offered considerable guidance in how to produce an opera in serious style that would appeal to Italians.A detailed discussion of this episode in Mozart's life is provided in Freeman (2022), 297-309. The most obvious uses of Mysliveček's music from La Nitteti as a source of inspiration in Mozart's Mitridate are found in its overture, its opening aria, “Al destin, che la minaccia” (based on the opening aria of Mysliveček's La Nitteti, “Sono in mar”), and the aria “Lungi da te,” which is closely based on Mysliveček's aria “Se la cagion saprete” from Act II of La Nitteti.