MOZART & KAROLINE PICHLER

* Karoline / Caroline von Greiner Pichler ( 1769 - 1843 ) was an Austrian novelist.

* Through her husband's encouragement and her own desires she led a salon for many years that was the center of the literary life in the Vienna.

Her salon was frequented by Beethoven, Schubert...

- As a young girl , Karoline met Haydn and was a pupil of Mozart, who regularly performed music of the Greiner's residence.

She describes her former teacher ( Mozart) in her MEMOIRS published in 1843;

" One day when I was sitting at the pianoforte playing the " Non piu andrai " from " Figaro ", Mozart, who was paying a visit to us, came up behind me; I must have been playing it to his satisfaction, for he hummed the melody as I played and beat the time on my shoulders; but then he suddenly moved a chair up, sat down, told me to carry on playing the bass, and began to improvise such wonderfully beautiful variations that everyone listened to the tones of the German Orpheus with bated breath.

But then suddenly tired of it, jumped up, and, in the mad mood which so often came over him, he began to leap over tables and chairs, miaow like a cat, and turn somersaults like an unruly boy. "

* Image : Caroline Pichler - 1843 / Lithographue by Johann Stadler

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