Georg Nikolaus von Nissen
Encyclopedia
Haderslev
Haderslev is a town and municipality on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula in south Denmark. Also included is the island of Årø as well as several other smaller islands in the Little Belt. The municipality covers and has a population of 56,414 . Its mayor is Jens Christian Gjesing,...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
– March 24, 1826 in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
) was a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
and music historian
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
. He is remembered as the author of one of the first biographies of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, still used today as a scholarly source on the life of this composer.
Life
Nissen completed his schooling in 1781 and became "authorized agent of the General Post Office" in CopenhagenCopenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
in 1781. In 1792 he became a diplomat in the Danish foreign service. As of 1793, he worked in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
as chargé d'affaires
Chargé d'affaires
In diplomacy, chargé d’affaires , often shortened to simply chargé, is the title of two classes of diplomatic agents who head a diplomatic mission, either on a temporary basis or when no more senior diplomat has been accredited.-Chargés d’affaires:Chargés d’affaires , who were...
.
In 1797, while serving in this post, Nissen first met Mozart's widow Constanze
Constanze Mozart
Constanze Mozart was the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.-Early years:Constanze Weber was born in Zell im Wiesental. Her mother was Cäcilia Weber, née Stamm. Her father Fridolin Weber worked as a "double bass player, prompter and music copyist." Fridolin's half-brother was the father of composer...
, whose husband had died six years earlier in 1791. He was initially her tenant. The two began living together in September 1798.
Constanze had been through an arduous period following Mozart's death, trying to ward off poverty for herself and her two sons. In this she was successful, obtaining a pension from the Emperor, and making considerable money from concerts of Mozart's music and sale to publishers of his works in manuscript. Nissen came to participate in these labors, taking over much of the work of negotiating with publishers. He also helped care for the children, eventually taking (in Ruth Halliwell's words) "the role of a caring father" in the family.
Nissen and Constanze were married in 1809. The marriage did not produce any children.
In 1812 the couple moved to Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, where Nissen took up a post as a censor. They dwelt there until 1820, at Lavendelstræde 1, a street where many houses of the period are still preserved.
In 1820, Nissen retired, and the couple moved to Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
. Nissen had long been planning a biography of Mozart, and the work began seriously in 1823. Nissen benefited greatly when Mozart's now-elderly older sister Nannerl
Maria Anna Mozart
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart , nicknamed "Nannerl", was a musician, the older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and daughter of Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart.-Childhood:...
gave him and Constanze a collection of about 400 Mozart family letters. He worked assiduously to assemble all the biographical material he could, including interviews with still living people who had known the composer.
Unfortunately, the collection of the material was still in progress when Nissen died, 24 March 1826. Only the incomplete Preface can be fully attributed to Nissen himself. The completion of the work, based on his notes, was left to a medical doctor and Mozart enthusiast living in Pirna
Pirna
Pirna is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 40,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a Große Kreisstadt...
, Johann Heinrich Feuerstein (1797–1850). Angermüller and Stafford (cited below) call Feuerstein "unstable," and Halliwell judges his work thus: "the book was cobbled together in a haphazard fashion from the raw material, and the result was disastrous in terms of quality." Angermüller and Stafford similarly call the work "problematic", adding that "large sections are taken from earlier accounts, often of dubious reliability, and it contains contradictions and errors. The letters it quotes were selected and censored." These authors leave open the question of whether it was Nissen or Feuerstein who is to blame.
The biography was published posthumously in 1829, titled Biographie W. A. Mozart's. Nach Originalbriefen, Sammlungen alles über ihn Geschriebenen, mit vielen neuen Beylagen, Steindrücken, Musikblättern und einem Facsimile.
Nissen's biography of Mozart
Nissen's work attempted to achieve a compromise between NiemetschekFranz Xaver Niemetschek
Franz Xaver Niemetschek was a Czech philosopher, teacher and music critic. He wrote the first full-length biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which has remained an important source of information about the composer.-Life:Niemetschek came from a large, musical family...
's and Schlichtegroll
Friedrich Schlichtegroll
Adolf Heinrich Friedrich Schlichtegroll was a teacher, scholar and the first biographer of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His brief account of Mozart's life was published in a volume of twelve obituaries Schlichtegroll prepared and called Nekrolog auf das Jahr 1791...
's point of view. He attempted to document everything that had been written about Mozart so far and to deliver an accurate description of Mozart's life based on primary sources, namely the letters of the Mozart family. Also, he had a direct witness as a source, his wife Constanze Mozart, who committed Mozart's inheritance to him.
Nissen deserves credit most of all for his efforts to collect all documents concerning Mozart, starting with the Mozart family's letters and including commemorative coins and monuments. Admittedly, he treated the written sources rather generously and edited some passages, especially from Mozart's letters. (For one instance of Nissen's bowdlerizations, see Aloysia Weber
Aloysia Weber
Maria Aloysia Louise Antonia Weber was a German soprano, remembered primarily for her association with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.-Biography:...
.) However, he did so not to deform Mozart's image, but because of "biographical respect". In the foreword to his biography he explains:
- There is a need for a lot of selection to extract something attractive and characteristic in the letters, which can be offered to the public, without harming the fame and the esteem of the name-human. ... One desires not to, one must not show one's hero publicly in the way in which he portrayed himself in evenings of familiarity. By all truth, one can harm his fame, his esteem, and the impression of his works.
Later biographers often attempted to revert Nissen's "biographic respect", not because of disrespect for Mozart, but for the sake of scholarly accuracy.
Another possible source of inaccuracy in the biography is Constanze. According to Maynard Solomon
Maynard Solomon
Maynard Solomon has carried out a multiple career: he was a co-founder of Vanguard Records as well as a music producer, and later became a writer on music.-Career in the recording industry:...
, she "had developed an interest in exaggerating Mozart's generosity, poverty, and lack of recognition, and so, in Nissen's biography, she validated many false reports--primarily those originating with [publisher] Friedrich Rochlitz--bearing on such matters, including those alleging that he was taken advantage of by impresarios, publishers, and fellow musicians."