A little fool lies here
Whom I held dear-
A starling in the prime
Of his brief time,
Whose doom it was to drain
Death’s bitter pain.
Thinking of this, my heart
Is riven apart.
These are the words Mozart professed when he buried his beloved pet starling. Having a pet starling seems an unusual choice of companions, but the iconic composer may have been more attached to his bird than some of his own family members.
Mozart and his Starling
The tale of the composer and his bird goes like this… Mozart visited a pet store in Vienna and was introduced to a brilliant European Starling. Starlings, known for their ability to mimic sounds, began mimicking the melody of his Piano Concerto no. 17 in G major. So impressed by this little starling, he purchased the bird on May 27th of 1784. He noted the purchase in an expense book. In addition, he jotted down the bird’s slightly different version of his melody. In his book, he wrote of the bird’s song, “That was beautiful.”
Historians have wondered, though, which really came first? The bird’s song or Mozart’s concerto?
The earliest known performance of the concerto was by a student of Mozart’s on June 13th of that year. Mozart wrote that he completed the melody on April 12th, which would have placed it before he purchased the starling. It’s possible Mozart performed the concerto at an earlier performance, and a shopkeeper taught it to the bird. Or maybe Mozart fell in love with the bird and taught it to the starling before purchasing it. Or perhaps he met the bird who sung the tune earlier that year, then he went and wrote the concerto and later went back to buy the brilliant starling. There’s no way of knowing for sure.
Starlings in the United States
Starlings sometimes get a bad rap for being an invasive bird, but they’re brilliant and social. They were first introduced in the US in the 1890s. Twenty birds were released into Central Park. Currently, more than 200 million starlings now roam the skies from that initial group.
They can be aggressive toward people and are incredibly territorial. Bird watchers love woodpeckers, bluebirds, and others that starlings sometimes scare away. They also cause millions of dollars in damage to crops. Many naturalists consider them to be pests.But Mozart’s relationship with the bird proved to be an impactful one.
If you enjoy learning about famous creatives from history, you may also enjoy reading about Virginia Woolf.
The Death of Mozart’s Father and Starling
On May 28th of 1787, Mozart’s father, Leopold, died. The two suffered a problematic relationship, but Mozart still seemed saddened by the loss. In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “You can imagine the state I am in.” Mozart didn’t, however, attend his father’s funeral. The reasons for which, we can only speculate. It may have been too great a distance to travel or perhaps something else.
To make matters worse, his beloved starling died a week later. He planned an elaborate ceremony to celebrate the bird’s life.
Much of Mozart’s correspondence during those years are lost, so while it’s evident the starling made an impact on him, the extent of it has been left up to scholars’ interpretation.If you’re interested in learning more, naturalist and author Lyanda Lynn Haupt wrote the book Mozart’s Starling. Lyanda adopted a starling to further understand the relationship between humans and birds.
Mozart the Great Mischievous Mimic
Lyanda said in a NPR interview:
“What I didn’t understand was that Mozart himself was a great mimic. Your readers who are into classical music history will know that he could imitate any musical style. But he also liked to mimic people for fun, you know; at parties, he would mimic the emperor. So Mozart himself was very mischievous, very clever, with kind of an eccentric personality. And so we also see in the elegy he wrote for his pet that he had a deep understanding of the starling’s personality, its friendliness, its foolishness.”
Mozart’s Musical Joke, written shortly after the starling’s death, is an uncontrolled piece of music akin to a starling’s natural melodies. Perhaps this piece was written as a comical tribute to his pet.
As a bird watcher myself, I found this little, nearly lost piece of history fascinating. I do not have any hard feelings about starlings, despite their reputation. A starling cannot help it was born a starling, neither should it want to. Its purpose and place belong to nature, and nature will do what it will with that. I believe it’s for us to appreciate and learn from all the creatures with which we share the world.
