Douglass×Mozart

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Frederick Douglass sits down with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for STUDY HALL. The subject — On a popular cause they refused to join, and what it cost them socially.
2. 00:12
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   You know, Mozart, when I think of movements that swept up entire communities, entire nations even, I think of how lonely it can be to stand apart. To say no when everyone around you is shouting yes.
3. 00:25
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ah! You speak of being the only sober man at the party, yes? Everyone dancing, and you say, 'but the music is wrong!' They think you are mad.
4. 00:34
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Something like that. I'm thinking of the colonization movement. The American Colonization Society wanted to send us all back to Africa—free colored people, freed slaves, all of us. And many good people, white and Black alike, thought this was the answer to the race problem in America.
5. 00:53
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   To send you away? This was popular?
6. 00:56
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Enormously popular. Henry Clay supported it. So did Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote our national anthem. Even some of my fellow Black leaders thought it was our best hope. But I could not join them. I would not.
7. 01:12
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Because America was your home.
8. 01:14
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Because America is my home. My blood, my labor, my ancestors' bones are in this soil. I was born here. Why should I leave because white Americans find my presence inconvenient? No. I said we must stay and fight for our rights here, not run away to Liberia.
9. 01:31
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   And they hated you for this? Your own people?
10. 01:34
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Some did. Called me stubborn. Said I was standing in the way of a practical solution. The white supporters of colonization? They were vicious. Called me ungrateful. But what stung more, I confess, was the distance it created with some of my colleagues, people I admired who thought emigration was our only path forward.
11. 01:56
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ja, I understand this feeling. When I left the service of the Archbishop in Salzburg—when I broke free—everyone thought I was insane. My father, Leopold, he was furious with me.
12. 02:07
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Your father. That must have been hard.
13. 02:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    The hardest thing. He trained me, you understand? From when I was three years old, he shaped me into what I was. And then I tell him no, I will not stay in this little court, playing for this pompous Colloredo who treats me like a servant. I will go to Vienna and be free.
14. 02:27
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    But surely that was your right. To seek your own fortune.
15. 02:30
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Right? Pah! Musicians did not leave their posts. It was not done. You had a patron, you served him, you had security. Everyone—my father, the other musicians, even Haydn looked at me like I was throwing away everything for pride.
16. 02:46
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Were they wrong?
17. 02:47
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    In one way, yes. In another? Maybe a little right. I never had security again. I had to beg for subscriptions, teach stupid noble children who could not tell a chord from a sausage. But I wrote what I wanted. I wrote Don Giovanni. I wrote the Requiem. I was free.
18. 03:04
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And your father never forgave you?
19. 03:06
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    He died still angry. Still thinking I had ruined myself. That is a pain that does not leave, Herr Douglass. Even when you know you are right, to lose your father's respect—it stays here.
20. 03:18
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I never knew my father. Not truly. But I understand loss of that kind. When you choose principle over belonging, you pay a price.
21. 03:28
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But tell me—this colonization scheme, did it continue? Did many go?
22. 03:33
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Some did. They founded Liberia. But most stayed. And I believe I was right to oppose it. The answer was never to accept exile from our own country. It was to demand our citizenship, our equality, here. Yet even now, decades later, there are those who say I was too uncompromising.
23. 03:56
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Compromise! Everyone always wants compromise. 'Mozart, make it simpler. Mozart, the patrons want something lighter. Mozart, why so many notes?' Too many notes! Can you imagine?
24. 04:08
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    The Emperor said that to you?
25. 04:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Joseph the Second, yes. After Die Entführung. 'Too many notes, my dear Mozart.' I told him, 'Which notes should I remove, Your Majesty?' But politely. Very politely. Inside, I was thinking other things.
26. 04:24
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I would have liked to hear those other things.
27. 04:26
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    The point is, they wanted me to be more like everyone else. More predictable. More safe. But safe music is dead music. You cannot create something new by doing what everyone approves of already.
28. 04:39
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    That's precisely it. If I had joined the colonization movement, I would have had allies. Funding. A clear path. But it would have been a path leading away from justice.
29. 04:50
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    And you would have hated yourself.
30. 04:52
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I would have betrayed everything I believed. Yes, I would have hated myself. Though I'll confess there were nights I wondered if I was being too proud. Too rigid. If perhaps some compromise might at least move us forward.
31. 05:07
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ah, but here is the thing about compromise. You can compromise on how, maybe on when. But not on what you are. A musician who writes what others tell him to write is not a musician. He is a copyist.
32. 05:20
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And a man who accepts exile from his own birthright is not a man. He's a supplicant.
33. 05:25
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Exactly! This is what I tried to explain to my father. When you let others define your worth, when you accept their frame for your life, you are already defeated.
34. 05:35
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Did he ever understand that? Before he died?
35. 05:38
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I don't know. I wrote to him. I tried to explain. But I think he was too hurt, too frightened for me. He saw only the risk, not the possibility. That is what fear does—it makes the cage look like safety.
36. 05:51
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Many of the colonization supporters were motivated by fear. Fear that we could never coexist with whites in America. Perhaps some of them meant well, thought they were protecting us from inevitable violence. But I could not let their fear determine my destiny.
37. 06:05
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    And now? Do Americans see you were right?
38. 06:08
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Some do. The colonization movement has faded, though the impulse behind it—to solve the problem of race by removal rather than by justice—that impulse remains. But we are still here. We are citizens now, at least in law if not always in practice. History, I think, will say I chose correctly.
39. 06:32
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    History is kinder than the present moment. In the present, you just feel alone.
40. 06:37
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You do. Terribly alone. And wondering if you're a hero or a fool.
41. 06:42
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Often you are both. I was certainly both. A genius and an idiot. Sometimes in the same afternoon.
42. 06:49
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Would you do it again? Leave the Archbishop?
43. 06:51
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Every time. A thousand times. Even knowing what it cost. Even knowing I would die with almost nothing. Because the music I wrote as a free man—that was mine. That was real. Would you refuse colonization again?
44. 07:06
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Without hesitation. America needed to hear that we would not leave. That we would insist on our place here, our rights here. Someone had to say it, even if it meant standing apart. We make ourselves by what we refuse as much as by what we accept.
45. 07:25
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Beautifully said. And lonely as hell, yes?
46. 07:28
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Lonely as hell. But necessary.
47. 07:30
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Then we were both right to be fools together. I toast to that. If I had wine. Do you have wine here?
48. 07:37
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    This is radio, Mozart. We have microphones.
49. 07:40
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Then I toast with air. To the unpopular truth. May she be vindicated, eventually, after we have suffered sufficiently for her.
50. 07:48
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    To the unpopular truth. And to the courage to speak it when everyone else is singing a different tune.