[Reverb Effect’s theme music, lively and interrogative, plays behind the voice of a narrator, interspersed with historical clips of other voices]
Narrator [a woman’s voice]: How do past voices resonate in the present moment?
Man A: …hear the stories of your parent’s…
Woman A: yeah
Man A: …and your grandparents’ and stuff, so I’m living through them or the stories they told.
Narrator: And how do we make sense of those voices?
Woman B: No, and that’s the story of my life [echo]
Man B: And a case has been made!
Woman B: No I am not trying to void the question, I am trying to clarify the position…
Narrator: What were they trying to say? And whose job is it to find out? This is Reverb Effect.
[Intro theme slowly fades out]
Paige Newhouse: Waiting for a job interview. It is something that nearly all of us experience: the anxiety, the anticipation, the hope, and the excitement that maybe we will enter a new phase of our lives. For some, the stakes are even higher: the new job might help pay student loans or maybe it provides top-notch healthcare. Perhaps we receive a text for good luck from a partner or parent, or listen to music to calm our nerves. Maybe we look over our cover letters and resumes one last time. Imagine Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the most famous composers of all time, waiting for a job interview. What would Mozart do in this situation? Who would he talk to? What would his surroundings look like? How would he handle the wait?
In the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart, and many others, frequently found themselves waiting and encountering in an antechamber, a small room leading into a larger space. Helmut Puff has written a book on waiting – or at least the history of waiting in antechambers. His 2023 publication, The Antechamber, published by Stanford University Press, turns to time, space, and encounters. Reflecting on the past, Puff encourages us to think more deeply about what waiting means, who waits, how it shapes our society and culture, and how it defines our social interactions.
Welcome to Season 5 of Reverb Effect, a podcast brought to you by the History Department at the University of Michigan. I’m Paige Newhouse, this year’s season producer. In this episode, Helmut Puff shares a story about Mozart waiting for a meeting with Duke Max Joseph. Puff is the Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Collegiate Professor of History and Germanic Languages here at the University of Michigan.
[A table clock chimes; we hear the heels of someone walking, unevenly, impatiently. The clock keeps ticking away but the sound is fading]
Helmut Puff: Most of us know the experience of being stuck somewhere for some time, be it a lawyer’s office or a doctor’s waiting room, an agency where we hope to sort out some paperwork or a corridor before a job interview. What do these waits have in common? How do the contexts of our waits matter? Migrants waiting for a travel document. Lovers awaiting their beloved. Patients hoping for a diagnosis. Parents expecting a child. While often fleeting, the experience of waiting is omnipresent. Waiting orients waiters toward a future they can imagine.
Practically all of us know the experience. But most of us have rarely thought about in-between times. If asked, people state they dread these interstitial moments when we cannot yet do what we need or want to. Such sentiments notwithstanding, waiting allows us to evaluate the goods, services, or news we hope or dread to receive as well as the institutions where we are waiting. Yet the mixed emotions waiting evokes is also what makes waiting such a rich and rewarding subject to reflect on.
Why do we wait? Why do others have us wait? What are our states of mind while waiting? Such questions are especially poignant when we want to know how people may have experienced in-between times in the past. Have people always approached waiting with the tedium it usually conjures up in our own age?
Truth be told, as difficult as it is to know what it means to wait today, it is even more difficult to sound out waiting in history. Most written records document what is said to have happened. The text of a treaty, to pick an example, lists the stipulations different parties agreed upon. Yet the processes, negotiations, and sentiments that led to their formulation are not necessarily evident from what we have; they often elude our grasp. What may it have meant to wait in the past?
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. String Quartet No. 3 in G Major K. 156 (134B): 3. Tempo di Minuetto, excerpt
Helmut Puff: On Tuesday, September 30, 1777, the composer Wolfgang Amadé Mozart awaited Duke Maximilian III Joseph, the ruler of Bavaria. Their meeting constitutes one of the rare cases where we know the space where a wait took place, the time spans involved, as well as what may have been said. The fact that the duke was himself a musician and composer, did not undo the social gulf that separated them. The status differential at play can be measured in Mozart’s difficulties in bringing about a meeting. The time he was made to linger was part and parcel of the ways in which members of the elites in the old regime projected their power and authority. The greater the difference of rank, the less one knew whether one would be able to meet the other or how long one would have to wait. Yet while status had to be constantly re-asserted, the privileged in eighteenth-century Europe were also expected to show themselves generous. Members of the elites therefore held regular hours when they received others below their station.
Munich, where our episode takes place, was one of the largest political centers in the German lands. Over the course of the eighteenth century, this court experienced considerable growth. The enormous building where the duke, his household, and his staff resided, the Residenz, was a forum for both politics and sociability. With their festivities and rituals, courts were semipublic spaces; and music played an important role in aristocratic self-fashioning.
In the eighteenth century, palaces such as Munich Residenz, featured rooms designated for waiters like Mozart. They were known as antechambers. The word’s prefix derives from the Latin ante, meaning “in front of,” “before,” or “next to.” Such a space ordered the flow of people in multi-room buildings, protecting residents from unwanted intrusions as well as allowing them or their staff to control visitors’ access. Antespaces thus amounted to something like thresholds: a room where people halted before moving on. Such spaces helped organize and thus shaped encounters between people.
What were these rooms like? How did their furnishings accommodate waiters? Which messages did these rooms impart on those who waited? Through their size, décor, furniture, and other similar features, such rooms signaled profusely.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. String Quartet No. 3 in G Major K. 156 (134B): 3. Tempo di Minuetto, excerpt]
Helmut Puff: What brought Mozart to the duke’s antechamber? After having been let go by his former employer, the archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart left his hometown on September 22, 1777, to seek a new post. Since Mozarts’ father, Leopold, was indispensable, he delegated his wife, Anna Maria, to accompany the twenty-one year old composer. Having never traveled together without the household head, the odd mother-son team felt a whiff of freedom, as their letters show.
During a mission of the greatest importance for the family’s prosperity, reports from the road and frequent advice from home connected the travelers with Leopold, Mozart’s sister Nannerl, and the family dog Pimperl. [A dog barking.] These familial missives circumscribe a wide emotional landscape. They have frequently been mined for the psychology of the Mozarts. For our purposes, we can read these same letters for what they reveal about waiting at court in the eighteenth century.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Fantasia No. 3 in D minor, K. 397, excerpt]
Helmut Puff: Why aim for an in-person encounter with the duke? The much desired audience passed as an “opportunity,” as Leopold Mozart claimed. For a musician, the meeting with a potential employer figured as an occasion to demonstrate one’s skills.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart states in one of the letters from Munich: “He [the elector] knows nothing of me. He does not know what I am capable of …”
Helmut Puff: Will Mozart be lucky and turn around his fate?
The week after their arrival, the Mozarts socialized extensively in Munich. Mozart collected information about the theater, the orchestra, and performances. But these exchanges weren’t exclusively about fact-gathering. They created a buzz about the composer’s stay in town. In the two days after their arrival, mother and son interacted with at least 19 people, some among them several times:
Anna Maria Mozart writes: “The whole day we have [received and paid] visits … How things will go with us we must wait and see, we have indeed many good friends here who would like to see us remaining here,”
Helmut Puff: During these conversations, Mozart entrusted others with the task of abetting his quest for a meeting and a position. Doing so maximized his chances of success. He asked people to speak in his favor, or, if necessary, to defend him against detractors. Once trusted interlocutors had agreed to put in a word, there was no guarantee that these “friends” would follow through. For such “friends” found themselves in a position similar to the one Mozart was in. Even if they were close to the ruler, they needed to wait for the right moment to speak. By contrast, a person of high rank would have more direct access, and might write a letter or seek an unsolicited conversation on a particular matter, as did one aristocrat on Mozart’s behalf – but to no avail.
Leopold Mozart: “One must make friends of all people,”
Helmut Puff: This is Leopold reminding his son that he comport himself in a servile manner, perform uncompensated labor, and tell everyone what they wanted to hear. For his part, Wolfgang Amadeus relied on his exquisite talents and considerable charms to solicit support. Be that as it may, the open-endedness of one’s efforts when working toward a hearing with the duke depended on committing considerable amounts of time and effort. Anxiousness was part and parcel of living in the anticipatory mode that is the waiter’s condition.
Helmut Puff: Another informant, Count Joseph Anton von Seeau, director of the court theater and a theatrical entrepreneur, advised Mozart on how best to win over the duke for his plan:
Count Joseph Anton von Seeau: “request an audience with His Electoral Highness.”
Helmut Puff: If Mozart
Count Joseph Anton von Seeau: “were not granted a hearing” [he] “should simply present [his] case in writing.”
Helmut Puff: This was straightforward enough, though it was a comment so general that it could have been issued by anyone with some knowledge of courtly affairs.
In addition to the words proffered, the gestures of one’s interlocutors in such a quest had to be scrutinized. Observations on demeanor, gestures, and similar such details permitted one to calculate the likelihood of advancing one’s plan. Every exchange was parsed as a portent. Words did not suffice; embodied affirmation was what supplicants were on the lookout for. This reflects a basic truth about conversations with courtiers: minutiae regarding comportment, space, timing, and medium of communication passed as indicators of one’s prospects. Thus viewed, the court resembled a thicket of signs. Reassurances were hard to come by. After all, whether one would be granted an audience in the end was uncertain.
Mozart’s letters give a blow-by-blow account of the efforts to advance his cause. Whether he exaggerated or not, he surely intended to convey to his vigilant father that he and his mother approached the task at hand, securing employment, with the utmost earnestness. It is important to acknowledge the group effort here. His family participated, as did their friends. Nevertheless, the exact course of action remained murky. What was the appropriate amount of time to invest? After several days, doubts were certain to arise. Mozart was bound to encounter hesitations, reservations, obstacles, and the like, since the decision about employment rested with the duke alone.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Fantasia No. 3 in D minor, K. 397, excerpt]
Helmut Puff: Not surprisingly, during his days in Munich, Mozart’s mood darkened somewhat. Initially, Mozart approached what others—prominently among them his father—understood to be an ambitious plan with confidence. In his messages from the road, he joked profusely. Yet the longer the mission lasted, the more difficult it was to uphold unmitigated optimism. Neither actual results nor an audience or the prospect of one could be cited. To be sure, this was the nature of such a mission. Everything hinged on the moment. A level-headed approach to the task at hand would have taken these challenges into account. But this was not simply about a person’s understanding of the situation they found themselves in. The often drawn-out uncertainty was a structural feature of interacting at court.
After almost a week had passed, the much anticipated “audience” with the duke materialized. This was so because one person intervened on his behalf: an attempt to save a mission whose momentum was at risk of flagging. This person was Franz Xaver Wotschitka, one of the many in the service of the duke as well as a member of a circle of music lovers who appreciated Mozart’s gifts. He told Mozart to report the following morning in the ducal residence.
When Mozart showed up the next day, a ducal servant welcomed him. Having waited a while in one of the grander antechambers, he was led into another one
[door opening and closing, steps]
Helmut Puff: Time and space had been allotted to accommodate the ruler’s schedule on this particular morning when Duke Max Joseph was planning to go on a hunt after mass. This was Mozart’s chance.
If he was made to wait in the first of two antechambers in the so-called elector’s wing of the Munich Residenz, then this was so because the second one was reserved for people of station and dignitaries. In general, the closer these spaces were to the inner chambers of the ruler, the more exquisite they were.
The passage of time and the destruction of the palace during the second world war means we don’t know exactly how this room looked like in Mozart’s time. But we can draw some conclusion from undated pre-war photographs.
We see a timepiece on a table which, if it was sitting there in the eighteenth century, enabled the one who waited to gauge the time spent.
[A clock ticking in the distance.]
Helmut Puff: Checking the time on a pocket watch (of which Mozart owned several) was fashionable in the eighteenth century. So was the China-themed French tapestry that adorned one wall, which depicted the German Jesuit and astronomer Adam Schall in a somewhat fantastical Chinese court attire in the midst of other experts, talking to an Emperor. To be sure, Enlightenment Europe abused the much admired Chinese court as an exotic mirror. Yet the interaction between an expert and a ruler also resonated with the function this anteroom had. After all, Mozart was an expert musician in search of employment at court. Would he have had time to notice this detail?
Helmut Puff: The overall wait time was moderate in Mozart’s case. In the eighteenth century, a wait of more than two hours would have been considered excessive. Here everything had been well prepared. Mozart waited less than an hour. Yet the all-important meeting with the duke turned out to be a conversation in passing.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Fantasia No. 3 in D minor, K. 397, excerpt]
Helmut Puff: Mozart offered his services to the elector with politeness, deference, and references to his credentials: three voyages to Italy; membership in the Bologna Academy; and three operas. This information reminded Max Joseph that the twenty-one year old Mozart had acquired Europe-wide recognition at a young age. These verbal overtures with their “mixture of cocksureness and pretended servility,” as one biographer puts it, were met with the elector’s curt repartees. Max Joseph was interested in hearing details about the composer’s departure from his Salzburg post. He also addressed the twenty-one year old as a child and as young. If Mozart’s version of events is to be trusted, the duke’s response contained signs that prudence was called for; the composer duly ignored them. Throwing all caution into the wind, Mozart proceeded to use his time well which he knew would be short. He made his desire for a post explicit:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “My only wish … is to serve Your Elect. Highn. …”
Helmut Puff: Mozart’s overture left the duke little choice but to address the composer’s request for a job directly. Interrupting Mozart, Max Joseph stated that there was no vacancy at court.
Duke Max Joseph: es ist keine vacatur da … es ist keine vacatur da … es ist keine vacatur da … es ist keine vacatur da …
Helmut Puff: This sentence he uttered repeatedly, even after Mozart reassured him that he was sure to bring “honor” to Munich and again as the duke left the antechamber.
Mozart staked everything on one card. It may not have been the best strategy. But it was a response to the scarcities of time, money, as well as his precarious social status.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Fantasia No. 3 in D minor, K. 397. excerpt]
Helmut Puff: After the encounter with Max Joseph failed to generate the desired outcome, a barrage of emotions broke forth in Mozart, as the letters have it. There were good friends and bad friends, he stated, or as Leopold recast the formula, friends and enemies. Not that it was easy to identify who belonged to the latter group. This precisely was the challenge of life at court where most everyone interacted cavalierly. Such enemies were “secret,” a generality which Leopold offered about the court as a cesspit—a widely held opinion about them at the time.
This failure to achieve what he was after meant that he had to travel to other places to find employment—a trip that lasted more than a year. In the process, Mozart came to dread waiting. This sentiment was not atypical for this period. In Enlightenment Europe, work of whatever kind solicited praise. By contrast, idleness became subject to philosophical, political, and other forms of critique.
In 1786, Mozart finally settled the score. At the pinnacle of his fame, Mozart composed The Marriage of Figaro, an opera that offered a trenchant critique of aristocratic politics of time. Based on the 1784 scandalous and frequently censored play by the French dramatist Beaumarchais, this “musical comedy” takes a count to task for scheming to delay the marriage of two of his subordinates because he had cast an eye on one of them, the servant Susanna. Ultimately, through ingenious acts and confounding reversals, they got what they wanted and succeeded to marry, without further delay.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Marriage of Figaro: Overture, excerpt
Helmut Puff: The historical sociologist Norbert Elias speaks of the composer’s “one-man revolution” against the status of a court musician, and cites Mozart’s experience in the Munich antechamber as evidence. I agree with Elias that the Mozarts may not have fully understood court society, even though the wunderkind and his family had gotten to know many a court over the years. Yet this predicament was shared by many.
What if Mozart had been successful? Likely, he still would have spent time waiting in antechambers. His fellow composer and later friend, Joseph Haydn, secured a post with another music enthusiast, Prince Paul II Anton Esterházy de Galántha. His employer specified that the composer had to show up daily to receive instructions about whether and what kind of a musical performance the prince had in mind for the day.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. String Quartet No. 3 in G Major, K. 156 (134b): 3. Tempo di Minuetto, excerpt]
Helmut Puff: Imposing waits and having to wait is a condition that warrants our attention. Waiting was and is imbricated with plans, dreams, visions, fantasies, as well as scenarios of subjection, and therefore it is meaningful. Waiting has much to tell us about who we are, what we value, and how we interact. Importantly, waiting was and is a physical-mental condition not of the waiter’s own choosing. In the antechambers of old regime Europe waiting helped sustain social hierarchies. Interpersonal waiting also was about the conundrum of mutual obligations in societies of people cast as unequal. As participants in asymmetrical scripts, waiters and those who had people wait, co-produced authority, power, and the like.
Since the eighteenth century, waiting’s status has sunk considerably. Increasingly, the antechamber became identified with the opposite of good rule: anathema to the rights of free citizens as a collective of equals. In this context, antechamber became a word in the German language. “To antechamber” designates pursuing one’s designs in the halls of the high and mighty. The verb is suggestive of scheming, fawning, boot-licking, and idling. Nineteenth-century writers saw antichambrieren as the residuum of a past that should long have vanished.
Conversely, the term civil society has us imagine a politics of equals without antichambers. Still, the antechamber as a technology of power lives on. In the centers of decision-making, diplomats, businessmen, associates, and others wait for appointments, whether in Addis Ababa, Beijing, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Moscow, or Washington. President Vladimir Putin of Russia makes ambassadors wait, sometimes for hours on end. Occasionally, he extends or cuts short the wait for the appointment or the appointment itself, according to his gusto.
These days the preeminent form of waiting is not about encounters with another, as in Mozart’s case; it is waiting for services or products. The digital age has been heralded as a world where everything will only be a mouse-click away. Now that most of us no longer use a mouse, we still are waiting for the fulfillment of such visions of immediate gratification, general inclusiveness, or widespread accessibility. As a result, waiting is relegated to the space where corporations or individuals do not “own” it.
But is waiting’s demise imminent? If one can trust the presence of the theme in recent years, the opposite is true. During the height of the covid pandemic, different types of wait intersected to trigger a resurgent awareness of interstitial temporalities. We were waiting for information; we were waiting for news from family and friends; we were waiting for food and other deliveries; we were waiting for vaccinations; we were waiting for lockdowns or home office to end. The end of waiting is not in sight.
When you are waiting in the future, you will, I hope, remember that waiting is key to many an interaction, in history and today. Waiting with Mozart in mind means waiting differently.
[Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. String Quartet No. 3 in G Major, K. 156 (134b): 3. Tempo di Minuetto, excerpt]
Paige Newhouse: Thank you for listening. Thank you to Helmut Puff for producing this episode. Thank you to our voice actors, Lucas Chalhoub, Himani Boompally, W. Forrest Holden and Jackie Lauer.
Our editorial board is Amir Marshi, Ennrieth Martinez Palacios, Talitha Pam, Cheyenne Pettit, and Sophie Wunderlich. Gregory Parker is our executive producer, and I’m your host and season producer, Paige Newhouse.
Please join us for our next episode, for more stories about how the past reverberates into the present. This is Reverb Effect.
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