Mozart's Starling

by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Mozart kept a pet starling. I can’t even remember where I read that in my ornithological studies—it is one of those arcane little details recorded here and there, usually without substantiation. I repeated it myself in my first book, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds. Later, I was reading Jim Lynch’s lovely novel Border Songs and discovered that one of his characters mentioned it. When I asked Lynch where he’d heard about Mozart’s starling, he told me, “I read it in your book.” Oh, dear! I began to worry that I’d been spreading an apocryphal story, but further research assured me that the tale was true. Mozart discovered the starling in a Vienna pet shop, where the bird had somehow learned to sing the motif from his newest piano concerto. Enchanted, he bought the bird for a few kreuzer and kept it for three years before it died. Just how the starling learned Mozart’s motif is a wonderful musico-ornithological mystery. But there is one thing we know for certain: Mozart loved his starling. Recent examination of his work during and after the period he lived with the bird shows that the starling influenced his music and, I believe, at least one of the opera world’s favorite characters. The starling was in turn his companion, distraction, consolation, and muse. When his father, Leopold, died, Wolfgang did not travel to Salzburg for the services. When his starling died, two months later, Mozart hosted a formal funeral in his garden and composed a whimsical elegy that proclaime...

“Mozart kept a pet starling. I can’t even remember where I read that in my ornithological studies—it is one of those arcane little details recorded here and there, usually without substantiation. I repeated it myself in my first book, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds. Later, I was reading Jim Lynch’s lovely novel Border Songs and discovered that one of his characters mentioned it. When I asked Lynch where he’d heard about Mozart’s starling, he told me, “I read it in your book.” Oh, dear! I began to worry that I’d been spreading an apocryphal story, but further research assured me that the tale was true. Mozart discovered the starling in a Vienna pet shop, where the bird had somehow learned to sing the motif from his newest piano concerto. Enchanted, he bought the bird for a few kreuzer and kept it for three years before it died. Just how the starling learned Mozart’s motif is a wonderful musico-ornithological mystery. But there is one thing we know for certain: Mozart loved his starling. Recent examination of his work during and after the period he lived with the bird shows that the starling influenced his music and, I believe, at least one of the opera world’s favorite characters. The starling was in turn his companion, distraction, consolation, and muse. When his father, Leopold, died, Wolfgang did not travel to Salzburg for the services. When his starling died, two months later, Mozart hosted a formal funeral in his garden and composed a whimsical elegy that proclaimed his affinity with the starling’s friendly mischievousness and his sorrow over the bird’s loss.”