At the opening of Arkwright’s steam powered mill, 1782

A cottage industry culture-vulture lord of the manor invited you

Your crimson pelisse coat and star-studded waistcoat will do

A gold-laced bicorne hat is de rigueur

You are not seeing powdered wigs in Manchester

Your carriage enters this upstart village in the English north

A world occupied in quick lively tempo

Salford allegretto, Manchester allegro, molto gloom

The cathedral and Chetham’s look proud

And pride comes before a fall

Around the bridge over the river Irwell

Some foul stench is in the air

Rustics dredge the river panning for gold

Breughel’s bent-backed slaves look like fools

They’ve no idea who you are or what is happening to them

They sing a song so lachrymose

As though they play on instruments facing backwards

You see their backs

It is not long, you think, before no one listens to them at all

You play with gay abandon to a breaking gang of thieves turned navvies

Hands and spades so large you can only think of being in Paris, Salzburg, or Vienna

Who is listening, Mozart? None of them

That is why your alla turca looks east not west

The Manchester rain starts and you are soaked

Some Mancunian entrepreneur should invent a folding device

Call it a shadow from Latin, umbra in perpetuity

Da Vinci might have sketched it taking off in flight

If he was around he would seize on Mancunium

Shake it for all its enlightened potential to do work-

‘Choose my bobbin winder or my Last Supper, Arkwright

It’s your money. You choose.’

A hobnailed hungry monster rises from the mud ahead of you

Arkwright’s flatulent dragon is some stone cold mad idea

To harness the power of the English kettle

You fear this heathen temple and what it can do

One foundation block for a justified sinner

Hot wasteful clouds devoid of divinity

You do not pretend to comprehend the mass of steam

Cotton, rain and the devil

That’s all you need know about Arkwright’s ambition

Constanze shouts instructions; you must be gone from here

Your carriage awaits. You climb aboard and make haste

You must never mention Manchester again

You hope the roads that brought you there are navigable in reverse

In Peterloo fields, the long ears of corn perform a pastoral symphony

Long grass sways and swarms

Rain so hard it stands on the ground

Like soldiers marching with rifles on shoulders, bayonets drawn

Tell them you never visited Manchester, Mozart

To admit that would be a curse

“Mozart never visited Manchester” John Suchet, Classic FM, June 3rd 2019