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Title: Life of Mozart - Biographies of Musicians
Author: Nohl, Ludwig
Language: English
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[Illustration: WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART.]
_BIOGRAPHIES OF MUSICIANS._
LIFE OF MOZART
BY
LOUIS NOHL
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY
JOHN J. LALOR.
“_Man’s title to nobility is the heart._”
CHICAGO:
JANSEN, McCLURG, & COMPANY.
1880.
COPYRIGHT,
JANSEN, MCCLURG & COMPANY.
A. D. 1880.
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED
BY
THE CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
Mr. Louis Nohl, the author of the present little volume, has merited
for himself in Germany a high reputation as a writer of the biographies
of musicians, and some of his larger works have appeared in English on
the other side of the Atlantic. The present is the first translation
into our language of his shorter Life of Mozart. It will, we trust,
prove acceptable to those who desire to learn the chief events in
the life of the great composer, to see how his life influenced his
compositions, and how his great works are, in many instances at least,
the expression of his own joys and sorrows, the picture of his own soul
in tones.
The translator’s grateful acknowledgments are due to Mr. A. W. Dohn, of
Chicago, who was kind enough to compare the entire translation with the
original. His thorough knowledge of music and German, no less than his
rare familiarity with the English language, have largely contributed to
the fidelity of this translation.
J. J. L.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY TRAVELS.
Mozart’s Parentage--Early Development of his Genius--Character
as a Child--Travels at the Age of Six--Received by Maria
Theresa and Marie Antoinette--Mozart and Goethe--Meeting
with Madame de Pompadour--The London Bach’s Opinion of
Young Mozart--Asked to Write an Opera by Joseph II--Assailed
by Envy--Padre Martini--Notes Down the Celebrated Miserere
from Ear--The Pope Confers on him the Order of the Golden
Spurs--A Member of the Philharmonic Society of Bologna--First
Love--Personal Appearance--Troubles with the Archbishop, 7-41
CHAPTER II.
THE GREAT PARISIAN ARTISTIC JOURNEY.
Disgusted with Salzburg--In Vienna Again--Salzburg
Society--Character of Musicians in the Last Century--Jerome
Colloredo, Archbishop of Salzburg--Mozart’s Letter to
Him--The Father’s Solicitude for His Son--Paternal Advice--New
Compositions--Incidents of his Journey--Meets with
Opposition--Secret Enemies--His Ambition to Elevate
the Character of the German Opera--Disappointments--His
Description of German “Free City” Life--Meeting with Stein--In
his Uncle’s Family--“Baesle”--Meeting with the
Cannabichs--Attachment for Rosa Cannabich--Influence of this
Attachment on his Music--The Weber Family--The _Non so d’Onde
Viene_--Circumstances of its Composition, 42-82
CHAPTER III.
IDOMENEO.
New Disappointments--Opposition of the Abbe Vogler--Mozart and
the Poet Wieland--Wieland’s Impressions of Mozart--German
Opera and Joseph II--The Weber Family--Aloysia Weber--Mozart’s
Plans--His Father Opposes them and his Attachment for
Aloysia--Mozart’s Music and Heart-trials--In
Paris--Disappointments there--Contrast Between Parisian and
German Life--New Intrigues Against Him--Invited Back to
Salzburg--“Faithless” Aloysia--Meeting of Father and
Son--Reception in Salzburg--“King Thamos”--Character of
Mozart’s Music Composed at this time--Invitation to Compose
the Idomeneo--Its Success--Effect on the Italian Opera, 83-117
CHAPTER IV.
ELOPEMENT FROM THE SERAGLIO--FIGARO--DON GIOVANNI.
Opinions on the Idomeneo--Tired of Salzburg--Goes to Vienna--The
Archbishop Again--Mozart Treated by Him with
Indignity--Paternal Reproaches--Assailed by Slander--He Leaves
Salzburg--Experiences in Vienna--Austrian Society--The German
Stage--The Emperor Expresses a Wish that Mozart might Write a
New Opera--Mozart’s Love for Constance Weber--Description of
Constance--The New Opera--Mozart’s Marriage--The Emperor’s
Opinion of Mozart’s Music--Mozart’s Interest In the Figaro--Its
Composition--Its Success--Mozart’s Poverty--In Bohemia--His
Popularity in Prague--Meaning of the Don Giovanni--Richard
Wagner on Mozart, 118-180
CHAPTER V.
THE MAGIC FLUTE--TITUS--THE REQUIEM.
Haydn’s Opinion of Mozart--Made Court Composer by Joseph
II--Don Giovanni in Vienna--Mozart’s Extreme Poverty--His
Cheerfulness under Adverse Circumstances--“The Song of the
Swan”--Other Compositions--Mozart’s Opinion of
Handel--Acquaintance with Sebastian Bach--Mozart’s Opinion
of Church Music--Mozart’s Characteristics--Audience
with the Emperor--Petition to His Imperial Majesty--His
Religious Feelings--Joins the Free Masons--History of the
Magic Flute--The Mysterious Stranger--The Requiem--Success
of the Magic Flute--Mozart as Reflected in his Music--His
Industry--Last Illness--Strange Fancies--His Last
Days--His Death, 181-236
THE LIFE OF MOZART.
CHAPTER I.
1756-1777.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY TRAVELS.
Mozart’s Parentage--Early Development of his Genius--Character as a
Child--Travels at the age of Six--Received by Maria Theresa and
Marie Antoinette--Mozart and Goethe--Meeting with Madame de
Pompadour--The London Bach’s Opinion of Young Mozart--Asked to Write
an Opera by Joseph II--Assailed by Envy--Padre Martini--Notes Down
the Celebrated Miserere from Ear--The Pope Confers on him the Order
of the Golden Spurs--A Member of the Philharmonic Society of
Bologna--First Love--Personal Appearance--Troubles with the
Archbishop.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in the city of Salzburg, on the 27th
of January, 1756. His father, Leopold, was descended from a family
of the middle class of the then free imperial city of Augsburg, and
had come to Salzburg, the domicile of a prince-bishop and the seat
of an excellent university, to study law. But as he had to support
himself by teaching music, even while pursuing his legal studies,
he was soon compelled to enter entirely into the service of others.
He became _valet de chambre_ to a canon of the Roman church, Count
Thurm; afterwards court-musician and then _capellmeister_[1] to
the archbishop. He had married in 1747 a young girl, educated in a
neighboring convent. Himself and wife were considered the handsomest
couple in Salzburg in their day. Of seven children born to them, they
lost all but two, Maria Anna, known by the pet-name of Nannerl, and our
Wolfgang, most frequently called Wolferl. Anna was about five years
older than Wolfgang, and both gave evidence, from the time they were
little children, of an extraordinary talent for music.
An old friend of the family tells us how, from the moment young Mozart
had begun to give himself to music, he cared neither to see nor hear
anything else. Even his childish games and plays did not interest
him unless accompanied by music. “Whenever,” says our informant, “we
carried our toys from one room to another, the one of us who had
nothing to carry was always required to play, or sing a march,” ...
and further: “He [Mozart] grew so extremely attached to me because
I kept him company and entered into his childish humors, that he
frequently asked me ten times in a day, if I loved him; and when I
sometimes said no, only in fun, the tears instantly glistened his eyes,
his little heart was so kind and tender.”
We learn from the same source that he manifested no pride or awe, yet
he never wished to play except before great connoisseurs in music;
and to induce him to do so it was sometimes necessary to deceive him
as to the musical acquirements of his hearers. He learned every task
that his father gave him, and put his soul so entirely into whatever
he was doing that he forgot all else for the time being, not excepting
even his music. Even as a child, he was full of fire and vivacity, and
were it not for the excellent training he received from his father,
who was very strict with him, and of a serious turn of mind, he might
have become one of the wildest of youths, so sensitive was he to the
allurements of pleasure of every kind, the innocence or danger of which
he was not yet able to discover.
When only five years of age he wrote some music in his _Uebungsbuch_ or
Exercise-book, which is yet to be seen in the Mozarteum[2] in Salzburg;
also some little minuets; and, on one occasion, his father and the
friend of the family mentioned above, surprised him engaged on the
composition of a concerto so difficult that no one in the world could
have played it. His ear was so acute, and his memory for music so good
from the time he was a child, that once when playing his little violin,
he remembered that the _Buttergeige_, the “butter-violin,” so-called
from the extreme smoothness of its tones, was tuned one-eighth of a
tone lower than his own. On account of this great acuteness of hearing,
he could not, at that age, bear the sound of the trumpet; and when
notwithstanding his father once put his endurance of it to the test, he
was taken with violent spasms.
His readiness and skill in music soon became so great that he was able
to play almost everything at sight. His little sister also had made
very extraordinary progress in music at a very early age, and the
father in 1762, when the children were respectively six and ten years
of age, began to travel with them, to show, as he said, these “wonders
of God” to the world.
The first place they went to was Munich, then as now the real capital
of Southern Germany, and after that to Vienna. Maria Theresa and her
consort were very fond of music. They received the children with
genuine German cordiality, and little Wolfgang without any more ado,
leaped into the lap of the Empress and kissed her; just as he had told
the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who had helped him from the slippery
floor: “You are good and I’ll marry you.” The youngest son of Maria
Theresa, the handsome and amiable grand-duke, Maximilian, was of the
same age as young Mozart, and always remained his friend, as he was,
subsequently, the patron of Beethoven. The picture of Mozart and his
little sister dressed in the clothes of the imperial children hangs on
the walls of the Mozarteum; his animated eyes and her budding beauty
have an incomparable charm.
He now, in his sixth year, learned to play the violin, and his father
neglected nothing to give him, in every way, the best musical
instruction. For he was himself an excellent composer, and had written
a “violin method” which had a great reputation in its day, and was
honored with translation. Mozart’s education in music continued even
during the journey. Instruction in playing the organ was soon added to
instruction in the use of the violin. The next scene of the marvels of
the little ones was Southern Germany. This was in the summer of 1763.
In Heidelberg, Mozart’s little feet flew about on the pedals with such
rapidity that the clergyman in charge made a record of it in writing
on the organ itself. Goethe heard him in Frankfort, and thus obtained
a standard by which to measure all subsequent men of musical genius
whom he chanced to meet. In his declining years, Goethe listened to a
child similarly gifted, Felix Mendelssohn. In Paris, also, the court
was very gracious to the children; but when little Wolfgang, with the
ingenuousness of childhood, tried to put his arms about the neck of the
painted Madame de Pompadour as he had about that of Maria Theresa, he
was met with a rebuff, and, wounded to the quick, he cried: “Who is
that person there that won’t kiss me? The empress kissed me.” He always
thought a great deal of Maria Theresa, and his heart, through life, had
a nook in it for her, and was ever loyal to the imperial family, as we
shall see further on.
The princesses were all the more amiable in consequence, and did not
trouble themselves about etiquette. Every one wondered to hear so young
a child tell every note the moment he heard it; compose without the aid
of a piano, and play accompaniments to songs by ear only. No wonder
that he was greeted everywhere with the loudest applause, and that the
receipts were so flatteringly large.
The reception extended to them in London in 1764, was still kinder; for
the royal couple themselves were German, and Handel had already laid
a lasting foundation there for good music; while the French music of
the time seemed to our travelers to be exceedingly cold and empty--“a
continual and wearisome bawling.” Their stay in England was, on this
account, a very long one, and the father made use of the opportunity
he found there to give an excellent Italian singer as an instructor
to Wolfgang, who soon mastered the Italian style of melody, which was
then the prevailing one. It was in London that Mozart wrote his first
symphonies.
Their journey back in 1765, led them over Holland, where both children
were taken very dangerously ill, and the father’s strength for the
difficult task of preserving and educating such a boy as Wolfgang,
was put to the severest test. Even during the Lenten season, he was
allowed, in Amsterdam, to exhibit “for the glory of God” the wonderful
gifts of his son, and he finally returned in the fall of 1766, after
an absence of more than two years, to Salzburg, laden not so much with
money as with the fame of his little ones.
The journey taken thus early in life was of great advantage to Mozart
himself. He learned to understand men--for his father drew his
attention to everything; he even made the boy keep a diary--he got
rid of the shyness natural to children, and acquired a knowledge of
life. He had listened to the music of the different nations, and thus
discovered the manner in which each heart understands that language of
the human soul called melody. The refined tone of the higher classes
at this time was also of great advantage to his art. The magnificent
landscape scenery of his native place had awakened his natural sense
of the beautiful; its beautiful situation, its numerous churches and
palaces, had further developed that same aesthetic sense; and now the
varied impressions received from life and art during these travels,
so extensive for one so young, were one of the principal causes why
Mozart’s music acquired so early that something so directly attractive,
so harmoniously beautiful and so universally intelligible, which
characterizes it. But this phase of his music was fully developed only
by his repeated long sojourns in that land of beauty itself, in which
Mozart spent his incipient youth, in Italy.
Mozart’s father, indeed, did not remain long in Salzburg. Salzburg was
no place for him. And must not the boy always have felt keenly the
impulse to display his artistic power before the world? Had not the
London Bach, a son of the great Leipzig cantor, Sebastian Bach, whose
influence on Mozart we shall hear of further on, said of him that many
a _capellmeister_ had died without knowing what this boy knew even
now? The marriage of an archduke brought the family, in 1768, to Vienna
once more, the first place they lived in after leaving Salzburg. Here
the father saw clearly, for the first time, that Italy and Italy alone
was the proper training-school for this young genius. The Emperor
Joseph had, indeed, confided to him the task of writing an Italian
opera--it was the _La Finta Semplice_, “Simulated Simplicity”--and the
twelve-year-old boy himself directed a solemn mass at the consecration
of a church, a performance which made so deep an impression on his
mind, that twenty years after he used to tell of the sublime effect of
his church on his mind. A German operetta, _Bastien and Bastienne_,
was honored with a private performance. But this first Italian opera
was the occasion of Mozart’s experiencing the malicious envy of his
fellow-musicians, which, it is said, contributed so much, later, to
make his life wretched and to bring it to an early close.
His father writes:
“Thus, indeed, have people to scuffle their way through. If a man has
no talent, his condition is unfortunate enough; if he has talent,
he is persecuted by envy, and that in proportion to his skill.”
Young Mozart’s enemies and enviers had cunning enough to prevent the
performance of his work, and the father was now doubly intent on
exhibiting his son’s talent where, as the latter himself admitted, he
felt that he was best understood, and where he had won the highest fame
in his youth.
Italy is the mother country of music and was, besides, at this time,
the Eldorado of composers. The Church had nurtured music. With the
Church it came into Germany. From Germany it subsequently returned
enriched. It reached its first memorable and classical expression in
the Roman Palestrina. After his day, a worldly and even theatrical
character invaded the music of the Catholic Church, of which Palestrina
is the great ideal. The cause of this change was the introduction of
the opera, which was due to the revival of the study of the antique,
and especially of Greek tragedy.
The pure style of vocal composition was founded on the Protestant
choral, and reached its highest classical expression, in modern times,
in the German Sebastian Bach. His contemporary and countryman, Handel,
on the other hand, remained, by way of preference, in the region of
opera; and, after he had achieved great triumphs in it in foreign
countries, he rose to the summit of his greatness, in the spiritual
drama, the oratorio. The world at this time loved the theatrical; and
its chief seat, so far as the opera was concerned, was the country
which had given birth to music. As, in its day, Italy had the greatest
composers, it had now, to say the least, the greatest and most
celebrated singers, and with a single victory here one entered the
lists with all educated Europe. “Then up and go there,” the father must
have said to himself, when he saw that his son’s talent for composition
was not recognized in Germany as much as it deserved to be recognized
even then, and the superior excellence of his performances denied there
when it was admitted everywhere else.
We need not here enter into the details of this journey. The youthful
artist continued to work wonders similar to those which we have
already related. And on one occasion, in Naples, the boy was even
obliged to remove a ring from his finger, because his wizard-like art
was ascribed by the people to his wearing it. We must here confine
ourselves to tracing the course of development of this extraordinary
genius, and to showing what were the influences that made him such.
At the end of the year 1769, that is, when Mozart was nearly fourteen
years of age, we find him and his father journeying through the
Tyrol to the land of milder breezes and sweet melodies. Everywhere
the same unbounded admiration of his talent. In Vienna, the two--who
now traveled unaccompanied by the mother and sister--were obliged to
elbow themselves through the crowd to the choir, so great was the
concourse of people. In Milan, such was the impression made by our
hero, that Wolfgang was asked to compose an opera. In Italy new operas
were introduced twice a year; and he was given the first opportunity
to display his talent during the season preceding Christmas. The
honorarium paid him was, as usual, one hundred ducats and lodging free.
He received no more at a later period for his _Don Giovanni_. But
such an amount was a large remuneration, at that time, for the young
beginner.
In the execution of his task, however, he showed himself by no means a
mere beginner. For when, continuing their journey--to which they could
give themselves up with all the more composure as the libretto was to
be sent after them--they came to Bologna and there called upon the most
learned musician of his age, Padre Martini, even he could do nothing
but lose himself in wonder at the power of achievement of our young
master, who, as Martini said, solved problems and overcame difficulties
which gave evidence both of innate genius and of the most comprehensive
knowledge. Wolfgang here became acquainted with the greatest singer
of his time, the sopranist, Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli, and
received from him as a last legacy the Italian art of _bel canto_;
for, said he, only he who understands the art of song in its highest
sense, can, in turn, properly write for song. And yet this vocalist was
already in the sixties.
Florence was still governed by the Hapsburgs, and hence the best of
receptions was given to our travelers there. Of the magnificent works
of art in the place, the letters to his mother and sister do not say
anything. But we can scarcely suppose that the _Venus Anathusia_
and the _Madonna della Sedia_ remained unknown to him who was alone
destined to give life to Raphael and the antique, even in tones.
Mozart’s own letters from Rome do not leave us in the dark on this
point. He writes to his sister: “Yesterday we were in the Capitol
and saw many beautiful things, and there are, indeed, many beautiful
things there and elsewhere in Rome”--Laocoon and Ariadne, the Apollo
Belvedere and the head of Olympian Jove. And then the many churches,
and among them a St. Peter’s! But naturally enough, the music remained
the most remarkable thing of all to the two musicians; and then there
was the Sistine Chapel, in which alone something of the art of the
great Romans still lived and ruled. Of Palestrina we hear nothing in
this connection, but Wolfgang went so far as to make a copy of Allegri.
“You know,” the father writes, “that the Miserere sung here is esteemed
so highly that the musicians of the chapel are forbidden, under
pain of excommunication, to copy any part of it, or to give a part
of it to anybody. But we have it. Wolfgang has written it down from
ear. However, we do not wish this secret to come into anyone’s else
possession, lest we should incur the censure of the Church directly or
indirectly.” The Mozarts, indeed, attached some importance to their
faith in the Catholic Church. To them it was intrinsic truth. And thus
Wolfgang’s youthful soul was forever consecrated, for the reception
of the highest feelings of the human breast, by the peculiarly sacred
songs sung during this holy week in Rome--feelings which, even in
compositions not religious, he, in the course of his life, clothed
in sounds so beautiful and enrapturing. In after years, he was wont
to tell of the deep impression made on him by these incidents in
his religious experience. “How I felt there! how I felt there!” he
exclaimed, over and over again, in speaking of them.
We have heard already of Naples. The father had written from Rome
that the further they got into Italy the greater was the wonder of
the people. The intoxicating beauty of nature mirrored in the Bay of
Naples, could not but make a deep impression on the artist, who was
himself destined one day to give expression in so magical a manner
and in sounds so entrancing, to the charm and intoxication of the
serenest joys of life. “Naples is beautiful,” he writes curtly but
characteristically to his sister. Yet it may be that the immense
solemnity of Rome was more in harmony with Mozart’s German nature.
They were there soon again, and this time they had an opportunity to
see what can be seen only in Rome--the Pope. Delighted with young
Wolfgang’s playing, the Holy Father--it was the great Ganganelli,
Clement XIV--granted him a private audience, and conferred on him the
order of the Golden Spurs, that same order which afterwards gave us a
chevalier Gluck. Mozart did not, at first, make much of this honor, and
his father wrote: “You may imagine how I laugh to hear him called all
the time _Signor Cavaliere_.” Later, however, they knew when a proper
occasion presented itself, how to turn such a distinction to advantage.
The end now aimed at by young Mozart and his father was fame and
success. A step towards the attainment of these was Wolfgang’s
nomination as a member of the celebrated Philharmonic Society of
Bologna, which invested him, in Italy, with the title of _Cavaliere
Filarmonico_. And when father and son came to Milan again in 1770,
he had, so far as his rank as an artist and his position in life
were concerned, attained success. At fourteen, he was _Signor
Cavaliere_--Chevalier Mozart. The journey itself had done much to bring
his artistic views to maturity. His technical ability was very plainly
now supplemented by the pure sense of the beautiful, the result of the
highest intellectual labor. He had surmounted all difficulties, and
especially those purely natural ones by which the rough, lack-lustre
north, with its inhospitable climate, only too frequently keeps Germans
back in art. From this time forward the divine rays of ideal beauty
beam brightly from Mozart’s melody, and they never became extinct. In
Mozart’s art there was now no room for perfection of form. His art
could be added to only by adding to the life that was in it; and we
shall soon again meet with traces of that personal contact with life
which matures man’s capabilities and develops them. Let us first look
at the earliest decided successes of the composer, successes which, for
a long time, bound him to the “land where the citron blooms.”
The Italian opera which then ruled supreme everywhere, was far from
being such a dramatic performance on the stage as rivets the attention.
The taste of the Italians which revelled in beautiful songs, soon made
these the chief feature in the entire opera. Interesting or thrilling
incidents from history, and still more the great myths of antiquity and
of the middle ages, were so adapted for the occasion that a love affair
always played the principal part in them, and the whole culminated
in the effusions of happy or heart-broken lovers. There was here,
certainly, a rich opportunity for an art like music. As it was, almost
the entire opera was made up of arias, and the person who wrote the
prettiest arias, of course, carried off the palm. These arias had like
a garment to be made to order, so to speak, for the several singers,
and to fit them exactly, if they were to produce their full effect: the
finest note of the prima donna, or a tenor, had to be at the same time
the finest part of the air, and _vice versa_. Thus prepared, the opera
was sung, and went the round of one-half of Europe. We have seen this,
in this century, in the case of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, and we
see it in our own day, in the case of Verdi.
It was at this point that Mozart modestly entered on the musical
inheritance from the past. A youth of fourteen will certainly not
change or attack what more than a century and the whole educated world
has approved and admired. But how he took up into his work the several
features of the “fabulous history” of the old, unfortunate king of
Pontus, Mithridates, and united them into glowing music, we learn from
the critic of the day, after the performance of the piece on the 26th
of December, 1770, in the following words: “The young _Capellmeister_
studies the beautiful in nature, and then gives us back that beauty
adorned with the rarest musical grace.” Envy and intrigue were, indeed,
not wanting here, either. But Wolfgang was equal to the task of taking
care of himself, and even of adapting himself to the whims of the
singers. “If this duet does not give satisfaction, he can re-arrange
it,” the first sopranist exclaimed; and people were very much surprised
to see the tone of the home opera, its _chiaroscuro_, as they called
the beautiful discordance of the different pieces with one another, so
accurately hit by a young beginner. Cries of _Evviva il maestro! Evviva
il maestrino!_ were heard on every side; the work had to be repeated
twenty times, and it was immediately ordered for five other stages,
among them that of Mozart’s own beloved capital--all of which, however,
according to the custom of the time, turned only to the advantage of
the copyist.
The object of the first trip to Rome, in 1770, was thus attained.
Wolfgang had not spared himself, and his father had to keep a
watchful eye on him. Uninterrupted labor and earnest occupation had
given so serious a turn to his mind--and he was always naturally
reflective--that his father thought well to invite some friends to his
home while Wolfgang was composing. He asked others to write him jocose
letters, in order to divert him. The musical genius and the inner man
were ripening side by side. At the age of fifteen he had the maturity
of a full-grown youth.
Even now the chords of his nature, which lent to his melodies that most
fervid of tones which we think we hear even when only Mozart’s name is
mentioned, those tender feelings of the heart which made him above all
the minstrel of love, are heard in the soft vibrations of his music. In
his hearty attachment to his mother and sister, we see the development
of what the family-friend already mentioned has told us of his innate
craving for affection when only four years old. His little postscripts
to his father’s letters about this journey are delightful reading. He
never forgets the dear ones at home. He inquires about each one in
turn; and even the “weighty and lofty thoughts of Italy,” where he was
frequently “distracted by mere business,” do not keep him from doing
so. He tells his mamma he kisses her hands a billion times, and Nannerl
that he kisses her “cheek, nose, mouth and neck.” On post-days, he goes
on, “everything tastes better,” and only the abundance of his bantering
in these notes preserved in the Mozarteum can give any idea of his
overflowing tenderness for his sweet sister.
But it was not long before he discovered beauty in others than his
sister. His young eye caught sight of the _prime donne_ and pretty
ballet-dancers of Italy; but, with the fair ones, he had formed a
more intimate personal acquaintance in Salzburg, where his sister had
friends of her own sex. “I had a great deal to say to my sister, but
what I had to say is known only to God and myself,” he wrote from
Italy; and shortly after, still more suggestively: “What you have
promised me, my dear (---- you know you are my dear one), don’t fail
to do, I pray you. I shall surely be obliged to you.” This was during
his second journey to Rome, when his short and restful stay in his
beautiful home allowed his heart, so to speak, repose, and afforded him
leisure to busy himself with other matters than music. “I implore thee,
let me know about the other one, _where there is no other one_; you
understand me, and I need say no more,” he adds, evidently desiring to
cover something up, and what could there be for him to cover up but a
tender feeling of the heart? Later he adds: “I hope that you have been
to see the young lady; you know which one I mean. I beg of you when you
see her to pay her a compliment for me.” There certainly is nothing
more easy of explanation than that the young artist was attracted by
the fair sex, whose admiration for him was so unbounded. Nothing so
charms woman as fame and greatness, especially when fame and greatness
have an intellectual foundation; and was not the young _cavaliere
filarmonico_ famed beyond all men living? His mere appearance, indeed,
made no very powerful impression at the first sight. He was small of
stature. According to the account given of himself, in one of his
letters, he was “brought up on water.” His head seemed to be too large
for his body, the result of an abundance of beautiful flaxen hair;
and only his natural ease and grace of movement made him--especially
in the costume of the past century--irresistibly charming, an effect
which was heightened by the thoughtful expression of his beautiful
greyish-blue eyes. But when this excitable young man, in his velvet
coat, knee-breeches, silk stockings, buckled shoes, galoon-hat and
sword, was thought of as the celebrated _maestro_, whose fame was
only beginning; or when he was heard play and seen producing his own
compositions, the impression was changed, and the place of mere
physical attraction was taken by the unspeakable charm of the mind and
heart, by the spell-binding, mysterious force of creative genius. But
woman loves the power of genius, and surrenders her entire self to it.
A kiss from pretty lips when he had written a new minuet, he considered
a beautiful “present,” and kisses do not come singly.
But now little time remained to him for the half-innocent,
half-sensuous idyls of the eighteenth century. He was again engaged
for the first season of the year, 1773, in Milan, this time for a
consideration of one hundred and thirty ducats, and in the meantime,
he received another commission, probably in consequence of the
reputation of “Mithridates,” to help celebrate the marriage of a son
of the Empress Maria Theresa, in Milan, by means of a _serenata_, _i.
e._, a kind of little opera. This was in the summer of 1771, and in
August both father and son were in Milan again. The subject-matter was
_Ascanius in Alba_. But flattery for the noble couple chiefly filled
this theatrical sketch, a fact which by no means kept Wolfgang from
doing his best. He writes: “Over us is a violinist, under us another,
next us a singing master, and in the only remaining room a hautboyist,
all of which makes composing very pleasant, and suggests many ideas
to one.” These ideas must have been of great consequence to him at
this time, because his rival, the composer of the principal opera, was
Hasse, the then most celebrated composer in Italy, the “dear Saxon,”
as the Italians called him, a man who had presented them with so many
hundred operas that he could not count them himself. The libretto did
not reach him until the end of August, and the festivities were to take
place in October. “And then my fingers pain me so from writing,” he
says, in an exculpatory way, after four weeks, to Nannerl. There were
now wanting only two arias. Thanks to the elasticity of his nature, he
preserved his health; but the fact that he “was always sleepy” shows
how very hard he had worked, nay, that he had worked too hard.
He did not fail of success. The noble couple set an example to the
public by their approbation, and the father writes: “I am sorry;
Wolfgang’s _serenata_ has so badly beaten Hasse’s opera that I cannot
describe it.” And it is said that the latter, with a delightful absence
of envy, exclaimed: “That boy will send us all to oblivion.” How true
was the prophecy, and how many, in all ages will not this same Mozart
eclipse by his refulgence!
The play was, contrary to custom, repeated several times, and on
this occasion a diamond snuff-box from the archduke was added to the
honorarium usually paid.
In December, 1771, we find the Mozarts at home once more, but enjoying
the pleasant prospect of new laurels in Italy. It was well that there
was such a prospect before them; for the death of Archbishop Sigismund
placed a new master over them. His successor, Jerome, whose election
was received with feelings anything but joyful, was destined to leave a
sad page in Mozart’s life.
The citizens of Salzburg entrusted their celebrated young
fellow-townsman with the composition of the music for the occasion of
their demonstration of respect to the new archbishop. It was the “Dream
of Scipio.” Besides this, there was little in Salzburg to be done. In
the capacity of _concertmeister_ to the archbishop, to which position
he was appointed after his success in Italy, he had to write the music
for the court and for the cathedral. In those days people were ever
craving for something new in their favorite art; and while Mozart’s
masses, yielding to the theatrical tendency of the time, like those of
Haydn, have more of a pleasant play in them than of church gravity,
and are therefore of less importance to posterity, the composition of
symphonies carried him into a department which, created by Haydn, was
destined, through Mozart, to lead to that mighty phenomenon, Beethoven.
The form of the sonata, which is the basis of the symphony, also
had originated in consequence of a more and more poetico-musical
development from the suite which introduced a series of dances,
the allemande being the first. And as the dance itself is a direct
imitation of natural human movement and passion, the sonata and
symphony, together with the quartette, became more and more, the
expression of the personal experience and feelings of the composer,
who, the more deeply and grandly he conceived the world, was able to
give of it, in his music, a more beautiful and ravishing picture--an
art which afterwards reached in Beethoven’s symphonies a height
unsurpassed as yet.
What poetry and prose were for the opera, the joy and the sorrow
of life felt by the composer himself were for the piano and the
orchestra--the impulse and poetical bait to musical composition. We
shall soon find Mozart’s life reflected in his art, and it is this that
makes the biography of the man so peculiarly attractive and so full of
meaning.
In November, 1772, we find our two travelers in Italy again. The opera
of Silla had to be written for Milan. And now, what the father desired
above all, was to see his son anchored there in a permanent position.
He first made some arrangements in Florence. He could not feel at home
in Salzburg after the appointment of the new archbishop. The latter
was, indeed, friendly to intellectual progress, and opposed to the
gloomy rule of the priesthood, but, at the same time, he was himself
too much of a tyrant to be able to bless his people by diffusing
prosperity among them, or to win their love. His mode of government
could not be acceptable to the independent spirit of the father any
more than to the liberty-loving genius of the son; and this all the
more, as he had no real feeling for, or understanding of art, or of
the sovereign rule of genius. And so it happened, that the father,
even during his journey, found it hard to banish what he called his
“Salzburg thoughts” from his mind. He was disappointed because he
accomplished nothing in Florence, and this added to his trouble.
But he now met with compensation in Milan. In his letters, Wolfgang
says: “It is impossible for me to write much, because, in the first
place, I know nothing to write about, and in the second place, I do not
know what I am writing; for all my thoughts are with my opera, and I
am in danger of writing a whole aria to you instead of a letter.” The
performers were very well satisfied this time too, and what an effect
the work must have produced is attested by a mishap which occurred
to the principal male voice. He had unwittingly provoked the prima
donna to a fit of laughter, which confused him so much that he began
to gesticulate himself in a most unmannerly way. The audience, whose
patience had been taxed to the utmost by being obliged to wait for the
archduke, who lived in the city, caught the contagion, and began to
laugh likewise. Spite of this, the opera proved victoriously successful
the first time it was performed, and was repeated more than twenty
times.
This closed Mozart’s real work for the Italians. He would certainly
have been called upon to do much more in that country, but the
Archbishop of Salzburg refused him leave of absence, saying that he
“did not want to see his people going begging about the country.”
And yet Mozart himself said subsequently: “When I think it all over,
I have nowhere received so many honors, and nowhere been so highly
esteemed as in Italy. A man has good credit indeed when he has written
operas in Italy.” And, in reality, it was due to his success in Italy
that Mozart was, two years after this, called to Munich to write the
music for another Italian opera. This was the charming _opera buffa_
(comic opera), the _La finta giardiniera_; and here Jerome could not
refuse his permission; his relations, personal and official with the
neighboring elector’s court, did not allow him to do so.
The elector Maximilian III. was a kindly, good-hearted gentleman, and
very fond of music himself. He had long before manifested a great deal
of interest in Mozart, and knew as well as anybody what success the
young composer had met with in the world. Mozart saw himself loved
and honored, and the excellence of the opera in Munich was a great
incentive to induce him to do his very best in the performance of the
task now given him. In it we find early traces of those living streams
of pleasant feelings which flowed from Mozart’s heart. The words of
the opera had been frequently set to music; but the people said that
no more beautiful music had ever been heard than that of Mozart’s
opera, in which all the arias, without exception, were beautiful.
“Thank God,” he wrote on the 14th of January, “my opera was put upon
the stage yesterday, and came off so well that I find it impossible
to describe the bustle to mamma. In the first place, the theater was
so very crowded that a great many people had to go back home. Every
aria was followed by a frightful hubbub and cries of _viva maestro!_
Her highness the electoress and the electoress dowager, who were just
opposite me, saluted me with a _bravo!_ When the opera was out, there
was nothing to be heard but the clapping of hands and cries of _bravo!_
interrupted by pauses of silence, only to be taken up again, and again.
After this, I went with papa into a room, through which the elector
had to go, where I kissed the hands of his highness, of the electoress
and of the nobility, all of whom were very gracious to me. Early this
morning his grace, the prince-bishop of Chiemsee, sent a special
messenger here to congratulate me on the fact that the opera had proved
so unprecedently successful.” The prince-bishop, who had been a canon
of the cathedral in Salzburg, and loved Mozart very much, had, it is
very likely, procured for him the commission from Munich, and hence his
enhanced interest in Mozart, and the peculiar satisfaction he felt in
his great success.
Even the archbishop himself was an unwilling witness of the triumph of
his _concertmeister_, to whom he showed so little respect. He had not,
indeed, seen the opera himself, because it was not performed during
his visit, which was a mere visit on business connected with his
office; but, as the father writes, he could not help hearing Mozart’s
praise, and accepting many solemn congratulations on having secured the
services of so great a genius, from all the elector’s household and
from the nobility. This confused him so much that he could answer only
with a nod of the head and a shrug of the shoulders. We shall soon see
that all this did not redound to Mozart’s welfare and advantage.
An operetta, the _Il Re Pastore_, “The Royal Shepherd,” written in
honor of the sojourn of the Archduke Maximilian Francis in Salzburg,
in the same year, 1775, must also be classed among the youthful works
of our artist. He had now passed his twentieth year. He had learned
all there was to be learned, and proved it in many ways by what he had
achieved in practice. His feelings urged him to display his powers
before the world. He felt himself a man with
“Muth sich in die Welt zu wagen,
Der Erde Weh, der Erde Glück zu tragen.”
His boyhood was over; the youth was growing into the man, and the man
craves to try his strength--craves action.
This craving brought our artist, for the first time, into a personal
struggle with life; and as he was compelled henceforth to carry on that
struggle alone, experience quickly strengthened his moral power; and we
find him no longer simply the divinely favored artist, but the strong,
noble-minded man as well.
CHAPTER II.
1777-1779.
THE GREAT PARISIAN ARTISTIC JOURNEY.
Disgusted With Salzburg--In Vienna Again--Salzburg Society--Character
of Musicians in the Last Century--Jerome Colloredo, Archbishop
of Salzburg--Mozart’s Letter to Him--The Father’s Solicitude for
His Son--Paternal Advice--New Compositions--Incidents of his
Journey--Meets With Opposition--Secret Enemies--His Ambition to
Elevate the Character of the German Opera--Disappointments--His
Description of German “Free City” Life--Meeting With Stein--In His
Uncle’s Family--“Baesle”--Meeting With the Cannabichs--Attachment
for Rosa Cannabich--Influence of this Attachment on His Music--The
Weber Family--The _Non so d’onde viene_--Circumstances of its
Composition.
In a letter written in the year 1776, Wolfgang complained to Father
Martini, of Bologna, that he was living in a city in which musicians
met with little success; that the theater there had no persons of good
ability, because persons of good ability wished good pay; and he adds:
“Generosity is a fault of which we cannot be accused.” He informs the
reverend father that he was engaged writing Church music and chamber
music, but that the pieces had to be always very short, because such
was the desire of the archbishop, and he closes thus: “Alas, that we
are so far away from you, dearest master. Were we nearer to each other,
how much I would have to say to you.”
It is easy to see that the young _maestro_ felt impelled to go where he
might breathe a freer air, and prove by his deeds the power that was in
him. As early as in the summer of 1773, the father and son were again
together in Vienna, but not even the shrewdness of the father, with all
his experience, could devise any way to the success he desired there,
and Wolfgang himself wrote from Munich to his mother that she should
not wish for their immediate return, for she knew well enough how much
he needed a breathing spell, and he says: “We shall be soon enough with
----.”
They lived at home, father, son and daughter, a happy family in their
own narrow circle. They had, we are glad to say, some true and trusted
friends with whom they employed the little leisure which they could
afford to take, in the parlor games customary at the time, and other
simple pleasures. And this leisure was small indeed, for they had to
try to make both ends meet by writing musical compositions and giving
instruction in music. The father’s salary amounted to only forty
marks, and the son’s to only twenty-five marks a month. No wonder he
wrote: “generosity is not our fault.” But their sense of refinement
was offended yet more by the rude manner and the coarse tone prevalent
in the place. The Salzburgian was looked upon as a fool, and the merry
Andrews of Vienna mimicked his dialect. The mode of life and the
views of the higher and lower “noblesse” were of a nature still less
agreeable and refined. Mozart, who much preferred even the manners
of the “boorish Bavarians,” as they were then universally called, to
that of the Salzburg nobility, relates, in his letters, how one of the
latter expressed so much surprise and crossed himself so frequently at
the Munich opera, that they were greatly ashamed of him.
It is notorious that Mozart’s real colleagues, the musicians, had
a well-merited reputation during the last century, as “drunkards,
gamesters and dissipated, good-for-nothing fellows.” This was one of
the reasons which inspired him with so great a hatred for Salzburg.
“No decent man,” he writes, “could live in such company.” He was
ashamed of them, and of the coarse and dissolute music of the court.
Michael Haydn himself, Joseph Haydn’s brother, a very clever composer,
was not free from at least one of these vices. There was no one in
Salzburg but knew Haydn’s little drinking room in the _Stiftskeller_
(monastery wine-cellar). On one occasion, when the organist of one of
the city churches, drunk on the organ-seat, was struck with apoplexy,
Wolfgang’s father wrote to him asking him to divine who had been
appointed his successor. And he proceeds: “Herr Haydn--all laughed.
He is, indeed, an expensive organist. He drinks a quart of wine after
every part of the mass. He sends Lipp (another organist) to attend the
other services--another man,” he adds forcibly enough, “who wants a
drink.”
How now could it be said that here, in his own real province, the young
artist found a reward worthy of his fiery spirit and of his already
tested powers?
We have heard himself complain of the theatre, the parlor, and the
orchestra. A wandering troupe performed in the theatre during the
winter. The court-concerts were limited to, at most, an hour, during
which several pieces had to be performed. Masses, even the most solemn,
were not allowed to be longer than three-quarters of an hour. Moreover,
the orchestra was a small one, without as much as even a clarionet.
That, notwithstanding all this; that thus confined and narrowed, and
with means thus limited, Mozart was able to produce works such as we
possess in his masses, symphonies, and chamber music--works which far
surpass those of his contemporaries, and find a worthy place by the
side of the music of the same kind by Joseph Haydn, is a triumph which
bears eloquent testimony to his industry and genius. But he could
never be satisfied in Salzburg. That same genius urged him out into a
purer atmosphere, in which action such as he was capable of, becomes
possible, in which he might come in contact with men of culture. His
resolve was made. The world was before him, and he said to himself: Go
forth!
But in his way stood, bold and dark, the “---- ----” to whom they
had, as Mozart writes, returned soon enough, the “Mufti,” as he
called the man “with the keen glance from his grey eyes, the left
of which was scarcely ever entirely open, and the rigid lines about
the mouth”--Archbishop Jerome Colloredo. This man really could not
appreciate how much he possessed in Mozart. “Let them only ask the
archbishop, he will put them immediately on the right path,” Wolfgang
writes, on one occasion, referring to him concerning a concert which
had met with unusual success in Mannheim. The principal cause of
complaint, however, was the archbishop’s niggardliness. He was thus
rigorous with those in his employ, lest they should make any claims
upon him. Mozart wrote, at a later period: “I did not venture on
contradiction, because I came straight from Salzburg, where the faculty
of contradiction has been lost by long abstinence from using it.”
Whatever he composed was wrong, found fault with, and unsparingly. On
one occasion, the archbishop had the face to tell Mozart that he did
not understand anything of his art, and that he should first go to the
Conservatory at Naples to learn something about music, and this to
Mozart, the Academician of Bologna and Verona, the far-famed composer
of operas! We are informed that he never flattered Mozart except when
he wanted something; and Leopold told Padre Martini that, otherwise,
the archbishop never paid Wolfgang a farthing for his compositions.
Suffering from the mania of the time, Jerome preferred the Italians in
matters of music, and had surrounded himself with Italian musicians.
The Mozarts were, in consequence, set back in every way and made the
victims of “persecution and contempt.” All the elements of variance
were here. A breach was inevitable; for on the one side were the
father and son, both very frank, clear-headed and witty; Wolfgang,
with something in him of the impetuosity of youth, conscious of his
power and of the opinion which the world had of him, a consciousness
which he took no trouble to conceal; on the other the archbishop, whose
peculiarity it was to allow himself to be impressed by persons of fine,
handsome figure, but not to respect little, insignificant-looking
people like the slender, twenty-year-old Mozart.
We have Mozart’s letter to the archbishop. It saw the light--being
found among the official papers of the archbishopric--just one hundred
years after it was written. It gives us a great deal of information
concerning a circumstance which had a great influence on Mozart’s life,
and which was finally the cause of the most decided catastrophes to
him. It shows us, at the same time, what was the entire tone of the
period, and especially of Salzburg subserviency. Mozart writes:
“TO HIS ILLUSTRIOUS GRACE, MOST REVEREND
PRINCE OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE:
_Most Gracious Liege-Lord and Herr Herr!_
I dare not trouble your illustrious grace with any minute description
of our pitiful circumstances. My father has most humbly, upon his
honor and conscience, and with all truth, called the attention of
your illustrious grace to those circumstances in his most humble
petition presented to your grace on the 14th of March of this
year. But as your illustrious grace’s most gracious and propitious
decision, which was hoped for, did not come to him, my father would
have most humbly begged your illustrious grace, as long ago as the
month of June, most graciously to allow us to make a journey of a few
months, to the end that we might in this way do something to help
ourselves in our necessity, were it not that your illustrious grace
most graciously ordered that all your grace’s musicians should keep
themselves in readiness for the occasion of his imperial majesty’s
[Joseph II] passage through your grace’s city. After this, my father
most humbly asked this same permission, but your illustrious grace
refused it to him, and most graciously expressed a conviction that
I, who am only half engaged in your grace’s service, might travel
alone. Our circumstances are those of urgent need. My father resolved
to send me on my way alone. But here also your illustrious grace
interposed some most gracious objections. Most gracious liege-lord
and _Herr Herr_, parents laboriously strive to put their children in
a position such that they may earn their own daily bread; and this is
a duty which they owe to themselves and to the state.
The more talents children have received from God, the greater are
their obligations to make use of those talents for the amelioration
of their own and their parents’ circumstances, to assist their
parents and to take heed for their own advancement and for the
future. The gospels teach us thus to put our talents out at interest.
I therefore, in conscience, owe it to God to be grateful to my father
who spends untiringly his every hour on my education; to lighten his
burthen; and to care for my sister; for it would pain me greatly if,
after spending so many hours at the piano, she should not be able to
turn what she has so laboriously learned to account.
Your illustrious grace will, therefore, most graciously allow me to
ask most humbly for my dismissal from your grace’s service, as I
am forced to make use of the month of September this fall which is
just beginning, so that I may not be exposed to the inclemency of
the severe weather of the cold months which follow so soon upon it.
Your illustrious grace will not take this most humble petition of
mine ungraciously, as your grace most graciously pronounced against
me three years ago, when I asked leave to travel to Vienna, told me
that I had nothing to hope for, and that I would do better to seek my
fortune in some other place. Most humbly do I thank your illustrious
grace for all the high favors I have received from your grace, and
with the flattering hope of being able to serve your illustrious
grace with greater approval when I shall have reached man’s estate, I
commend myself to the favor and grace of
Your most illustrious Grace,
My most gracious liege-lord and _Herr Herr_.
Most humbly and obediently,
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART.
[_Addressed_]
TO HIS ILLUSTRIOUS GRACE
THE ARCHBISHOP OF SALZBURG, etc., etc.;
The most humble and obedient petition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”
It is no easy matter to imagine all that must have occurred before the
father resolved to permit his son to take a step which might possibly
cost himself both his position and his livelihood, but it may all be
very readily divined from the following passages in the Mozart letters.
The son writes: “I hope that you meet with less vexation now than when
I was in Salzburg, for I must confess that I was its sole cause.”
And again: “I was badly treated, I did not deserve it. You naturally
sympathized with me, but too much. That was the principal reason why I
hastened away from Salzburg.” And the father: “You are, indeed, right,
my dear son. I felt the greatest vexation at the contemptible treatment
which you received. It was that that preyed on my heart so, that kept
me from sleeping, that was ever in my thoughts, and which would have
surely ended by consuming me entirely.” And here follows an outburst
characteristic of the feelings of the Mozarts: “My dear son, when you
are happy, so am I, so is your mother, so is your sister, so are we
all. And that you will be happy I hope from God’s grace, and through
the confidence I place in your sensible behavior.”
And, indeed, this last was the only cause of solicitude the father had
when his son started on his journey. Not that he had any doubt as to
the young man’s character or goodness of heart. He had as much faith
in both as in the “superiority of his son’s talents.” What alarmed him
was Wolfgang’s want of experience. Wolfgang had never traveled alone.
And who had better opportunity to know the extent of this inexperience
than the faithful mentor who, as the son himself confesses, had always
served him like a friend, nay like a servant? The father’s utterances
here are full of beauty. They show us many a trait characteristic of
the whole life of the yet youthful but immortal prodigy of art.
The father writes: “You know, my son, that you will have to do
everything for yourself, and that you are not accustomed to get along
entirely without the help of others; that you are not very familiar
with the different kinds of coin, and that you have not the least idea
how to pack your things, or to do much else which must be done.” He
continues: “I would also remind you, that a young man, even if he had
dropped down from heaven and stood head and shoulders above all the
masters of art, will never get the consideration due him. To win this,
he must have reached a certain age, and so long as a person is under
twenty, enviers, enemies and persecutors will find matter for blame
in his youth, in the little importance attached to him and his small
experience.” And later: “My son, in all your affairs, you are hasty
and headlong. Your whole character has changed since your childhood
and boyhood years. As a child, you were rather serious than childish.
Now, as it seems to me, you are too quick to answer every one in a
jesting way at the very first provocation; and that is the first step
towards familiarity which one must avoid in this world, if he cares to
be respected. It is your good heart’s fault that you can see no defect
in the person who pays you a clever compliment, who professes esteem
for you and lauds you to the heavens, and that you take him into your
confidence and give him your love.”
Even if all this paternal chiding was provoked only by the one
special cause of which we shall soon have something to say, it is,
nevertheless, true that the father here touches upon some of Mozart’s
characteristic traits, especially his confiding goodness of heart,
his wit and jocoseness in everything, which were led into wrong
channels by the quickness of his mind. The parting of father and son
was heart-rending indeed. We are sure that the words in which Leopold
Mozart describes his feelings, when Wolfgang, in company with his
mother, started out on his travels in September, 1777, came from the
very bottom of a father’s heart. “After you had gone,” he writes,
“I went, very tired, up the steps and threw myself in a chair. I
tried hard to restrain myself on the occasion of our leave-taking,
that I might not make our separation still more painful, and in my
excitement I forgot to give my son a father’s blessing. I ran to the
window and begged a blessing upon both of you, but I did not see you
go out through the gate, and we could not but think that you had
already passed it, because I sat there a long time without thinking of
anything.” Nannerl cried so much that she was taken sick, and it was
evening before either she or her father had so far recovered from the
shock as to be able to distract themselves by attending to some little
home duties, and enjoying what remained to them of domestic bliss.
“Thus did this sad day pass--a sadder day than I believed life could
ever bring me,” says the father, in his account of it, when answering
the first letter he received from his son after his departure.
Wolfgang himself was very cheerful. He was out again in the bracing
atmosphere of freedom. His confidence in human nature, the result of
inexperience, hid from his eyes the thorns of life which were destined
henceforth to sting him till he died. Trusting in his talents and his
good will, he thought that his pathway would be strewn with roses. His
father, in a somewhat gloomy excess of zeal writes him: “Cling to God,
I beg you; you must do it, my dear son, for men are all knaves.”...
“The older you get and the more you have to do with men, the more will
you learn this bitter truth. Think only of the many promises, all the
sycophancy and the hundred other things we have met with, and then draw
your own conclusions as to how much you can build on human aid.” All
Salzburg wondered and revolted at the course pursued by the archbishop,
for young Mozart got his dismissal immediately and in a very unkind and
ungracious way. The father, indeed, was allowed to retain his position,
but the dissatisfaction of the court at the loss was very great, for
strangers found nothing to admire but Wolfgang. One of the cathedral
canons afterwards admitted this to Mozart himself, and the steward of
the household, Count Firmian, who was very fond of Mozart, gives the
following account of a conversation overheard by him while waiting on
the court:
“We have now one musician less. Your illustrious grace has lost a great
performer.”
“How so?”
“He is the greatest piano-player I ever heard in my life. As a
violinist he served your illustrious grace exceedingly well, and he was
besides a very good composer.”
The archbishop was silent.
All this was a rich source of satisfaction to Wolfgang, but it did
not lessen his father’s cares. The preparations for his journey
were of course very carefully made, even in the minutest details,
especially in what related to his compositions, that he might “be able
to show what he could do in everything:” in concertos for the piano
and violin, sonatas, airs and ensemble pieces of the most various
kind. The sonatas for the piano alone--as we would remark here to the
lovers of music--known as Nos. 279-284 in L. Kœchel’s “_Chron. themat.
Verzeichniss_,” are, as to their form, perfectly full of beauty, and
the matter of them frequently interests us by the distinctness of its
almost speaking pictures of life. More significant and important yet
is the sonata in C major. Its _Andante cantabile_, in F major (3/4),
is a dramatic scene which, although on a small scale, clearly bespoke
the hand of the future composer of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_. And
the variations with which the sonata in A major (6/8) begins were
hardly equaled by Beethoven in his Op. 26. The trio in the minuet, on
the other hand, was a full scene from life, taken from the Carnival to
which the closing _Alla Turca_ alludes. Compared with these youthful
works of Mozart--for they belong to the end of the year 1770--what are
the sonatas of Ph. E. Bach, and even of Joseph Haydn?
The travelers had also, with the assistance of the father, made every
other preparation for their journey. The boot-tree or stretcher, even,
which was, at the time, a necessary part of a traveler’s outfit, was
not forgotten. And yet their first stopping-place was near enough. The
father had once before knocked at the doors of Munich. Now the son went
to seek his fortune by calling personally on the good-hearted elector.
We can here, of course, touch only on the principal incidents of
Mozart’s journey, on those which influenced his subsequent life, and
must refer the reader for more detailed information to his letters. We
find in them the clearest and most charming descriptions of his life.
They appeal to our deepest feelings; for they are addressed, almost
without exception, to the father. The father’s answers had to be very
explicit, for there was ample room for advice and timely precaution,
much to deter from or to make good again, as occasion required, and
not a little place for admonition. In every one of them, we find the
reflection of the solid worth of these two faithful souls, a worth
which was destined to find a really ideal and transfigured echo in
Mozart’s music. This journey had for effect the development of Mozart’s
inmost nature. It gave his artistic creations that sovereign and
catholic character for which they are so remarkable.
Wolfgang wrote some letters home, when he reached the first station. In
one of them we read: “We live like princes. There is nothing wanting
to complete our happiness but papa. But, please God, all will be well
with us.”... “I hope that papa will be cheerful and as well satisfied
as I am. I can put up very well with my lot. I am a second papa. I look
after everything. I have undertaken to pay the postillion, too, for I
can talk to the fellows better than mamma can. Papa should take care
of his health, and remember that the mufti J. C. [Jerome Colloredo]
is a mean fellow, but that God is compassionate, merciful and kind.”
No sooner, however, had they reached their first stopping-place than
things began to wear a different aspect. Mozart received, indeed, a
warm reception. There was no lack of admiration for, or of recognition
of, his genius. But he met with no success. His receipts were small,
and employment hard to find. The innkeeper, Albert, of the sign of
the “Black Eagle” (the hotel Detzer of the present), received them.
Albert was known as the “learned host,” and took no small interest in
art. Mozart first called on the manager of the theatre, count Seeau.
He thought that if he had only one more opera, all would be well with
him. He next visited the bishop of Chiemsee, to whom he owed it that he
had the opportunity to compose the _Verstellte Gaertnerin_. Everybody
knew of his arrival, and advised him to go direct to the elector, who
was a patron of the fine arts, and esteemed Mozart himself very highly.
But many days did not pass before Wolfgang discovered that the bishop
had had a private conversation at table, in Nymphenburg, from which he
gathered that he could accomplish very little in Munich. The bishop
said: “It is too soon yet. He must go; he must take a trip to Italy
and become famous. I refuse him nothing; but it is too soon yet.” The
father was right; the want of good will hides itself too frequently
behind the mask of “youth and too little experience.” And yet, we
must ask, who was so much more celebrated than this young _Cavaliere
filarmonico_? The electoress, too, shrugged her shoulders, but promised
to do her best.
Mozart, however, insisted on going to Nymphenburg. The elector wanted
to bear mass just before going to hunt. Mozart thus dramatizes the
scene in one of his letters:
“With your electoral highness’s permission, I would fain most humbly
cast myself at your highness’s feet and offer my services to your
highness.”
“Well, have you left Salzburg for good?”
“Yes, for good, your electoral highness.”
“But why for good? Have you quarreled?”
“Well, please your electoral highness, I only asked leave to take a
trip. This was refused me, and hence I was compelled to take this step,
although I had long contemplated leaving, for Salzburg is no place for
me.”
“My God, and you a young man!”
“I have been in Italy three times. I have written three operas, am a
member of the Academy of Bologna, and have been obliged to undergo an
examination on which many a master has been obliged to work and to
sweat over for four or five hours. I got through it in an hour. This
may prove to your highness that I am able to be of service at any
court. My only wish is to serve your electoral highness, who is himself
a great....”
“Yes, my dear child, but I am sorry to say that there is not a place
vacant. If there was only a vacancy.”
“I assure your highness that I would certainly do honor to Munich.”
“Well, it’s of no use to talk that way, there’s not a place vacant.”
We have here given the whole dialogue. It is a typical example of the
way in which princes and magnates treated Mozart through the whole of
his short life. There never was “a vacancy” for him. Real genius finds
no place to lay its head. It would seem as if its god-given nature were
fated to find nothing earthly to cling to.
But, to continue. Spite of this positive declaration, Mozart was not
deterred from trying it again at court, and this spite of the fact
that his father had written to him that the elector could not create a
new place without any more ado, and that, besides, there were always
secret enemies in such cases, who prevented a thing of that kind out
of anxiety to save their own skin. Yet friends, true and false, found
means to flatter him. First of all, there was count Seeau, who had a
pecuniary interest in the theater, and understood what advantage a
fertile mind like that of Mozart might be to him. He knew how to amuse
Mozart, whom, on the occasion of the performance of his first opera,
he saw to be all fire and flame, with fair hopes: Mozart was to write
a German opera of the heroic kind, and this appealed powerfully to
his patriotic feelings. He himself next stirred up his own friends.
A number of those interested in him, it was proposed, should club
together, and enable him, by a regular monthly contribution, to remain
in Munich until he had written such a work, and thus obtained a
foothold. Seeau had, indeed, expressed himself to the effect that he
would like to retain Mozart, if he had only “a little assistance from
home.” Mozart wanted to pledge himself to write four German operas a
year, partly comic and partly serious, and estimated that his profits
from them would be at least eight hundred and fifty marks, or about two
hundred dollars; that count Seeau would give at least five hundred, and
would be always invited--and how much there was to be gained here! And
he adds: “I am very much liked here even now; but how popular I should
be if I could only elevate the German opera! and this I certainly would
be able to do, for I felt the greatest desire to write when I heard the
German vaudeville.”
“Wolfgang’s first castles in the air!” the father must have said to
himself when he read these lines. The “learned host” who had taken
the matter of contributions in hand with honest zeal and with a true
interest in young Mozart, could not find so many as ten persons to give
a trifle over a ducat a month to aid in the good cause. Yet it must be
remembered that the German national taste for art was fast awakening
together with the freedom of German national, intellectual life--the
result of many causes, but especially of the deeds and exploits of Old
Fritz (Frederick the Great); and, that a German national opera was
among the ideals both of princes and artists--at least of those of them
who shared in the broader and nobler thought of the period. We shall
have something to say on this point further on.
Thus are we able to understand Wolfgang’s warm attachment for the
German opera--and, indeed, had not the prima donna Kaiser “drawn many
and many a tear from him”--as well as his arduous endeavor to obtain
a firm and permanent foothold in Munich. But Wolfgang’s success as a
virtuoso made the father believe in him completely, and inspired him
with confidence, spite of this first want of success. The son writes:
“At the very last, I played my own _cassation_ in B major. Every one
wondered. I played as if I were the greatest fiddler in Europe.” To
which the father answered: “You don’t know yourself, my son, how well
you play the violin when you only do yourself justice and care to play
with heart and spirit, just as if you were the first violinist in
Europe.” A _cassation_ is a piece of music in the form of Beethoven’s
septett, but intended for a solo-instrument, and especially for
serenades.
But he was doomed to disappointment. To see how the father watched over
the credit of his son who, in his first endeavors to attain success,
had fallen into a condition of dependence entirely unworthy of him,
and thus become a laughing-stock for the archbishop; and how the son
excused his inconsiderate and inordinate zeal by pleading his passion
for the opera, we must consult the letters of both. Wolfgang, with his
characteristic amiability, says: “I speak from my heart, and just as
I feel. If papa convinces me that I am in the wrong, I shall submit,
however reluctantly; for I am out of myself the moment I even hear an
opera spoken of.”
They left Munich on the 11th of October, 1777--that is, a full
fortnight after their arrival. The father reminds them that neither
“fair words, compliments nor _bravissimos_ pay the postmaster or
the host.” “Do all you can to earn some money, and be as careful as
possible about your expenses. The object of your journey is, and must
be, either to obtain employment or to earn money.” This last, however,
was not their object in the rich and free imperial city of Augsburg,
whither they first directed their steps, because it was their father’s
birthplace. They received a warm welcome there from the father’s
brother, like Wolfgang’s grandfather, a book-binder. Mozart’s playing
and composition, as well as himself, here as everywhere else, met with
the greatest recognition, both in public and private, but he did not
succeed in giving a concert. The “patricians” were not in funds. And
when the Protestant patricians invited them to their boorish academy
(to the _vornehmen Bauernstub Akademie_), the total amount of the
present made was--two ducats. “I’m very sure,” the father says, “they
would scarcely have gotten me into their beggarly academy;” and, we may
add: “The prophet is without honor in his own country.”
But he has erected the best possible monument to those Gothamites, so
foolishly proud of their old imperial-city denizenship. In Mozart’s
letters to his father, we get an exquisitely faithful picture of “free
city” life and “free city” men, with the exaggerated self-consciousness
and self-satisfaction of inherited possession and honor, so frequently
met with in them that even mere youths seemed almost in their dotage.
One cannot but grow merry at the expense of that narrow little world.
“His grace,” the chamberlain to the exchequer of the town, Herr von
Langenmantel the “my lords,” his sons, and his “gracious” young wife,
fare all the worse under the lash of the Mozart’s well-known “wicked
tongue,” because Mozart might reasonably have hoped to find a becoming
welcome in his father’s birthplace. Even the golden spur given Mozart
by Pope Ganganelli did more to charm these “free citizens” than it did
to remind them of the honors so young an artist had already won, and
that he was, in consequence, the peer of any one of them. One officer
of the imperial army, especially, who ignored this fact, was very
properly snubbed, and taught the lesson that Mozart was not to be made
sport of. We read in one of the father’s letters, “Whenever I thought
of your journey to Augsburg, I could not help thinking of Wieland’s
Abderites; a man should get an opportunity to see _in natura_ what in
reading he considers a pure ideal.” But Mozart had here the best of
opportunities to pursue those studies which the artist needs, in order
to paint from life. We are reminded of his experiences, like those in
Augsburg, by the brutal, self-destructive, ridiculous haughtiness of
Osmin in the “Elopement from the Seraglio.”
Mozart’s meeting with the celebrated piano manufacturer Stein, to whom
he left it to guess who he was, was a very cheerful meeting, and the
manner of it such as Mozart delighted in. He again characterizes as
“bad” the playing of Stein’s eight-year-old little girl, afterwards
Frau Streicher, who played so honorable and womanly a part in
Beethoven’s life. His intercourse with his uncle’s family, in which
the presence of his niece, (_das Baesle_), a young girl of eighteen,
served somewhat to exercise his affections, and was the occasion,
afterwards, of a series of jocose letters between them. He writes:
“I can assure you, that, were it not that it holds a clever uncle and
aunt and a charming ‘Baesle,’ I should regret exceedingly having come
to Augsburg.” “Baesle” and he seemed made for one another, he thought;
“for,” as he said, “she, too, has a little badness in her. The two of
us banter the people, and we have very amusing times.”
Their separation was of such a nature that the father had the “sad
parting of the two persons, melting into tears, Wolfgang and Baesle,”
painted on a panel in their room. All else concerning this sojourn in
Augsburg must be looked for in the letters themselves, where the reader
will find some exquisite genre painting.
“How I like Mannheim? As well as I can like any place where ‘Baesle’ is
not,” we soon hear him answer; for Mannheim, the home of the elector,
Karl Theodore, who was as fond of reveling as he was of art, was the
next nearest destination our travelers had in view in order to attain
Wolfgang’s main object. True, he did not attain his object here either,
but he had there that first genuine heart-experience which helped to
mature his character as much as his mind was already developed beyond
his years.
His next meeting was with the electoral _Capellmeister_, Cannabich, who
knew him when he (Mozart) was a child. He was “extraordinarily polite,”
but the orchestra stared at him. As he writes: “They think that because
I am so little and young, I have not much that is great in me; but they
will soon see.” And the mother, soon after: “You cannot imagine how
highly Wolfgang is esteemed here, both by musicians and others. They
all say that he has no equal. They fairly deify his compositions.” And
yet, so far, he had composed nothing here that could be called really
great, no opera; and to write one was the chief reason why Mozart
protracted his stay in Mannheim so long. Karl Theodore was, above all,
the promoter and protector of those who endeavored to create a German
national operatic stage, and his orchestra, under the leadership of
Cannabich, was so exquisitely good that it and old Fritz’s tactics were
considered the most significant and noteworthy phenomena in Europe at
the time. Moreover, the elector was very affable with his musicians,
who were everywhere looked upon as “decent people”--a complete contrast
with those of Salzburg.
The pleasure-seeking tone of the court had, indeed, invaded the middle
classes of society, also; but what did Mozart’s pure heart know of
that? On the contrary, he was destined to find, even in voluptuous
Mannheim, a love as beautiful as it was pure.
His heart was now completely open to that irresistible impulse of
the human breast. Even when in Munich composing, his _Gaertnerin aus
Liebe_, he once said to his “dearest sister”: “I implore you, dearest
sister, do not forget your promise; that is, to make the visit, you
know, ... for I have my reasons. I beg of you to make my compliments
there, ... but most emphatically ... and most tenderly ... and ... O
... well, I should not trouble myself about it. I know my sister too
well; she is tenderness itself.” His trifling with “Baesle” had left no
impression on his heart of hearts. She was both in mind and culture too
much of the _bourgeoise_, too immature to captivate him. His jocose
correspondence with her affords sufficient proof of this. But now we
see that Cupid himself directed his pencil.
Young Mozart next informs us of the merry times he had at the houses of
the musicians of a city, in which, as a writer of the times says, “the
ladies,” were beautiful, sweet and charming. We soon find him again,
“as usual,” at Cannabich’s, for supper. Of an evening of this kind,
spent there, he writes: “I, John Chrysostome Amadeus Wolfgang Sigismund
Mozart, plead guilty, that, day before yesterday and yesterday, as I
have done frequently, I did not come home until midnight, and that
from ten o’clock, in the presence and society of Cannabich, his wife
and daughter, of Messrs. Ramm and Lang [two members of the orchestra],
I have made rhymes, and not of the most exalted nature, in words and
thoughts but not in deeds. I would not have acted in so godless a way
were it not that Lisel had excited me to it, and I must confess that
I found real pleasure in it.” On one occasion, at the house of the
flute-player, Wendling, he was in such excellent humor, and played so
well, that when he had finished, he had to kiss the ladies. He tells
us that, in the case of the daughter, he found this a very easy and
pleasant task. She had been the elector’s sweetheart, and, as Schubart
says, in his _Aesthetik der Tonkunst_, the “greatest beauty in the
orchestra.”
But Rosa Cannabich “a very sweet and beautiful girl,” as he writes of
her himself, fettered him with the complete irresistibleness of her
innocent charms more than could even this blooming flower. And this
was the beginning of those sweet love-songs which now flowed in pure
tones from his poet-heart; and, hence, this event marks a period in
our artist’s life. He writes, shortly after his arrival in Mannheim:
“She plays the piano very sweetly, and to make him (the father) a fast
friend, I am writing a sonata for mademoiselle, his daughter.” When
the first _allegro_ was finished, a young musician asked him how he
intended to write the _andante_. “I shall fashion it after mademoiselle
Rosa’s character,” he answered; and he informs us further: “When I
played it, it gave extraordinary satisfaction. It is even so. The
_andante_ is just like her.”
What was she like? A painter subsequently wrote of her thus: “How
many such beautiful, priceless hours did heaven grant me in sweet
intercourse with Rosa Cannabich. Her memory is an Eden to my heart;”
and Wolfgang now wrote of her that, for her age, she was a girl of
much mind, and of demure and serious disposition, one who said little,
but that little in an affable, nay, charming manner. In Naples stands
Psyche, a rose just opening. Mozart possessed the same refined, antique
feeling for the soul-statue of man. Here, before his clear-seeing
artist eye, the bud that in it lay was fully blown. This fruitful
heart-life was destined soon to sow deeper germs in his own soul, and
to cause his own art to bloom fully forth.
Here, accordingly, we discover one of those turning points in the
development of Mozart’s inner nature, which had much to do with his
intellectual growth, inasmuch as his passion disclosed to him for the
first time the meaning of the homely truth, that both life and art are
serious things. We proceed to show how this effect was produced.
The court had heard him in the very first week of his stay in
Mannheim. “You play incomparably well,” said the elector to him.
Shortly after Mozart spoke to the elector as “his good friend,” and
the latter began: “I have heard that you wrote an opera in Munich.”
“Yes, your highness,” Mozart replied, “I commend myself as your grace’s
obedient servant. My highest wish is to write an opera I beg your
highness not to forget me quite I know German also, and may God be
praised and thanked for it.” “That is not at all impossible,” answered
his most serene highness, and so Mozart made his arrangements for a
longer sojourn in Mannheim. He took some pupils, and as we saw when
speaking of the pretty Rosa Cannabich, he wrote sonatas, or variations
for them. For this he needed a copyist But copying was, as he once
complained to his father, very dear in Mannheim, and he was, therefore,
overjoyed, copying being to himself a real torment, after a while--it
was at the beginning of 1778--to find a man who performed that task for
him, in consideration of his instructing his daughter in music.
This man was Fridolin von Weber, brother of the father of C. M. von
Weber, and at that time, a prompter and a copyist in the Mannheim
theater. The daughter’s name was Aloysia, later the celebrated singer,
Madame Lange.
The family had seen better days, but the father’s passion for the stage
had led him into these straits, where he had for years to support
a family of six children on an annual salary of three hundred and
fifty marks. But he made such good use of his knowledge of music that
his second daughter, who was at this time--she was in her fifteenth
year--an excellent singer, cooperated with him at the theater, and thus
doubled her father’s salary. Mozart as a musician felt at home in the
family--for the eldest daughter, Josepha became afterwards Frau Hofer,
for whom the “Queen of the Night” in the _Magic Flute_ was written--and
so the sympathy of his good heart was soon awakened. “She needs nothing
but action, and then she will make a good prima donna on any stage.
Her father is a thoroughly honorable son of our German fatherland. He
brings his children up well, and that is the very cause why the girl
is persecuted here.” Thus did he sum up the chief points in this
affair in the first news he sent home. Subsequently he wrote _a propos_
of a performance at the house of the princess of Orange: “I may pass
over her singing with a single word--it was superb!” And at the close
of his letter: “I have the inexpressible pleasure to have formed the
acquaintance of thoroughly honest and really Christian people. I only
regret that I did not know them long ago.”
This tells the whole story. He henceforth devoted nearly all his
leisure to the family, rehearsed with the young vocalist all her
arias, procured her opportunities to have her music heard, and had the
satisfaction to know that Raaff himself, the most celebrated tenor in
Mannheim, and even in Germany, declared that she sang not like a pupil,
but like an adept in the vocal art.
One incident here deserves to be specially mentioned, for it had a
decided, far-reaching and direct influence on Mozart’s action, and on
his development as an artist. He had set about writing an aria for
the great tenor already mentioned, in order to win him over for his
contemplated opera. “But,” he writes, with the utmost frankness, “the
beginning of it seemed to me too high for Raaff, and I liked it too
well to change it. I therefore resolved to write the aria for Miss
Weber. I laid it aside, and resolved on other words for Raaff. But to
no purpose. I found it impossible to write. The first aria haunted my
mind and would not away, and then I decided to write it out to suit
Miss Weber exactly.”
What was the import of those words which he selected simply because an
air to the same words, composed by the London Bach, had pleased him so
much and kept forever ringing in his ears, and because he wanted to try
whether, spite of everything, he was not able to write an aria entirely
unlike Bach’s? What were the words?
A king orders a youth who has made an attempt upon his life to be
led to execution. But when he sees the young culprit, he immediately
exclaims: “What is this strange power that agitates and moves me? His
face, his eye, his voice! My heart palpitates; every fibre of my body
quivers! Through all my feelings I look for the cause of this strange
effect, and cannot find it. What is it, O God, what is it that I
feel?” And hereupon follows that very aria, _Non so d’onde viene_:
“I know not whence this tender feeling. Mere pity cannot produce a
change so sudden!” Was not this the condition of Mozart’s own heart?
He imagined that pity, and pity only, for the condition of the Weber
family, and, at most, an interest in the “beautiful, pure voice,”
and wonder at the combination of so much ability with such extreme
youth, bound his heart to their home; but it was not that; it was the
undivined depths which the first feeling of love opens before us; the
wonder, the charm, the trembling, glowing exultation, the heart-felt,
floating, exquisite bliss which with a longing foreboding discovers
us to ourselves for the first time, and which, in the throes of our
heart of hearts, seems to give a new birth to every drop of blood in
our veins. In such a state, we may imagine, it was that he sang this:
_Non so d’onde viene_--not as a musician, not as an artist, but urged
thereto by that powerful, irresistible impulse of the heart which, in
the last instance, begets in us all our truest life. And as Pygmalion,
in a fit of such fiery ardor, moved the marble so Mozart melted
in this first fire of the fullest and most human of feelings, the
elemental substances of all music, and gave it what it hitherto had
possessed only in isolated cases and accidentally, an impression full
of soul, a meaning to its every tone.
It is hard to find before Mozart, except it be in national melodies,
anything of this living, animated, thoroughly personal expression of
feeling, such as we possess in this _Non so d’onde viene_. It is like
Aloysia’s picture itself. Here we find a language plainer and more
universally intelligible than words. It charms and enchants us; looks
us in the face; speaks to us with an expression as if we alone were
addressed. This is the highest, the very highest effect of art, and
this the time when it becomes a second, an ideal, a transfigured life.
The language which Mozart thus acquired for his art, he never forgot or
dropped. He embellished it, amplified it, deepened it, until he reached
that expression of the soul in which, like the melody in the _Magic
Flute_, the soul itself stands face to face with its Creator, and in
the calmness of its bliss, feels that it is “the image of God,” and His
portion forever.
We here close the account of Mozart’s inner awakening. We may now
compare with his first heart-trials his first intellectual exploits,
the very beginning of which was this aria, _Non so d’onde viene_, to
write which he was inspired by his love for Aloysia Weber.
CHAPTER III.
1779-1781.
IDOMENEO.
New Disappointments--Opposition of the Abbe Vogler--Mozart and the
Poet Wieland--Wieland’s Impressions of Mozart--German Opera and
Joseph II.--The Weber Family--Aloysia Weber--Mozart’s Plans--His
Father Opposes them and his Attachment for Aloysia--Mozart’s Music
and Heart-trials--In Paris--Disappointments there--Contrast Between
Parisian and German Life at this Time--New Intrigues Against
Him--Invited Back to Salzburg--“Faithless” Aloysia--Meeting of
Father and Son--Reception in Salzburg--“King Thamos”--Character of
Mozart’s Music Composed at this Time--Invitation to Compose the
Idomeneo--Success of that Opera--Effect of the Idomeneo on the
Italian Opera.
Mozart’s way is henceforth through the tortuous paths of life.
Disappointment after disappointment meets him. He becomes familiar with
suffering and sorrow, but they point him to a higher goal than that of
mere immediate success. The severest trials of his affections broaden
his heart and make room in it for interests other than his own--an
effect which unveils the real worth of the artist.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that Mozart, at this time, was
completely entangled in the meshes of love. He did not forget his
high vocation, and even in this affair of the heart, his art had no
small influence. He writes to his father: “My dear miss Weber has done
herself and me credit beyond expression, by this aria. All said that
they were never moved by an aria as they were by that one. But then she
sang it as it should be sung.” And yet she “had learned the aria by
herself,” and sang it “in accordance with her own taste.” How well that
taste must have been already cultivated, and what a good teacher the
young composer must have been! But does not Platen sing:
“Mein Herz und deine Stimme
Verstehn sich gar zu gut!”[3]
Aloysia, in later years, contributed more than any other vocalist to
make the world acquainted with Mozart’s music and to teach people to
understand it. And this was necessary. For, even Mozart’s melodies,
which seem to us now so easily and so universally intelligible, found
it, in their own day, and this not unfrequently, no easy matter to
hold their own; and it was only very gradually that they were given the
preference over the incomparably more languid melodies of the time,
especially over the florid style of the Italians.
Even now, he had in this successful effort, the hoped-for opera in
Mannheim, mainly in view; which would thus and through his own efforts
have a _prima donna_ as well as a first tenor. But even here his hopes
were destined to disappointment. We cannot now enter into details, but
must refer the reader to Mozart’s letters to his father. They afford
us a true picture of the culture, musical and other, of a small German
court of that period, which had a very decisive influence on German art.
From these letters we learn, first of all, that the real object of his
visit was kept steadily in view. They tell us of his plans, and give
us detailed accounts of his industry in his art, with here and there
an outburst of the unknown feeling that animated him. Mozart, who was
so fond of doing nothing but “speculating and studying”: that is, who
loved to live only for art and in art, diligently endeavors to find
scholars to instruct and tasks in composition of every description,
even for the flute, for which he had so little liking. He has still
a firm faith in the intention of the elector to charge him with the
composition of at least one German opera. He had heard an opera of that
kind--“Guenther von Schwarzburg,” by Holzbauer--here in Mannheim, and
what would he not have been able himself to produce with artists like
Raaff, his own Weber, and the celebrated Mesdames Wendling, under the
leadership of a Cannabich! At all events he here learned what might
be expected of a good orchestra, just as he had previously learned in
Italy how to write for song.
When, now, Mozart’s prospects for an opera were becoming obscured--we
have no certain information as to the causes of this, but may safely
assume that the well-known abbe Vogler, _Capellmeister_, in Mannheim,
Mozart’s life-long opponent and even enemy, was not without influence
here--and there was little promise of the realization of his hopes,
it would have been very natural that he should think of pursuing his
journey further, especially as Paris was now not so far away. Some of
the musicians of the orchestra, Wendling, Ramm and Lang proposed to
him to go there with him in the Lenten season and give a concert with
him. They thought that their influence would help him to get orders
for all kinds of composition, and even for an opera. And, to keep him,
for the time being, in Mannheim, spite of his having himself written
to his father that the elector did nothing for him, they endeavored to
procure pupils and compositions for him. Added to this was an event
which strongly engaged him to stay, the rehearsal of another German
opera, “Rosamunde,” by Wieland; and it is of interest to learn what
Mozart, with that frankness which characterized him, had to say of
other celebrated men of that period. His description of Wieland can
scarcely be called flattering. He describes him a man, “with a rather
child-like voice, looking steadily through his glasses, with a certain
learned coarseness, and occasionally stupid condescension.” Yet he
excuses the poet because the people of Mannheim looked upon him as
upon an angel dropped down from heaven. Besides, Wieland did not yet
know the artist himself, and may, therefore, not have treated him in a
becoming manner. For, soon afterwards, we read in one of his letters:
“When Herr Wieland had heard me twice, he was charmed. The last time,
after paying me all possible kinds of compliments, he said: ‘It is a
real good fortune for one to have seen you!’--and he pressed my hand.”
Wieland had, by his appeal in the “Essay on the German opera,” in
the _Deutsche Merkur_ in 1775, become the principal representative
of those who were endeavoring to create a German national opera, and
thus Mozart’s meeting with him was of the utmost importance, and had a
great influence in promoting the end contemplated. The performance of
“Rosamunde” was, however, prevented by the sudden death of the elector,
Maximilian III. of Bavaria, as Karl Theodore had to go to Munich about
New Year’s. Still, the idea of a German opera continued a motive power
in Mozart’s soul. He even now writes about the intention of the Emperor
Joseph II. to establish such an opera in Vienna, and of his looking
seriously about for a young _Capellmeister_ with a knowledge of the
German language, one possessed of genius, and able to produce something
entirely new. The man who was one day to compose the “Elopement from
the Seraglio,” and the “Magic Flute,” exclaims: “I think that there is
there a task for me.”
At first, nothing came of this, much as Mozart, in his present
circumstances, might have desired such a position. But it had the
effect of changing his plans entirely, and this change of plans is
worthy of more than passing mention, since it was attended by a
powerful agitation and perturbation of his whole mind and heart.
Besides, it throws a new light on his relations to his “dear Weber.”
The father, who confidently believed that Wolfgang had gone to Paris,
and who had given him excellent advice on every point, telling him
among other things that he would do best to bring his mother back to
Augsburg, suddenly received the information that Wolfgang was not going
to Paris. The Wendlings’ way of living did not please him, he said;
they had “no religion;” besides, he added, he did not see what he was
going to do in Paris; he was not made to give lessons in music. “I am,”
he goes on, “a composer and born to be a _Capellmeister_. I must not
bury the talent with which God has so richly gifted me--I think I may
speak of myself in this way without pride--and I would be burying it by
taking so many scholars.”
What was it that he craved? Why does he lay so much stress on the
talent he possessed? He wanted to go to Italy with the Webers and write
operas there, in which the daughter was to act as prima donna.
He writes: “The thought of being able to help a poor family without
having to do any injustice to myself is a genuine pleasure,” and, in
these few words, he lays his whole soul open before us. Possessed by
this honest, benevolent feeling, he is only half conscious of the wish
to be able to remain with the charming girl and to make her his own at
last, by his ability and his profitable productions as a composer of
Italian operas. Some weeks previously, he had written to a friend in
Salzburg: “That is another mercenary marriage, a marriage for money. I
would not marry in that way. I want to make my wife happy, and not to
make a fortune by her.” At first they only intended to give concerts.
He tells his father: “When I travel with him [Weber] I feel just as
I used to when I traveled with you. And that is the reason I am so
fond of him; because, with the exception of his external appearance,
he is just like you. He has your character and your way of thinking.
I did not need to trouble myself about anything. Even the mending of
my clothes was seen to. In a word, I was served like a prince. I am so
fond of this distressed family, that I desire nothing so much as to be
able to make them happy, and perhaps I may be able to do it.”
It was in memory of his triumph in Italy that he himself counseled
going there, and advised his father that the sooner he renewed his
connections with it the better, so that he might get a commission for
an opera that season. He would pledge his life that her (Aloysia’s)
singing would be a credit to him. They would next visit his home, and
Nannerl would find a companion and friend in Aloysia; for she had in
Mannheim a reputation like that of Nannerl in Salzburg, her father
like his own, and the whole Weber family a reputation like the Mozart
family’s. “You know,” he concludes, “my greatest and most ardent desire
to write operas. I am jealous, to the extent of vexation, of every
person who writes one, and I could cry my eyes out whenever I hear or
see an aria. I have now written to you about everything just as I feel
in my heart. I kiss your hands a thousand times, and until death I
remain your most obedient son. W. A. Mozart.”
But the mother secretly added a post-script to this letter, saying
that Wolfgang would sacrifice everything for the Webers; that it was
true Aloysia sang incomparably well, and that the Wendlings had never
treated her exactly right, but that the moment he had become acquainted
with the Webers, he changed his mind about Paris.
Although the prudent father was “almost beside himself” when he heard
of Wolfgang’s plan of roving about the world with strangers, he begins
by laying before him as clearly and distinctly as possible, how almost
entirely useless his course had been since he started on his journey,
and by a thousand reasons endeavoring to make him see plainly the
impossibility of carrying out his design. His letter is throughout
replete with love for his child, with moderation and discretion, but
he nevertheless makes full use of his right as a father, and does not
even hesitate to employ the incisive irony of his nature. He begins
by telling him that he now recognizes his son only by his goodness
of heart and his easy credulity--one must read this beautiful, long
letter and bear in mind the time and place of its writing to appreciate
it, for it is a monument to the good sense that ruled in Mozart’s
family--that all else is changed, and that for him happy moments like
those he used to have were passed; that it lay with his son alone to
decide now whether he would gradually acquire the greatest renown ever
enjoyed by a musician--and he owed this to his talents--or whether,
ensnared by the beauty of a woman, he would die in a room full of
suffering and hungry children. He says: “The proposition to travel with
Mr. Weber and, mark well, with his two daughters made me almost run
mad.” Thus giddily to play with one’s own and his parents’ honor! And
how, he asks, could a young girl suddenly attain success in Italy where
all the greatest vocalists were to be found? Besides, just then, war
was impending--on account of the Bavarian succession. Moreover, such
plans were plans for small lights, for inferior composers, for daubers
in music. And, at last, he cries out to his son forcibly enough: “Get
thee to Paris. Have the great about thee. _Aut Cæsar, aut nihil!_ The
very thought of seeing Paris should have kept you from indulging in
such foolish whims.”
When Wolfgang received this letter he became ill, such was its effect
upon him. Not one of his most sacred feelings but was touched by
it--his love, his sense of duty, his honor, and his pride in his art.
On one point alone his father had said nothing: his love. To have
spoken of it would have been unavailing. And yet he reminded him of
all his changing inclinations, of his tears for the little Kaiser girl
in Munich, his little episode with “Baesle,” and his _andante_ for
sweet Rosa Cannabich. And so Wolfgang’s child-like feeling bent to his
father’s will, and his inexperience, to his father’s tried and tested
prudence. He had, he assured his parents, done all that he had done,
out of devotion to the family, and they might believe what they liked
about him, provided they did not believe anything bad of him, for he
was “a Mozart and a well-minded Mozart.” And at last, the full sun of
confiding love breaks out again: “After God, my papa! This was my motto
as a child, and I am true to it yet.”
Preparations were immediately made for his departure, and, after a
little, Mozart was in Paris. The sonata for the piano in A minor, which
bears the date “Paris, 1778,” tells us by its energetic rhythm and the
passionate lament of the finale, better than all else, what was going
on, at that time, in Mozart’s soul. It is the most direct language
of a heart bowed down with sorrow, and discloses to us, just as the
aria _Non so d’onde viene_ did, a short time before, a region newly
conquered to poetic expression, in tones. And, indeed, we find that
Mozart’s character had noticeably matured after these first struggles
with his beloved father. The sudden death of his mother in Paris
contributed largely to intensify and elevate this, his earnestness of
mind. Upon its heels followed the painful disappointment, that his love
for the beautiful Aloysia was a mortal one, and he had, at last, though
with great difficulty, to overcome himself and return to Salzburg,
which he so thoroughly hated. Such are the events and experiences which
lead us to the first real masterpiece of our artist, to his _Idomeneo_.
We shall meet again in his later years with the traces of the trials
of these days in Mannheim, and especially of the full recognition of
the worth of a father’s controlling love, as he then most decidedly
experienced it.
To continue our narrative. His father writes: “I have no, no not the
least want of confidence in you, my dear Wolfgang. On the contrary, I
have every confidence in your filial love. On you I base all my hopes.
From the bottom of my heart, I give you a father’s blessing, and remain
until death your faithful father and your surest friend.” Such was the
parting salutation he received from home, when starting on his journey
to a foreign land. And Wolfgang himself writes: “I must say that all
who knew me parted with me reluctantly and with regret.” Aloysia had,
“from goodness of heart,” knit a little memento for him. They all wept
when their “best friend and benefactor departed.” He says: “I must
ask your pardon, but the tears rush to my eyes when I think of it.”
Besides, there was now “neither rhyme nor reason” with him in anything.
He had, however, done his father’s will, and this was some consolation
to him. He soon learned that Raaff had come to Paris; and what pleased
him more, Raaff promised to take care of his dear Aloysia’s future.
In Paris, he met scarcely anything but discomfort and disappointment.
The style of Parisian music did not please him. The Italian arias were
distorted and the indigenous whining in singing grated on his musical
feelings which craved above all the charm of the beautiful. And yet
it was at this time, in Paris, that there was a decided controversy
between two schools of music; between the disciples of Gluck and
Piccini.
We saw above that, in the Italian opera, melody, the florid style
(_Coloratur_) and vocal virtuosity became predominant. But the French
had developed their opera independently. Action and a corresponding
musical recitation in keeping with the words, were considered by them
its chief features. The German Gluck at this point began his work in
France. He was guided here by his own good sense; and by theoretical
demonstrations he proved the weakness of the Italian style. He had
already turned his attention to the sublime tragedies of the Greeks,
and captivated Paris by his _Iphigenia in Aulis_. But as the great
mass always favors trifles and the fashion, this innovation was soon
confronted by a formidable opposition, which after all was only a
further development of the national French opera. Contrary to the
usual French custom, and misled by Rousseau’s influence, the Italian
opera was put above the nation’s own, and a foreigner, the Neapolitan
Piccini, called to Paris to retaliate on Gluck.
We know now who came off the victor in this struggle. Mozart’s feelings
ranged him, at first, on the Italian side--that is, on that side so
far as music alone was concerned. But his German nature told him that
the ultimate source of music lay in that earnestness of feeling and
of intellectual life which is the creator of poetry, and above all of
tragic poetry; and here the Italians were altogether too superficial
to satisfy him. And, then, he involuntarily favored the earnest
endeavors of the French opera, much as he disliked the French music
of the time. And, indeed, the whole mode of the really historic life
of Paris, contrasted with the political wretchedness of Germany and
Italy, must have made a forcible impression on his mind, spite of his
many disagreeable experiences there, and of the many inconveniences
and troubles he had to put up with. And, more than all else, the high
regard in which the stage, at that time, was held, in France, did not
escape his observation. It made a decided and lasting impression on
his mind. In his letters, he subsequently made particular mention of
the fact that the clown was banished even from the comic opera there.
It was not, indeed, until he was about to leave Paris, that he became
conscious of this greater, richer, more vigorous life,--of a life such
as was evidenced ten years later by the great Revolution. But the fact
remains that he did become conscious of it, and, as a consequence, his
artistic taste and aims acquired greater fixedness and value. This was
Mozart’s gain from his stay in Paris at this time. It was a gain of the
mind which richly compensated for his want of pecuniary success.
The detailed account of this sojourn in Paris is to be found in
Mozart’s own letters. It is a very vivid one, very clear, and the
language used is frequently very strong. The letters themselves
constitute a piece of the history of the art, and culture of the Paris
of the time. The death of his mother, the result of a way of living to
which she was not used and of great depression of spirits, had a very
sad effect on his mind. But when he saw that he had no need to worry,
at least about his father, he felt greatly encouraged, and the prospect
of writing an opera for Paris infused new life into the sluggish blood
of our young artist. A cheering evidence of this is to be found in the
so-called French symphony which he wrote just at this time; and we
can see what purely external cause it was that gave it its peculiarly
lively tone. It was the character of the French themselves, with their
peculiar love of life and of the external. All his hearers were carried
away by a lively passage of this kind in the very beginning, but in the
finale he took the liberty with his ingenuous musical audience to crack
a joke like that subsequently played by Haydn in London, by the beating
of the kettle-drum suddenly to attract the attention of the listeners.
Contrary to the custom usual in Paris, he had two violins to begin to
play _piano_, immediately followed by a _forte_. When they were playing
_piano_ a sound of sh-sh-sh--called for a dead silence; but “the moment
his audience heard the _forte_, they broke out into hand-clapping and
applause.” Thus adroitly and immediately did he employ in Paris the
manner of working up a climax which he had noticed in Mannheim.
But envy and intrigue still dogged him. He fairly dazzled the Italian
maestro, Cambini, the very first time he met him. Mozart played one of
Cambini’s quartets from memory, and executed it in such a manner, that
the latter exclaimed: “What a head that man has!” Cambini, after this,
took care that no more of Mozart’s compositions should be performed in
public, and hence he had to resort once more to the giving of lessons
in music, to make ends meet. This was exceedingly difficult in Paris,
and especially for an artist who, as he himself wrote at the time, was,
so to say, “sunk in music--one whose thoughts it always occupied, and
who liked to speculate, study and reflect the live-long day.”
A friend whom he had made during his previous stay in Paris, the
encyclopædist, Grimm, was not of much use to him this time either.
Wolfgang was not the man to see his way in such a city, or in
such society. And Grimm wrote to the father that his son was too
true-hearted, too inactive, too easily captivated, too little versed in
the arts which lead to success. This, indeed, was Mozart’s character.
He knew little of the ways of the world, and he remained ignorant of
them through life. As nothing came of his prospects to write an opera,
his father could not but wish that he might leave Paris entirely,
which, after his mother’s death, he considered a dangerous place for
him.
Wolfgang had turned his eyes towards Munich, where Karl Theodor was now
elector. But the war still kept everything in a state of stagnation
there. In the meantime, a vacancy occurred in Salzburg itself. A
_Capellmeister_ was needed in that city. Many a hint had been given the
father previously, on another occasion, when a vacancy was created by
death. Now he was appealed to again, at first in a round-about way and
then directly. And what was the bait he held out to his son? Aloysia!
The archbishop wanted a prima donna, also, and Wolfgang had already
urged his father to take an interest in her welfare. He did not, at
first, agree to the arrangement, but when it was certainly decided that
he could have the position and was sure of more becoming treatment than
he had formerly received there, and, when he heard that Miss Weber
was very ardently desired by the prince and by all, his hatred for
Salzburg and its hard and unjust archbishop abated. But without the
positive assurance that he would be granted leave of absence to travel,
an assurance which he received, he would not have been completely
satisfied; for, he writes: “A man of only ordinary talent, always
remains ordinary, whether he travel or not; a man of superior talent,
and it would be wicked in me to deny that I possess such talent,
deteriorates by remaining always in the same place.”
But, in the meantime, Aloysia found a place in Munich. Mozart learned
this fact before his departure, and all his aversion for Salzburg was
again suddenly awakened. Paris again stood out before him, a place in
which he would certainly have “earned honor, fame and money, and where
he would have been able to free his father from debt.” He now thought
of getting a place once more in Munich himself, for he had recently
learned again how much the girl loved him. Rumors of his death had been
put in circulation, and the poor child had gone to church every day
to pray for him. Writing of this incident, he says: “You will laugh,
I cannot; it touches me, and I can’t help it.” But this was a serious
matter with the father. His own place, as well as his daily bread, was
certainly at stake now, if Wolfgang retreated!
The journey was proceeded with this time slowly. And, indeed,
what cause was there for haste? He made a long stay in Strassburg
and Mannheim, and entered into some negotiations there about the
composition of a melodrama. “On receipt of this you shall take your
departure,” was the positive order sent him; and yet there was “a real
scramble” for him at Mannheim. His father consoles him by assuring him
that he is not at all opposed to his love for Aloysia, and this all the
less, since now she was able to make his fortune, not he hers! While
on his journey, Mozart had invited “Baesle” also to Munich, adding:
“You will, perhaps, get a great part to play.”
But, strange!--Aloysia does not seem, when he enters, to recognize the
very man for whom she once had wept. Mozart, therefore, seated himself
hastily at the piano, and sang aloud:
“Ich lass das Maedl gern, das mich nicht will!”[4]
This was told by Aloysia’s younger sister, Constance, who was
afterwards Mozart’s wife, to her second husband, and she gave as the
reason of it, the fact that Aloysia’s taste was offended because,
following the custom of the time, he wore black buttons, in mourning
for his mother, on his red coat. It may be, however, that the officers
and gentlemen of the court pleased the prima donna better than the
little man whose heart-tones had once entranced her. This time also, he
left the faithless one a gift, a composition of his own, not, however,
one which sprung from his heart, but one which showed his power as an
artist. The aria which he now wrote for her, _Popopoli di Tessaglia_,
discovers to us completely the full meaning of his _Non so d’onde
viene_, in his own life.
Aloysia was not happy. We shall have more to say of this hereafter.
Mozart did not, at this time, weep away his grief in tones. His pride
vanquished his love. But his letters depict the state of his mind all
the more truly, now that the hopes he had entertained of obtaining
a position in Munich turned to smoke. Still, his present sojourn in
Munich was destined to lead soon to a very important event in his life
as an artist. He regrets that he cannot write, because his heart is
attuned to weeping. A friend told the father that Wolfgang cried for
a whole hour, spite of all efforts to dry his tears. And, writing of
Mozart’s beautiful inner self, he says: “I never saw a child with more
tenderness and love for his father than your son. His heart is so pure,
so child-like to me, how much more pure and tender must it be for his
father! Only, one must hear him; and who is there that would not do him
justice as the best of characters, the most upright and most ardent of
men!” We think we hear the sounds of the well-spring from which the
tones of the _Idomeneo_ and the aria of the _Ilia_ were soon to flow.
The meeting of father and son could not fail to be a very touching
sight. To form an idea of their feelings on that occasion, one must
read the letter written by the father, after he received the news of
the mother’s illness. Wolfgang came home immediately, but he came
without her, the dearly beloved wife and mother. Every one received
him with open arms; but he had already written: “Upon my oath and upon
my honor, I say I cannot endure Salzburg or its people; their language
and their whole mode of life is unbearable to me;” and the chief cause
of his feeling thus lay in his art. He said later: “When I play in
Salzburg, or when one of my compositions is produced there, I feel as
if only chairs and tables were my listeners.” After this, it is easy to
understand why Salzburg was not to his taste. He says: “When one has
trifled away his young years in such a beggarly place, in inaction, it
is sad enough, and besides, a great loss.”
“Baesle’s” merriness helped him to while away the first week of his
second stay in his dull native city, in the beginning of 1779. But
her simple ways could not now make her what she was to him, when he
was less matured in mind and heart. His work was his most agreeable
pastime, and, spite of everything, productions of the most varied
nature written during his sojourn in Salzburg, afford very abundant
proof of this. The symphonies he now wrote were, indeed, greatly
excelled by others which he subsequently composed, and the masses
eclipsed by his great requiem. But the music to a tragedy, “King
Thamos,” has a sound so full and so appeals to the soul, that we feel
the presence in it of the greater life-trials he had experienced. And
hence it is that Mozart was subsequently able to adapt its choruses
to other words, and to introduce them to the world as “hymns.” Their
tone reminds us of the solemn, serious choruses of the “Magic Flute,”
the drift of which was followed also in the matter of the drama. The
composition of these works was due to Schikaneder, of whom we shall
have something more to say when speaking of the “Magic Flute.” He was,
at this time, director of the theater at Salzburg, and Mozart received
an order to write a comic opera for him. This was the “Zaide” and the
plot embraced a tale of abduction. Its composition was fast drawing
to a close when, at last--it was in the fall of 1780--he saw signs of
redemption from his captivity. He received an invitation to compose
an opera for Munich. It was the _Idomeneo_, and its success sealed
Mozart’s fate for all subsequent time. With the exception of a short
visit paid there, he never saw Salzburg again.
The subject of this work is the old story of Jephtha’s vow. The scene,
however, is transferred to Crete, whither its king Idomeneus, returns
after the destruction of Troy. In a frightful storm which occurred
during his journey, he vows to Neptune the first human being he shall
meet. The victim is his own son, Idamante. Idomeneus wishes to send
him away into a foreign country. But Neptune causes a still greater
storm to rage and the whole country to be devastated by a monster. The
people meet and hear of the vow that Idomeneus has made. When Idamante
himself who, in the meantime, had slain the monster, is informed of his
fate, he is ready to appease the anger of the god. Whereupon, Ilia,
who loves him, throws herself between him and his father, and asks that
she may suffer death in his place. But just as she casts herself on her
knees, “a great subterraneous noise is heard, Neptune’s statue trembles
on its base. The high priest is transported out of himself, all stand
motionless with fear, and a deep majestic voice proclaims the will of
the god:” that Idomeneus shall abdicate the throne, and that Idamante
and Ilia happily united shall ascend it.
It is easy to see that we have here great and grave situations in
the life of human creatures. Mozart knew how to do them justice. He
grasped their very kernel and allowed that which was only of secondary
importance to remain secondary. The whole, although taken from a French
libretto, had been, according to the custom of the Italian opera of
the time, broken up into a great many fragments for the purposes of
music, and among them we find, especially, a large number of arias; and
hence it did not satisfy true dramatic taste. But even these disjointed
pieces,--it mattered not whether they gave expression to sorrow,
terror, tenderness or joy, united to or mixed with one another--were
always full of what they were intended to express, and were, not
unfrequently, overflowing with musical beauty. It was only when he
conceded, too much to the incompetence or narrowness of singers, that
any sacrifice was made to the traditional form and sing-song of the
Italians. But there were in the plot, and they were its chief part,
some powerful scenes, susceptible of really dramatic presentation;
and here Mozart demonstrated that he was a great master of the stage,
and that he had adopted Gluck’s innovations not to allow the singers
and their florid style, but the music to govern, and the music as the
highest expression of the poetry, that is of the dramatic scene which
is performing. Mozart’s own letters give us many details of great
interest in this connection.
He again met his Mannheim artists, singers as well as the
orchestra--all but Aloysia, who had been called a short time
previously, to the national operatic theatre in Vienna--in Munich,
and he was therefore well prepared to go to work. And he was anxious
to do so, for it was a long time since he had an opportunity to show
his full powers on the stage. He felt happy, nay, delighted, since
his arrival. He lived in the _Burggasse_. A bronze tablet bearing his
portrait has since been placed on the house in which he lived. The
elector greeted him most graciously, and when Mozart gave expression
to the peculiar ardor he felt, he tapped him on the shoulder and said:
“I have no doubt whatever; everything will be well.” Every one was
delighted and astonished at the rehearsal of the first act. Much had
been expected of him, but the performance surpassed all expectation.
Frau Cannabich, who had been obliged to remain at home with her sick
daughter, Rose, embraced him, so overjoyed was she at his success; and
the musicians went home almost crazed with delight. The hautboyist
Ramm, with whom Beethoven played his quintet op. 16, in 1804, told him
on his word as a true son of the fatherland, that no music had ever
made such an impression on him--referring to the double choruses during
Idomeneus’s shipwreck--and what joy would it bring to his father when
he heard of it!
The latter cautioned him from home to take care of himself. He knew
his son. And, indeed, Wolfgang had a slight attack of illness at this
time. He writes ingenuously enough: “A man gets easily over-heated when
honor or fame is at stake.” But he was soon well again, and able to
write: “A person is indeed glad when he is at last done with so great
and so toilsome a piece of work; and I am almost done with it; for, all
that is wanting now is two arias, the final chorus, the overture, the
ballet--and _adieu partie_.” The father had reminded him not to forget
to make his music popular. It was the “popular” in music that tickled
the long-eared. Wolfgang replied that there was music in his opera
for all kinds of people, the long-eared excepted. And indeed the work
contained ballet-interludes, and besides the most popular of all kinds
of music, the dance. Mozart’s genius permitted him, as we have seen, to
make many a concession to the peculiarities of the singers, spite of
the gravity of the subject. But where this same gravity was paramount,
as in the quartet of the third act, he had trouble enough. The oftener
he put it on the stage, the greater was the effect it produced on
himself, and it was liked by all, even when only played on the piano.
Raaff alone found it too long, and not easy enough to sing.
Mozart replied to his objections: “If I only knew a single note that
could be changed! But I have not been as well satisfied with anything
in this opera as with the quartet;” and Raaff was himself afterwards,
as he said, “agreeably disappointed;” and just as delighted were the
four musicians: Wendling, Ramm, Ritter and Lang, who had an _obligato_
accompaniment to the aria of Ilia, in the first act, and who were thus
given an opportunity to appreciate Mozart’s skill; for it was the
profound rapture that comes from joy and love which was here to be
expressed in music. And as Mozart had once given expression to that
rapture in his _Non so d’onde viene_, he again gave it a voice in the
premature evening of his life in the aria:
_Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schoen._[5]
The aria of Ilia reminds us of both. But the quartet is the crowning
glory of Gluck’s endeavor to allow each singer to express himself,
at every moment, as far as possible, in accordance with his own
individuality. Even in Mozart’s works, we find little like it; and at
that time such musical wealth was entirely new and unheard of.
The elector said laughingly, after the thunder-storm in the second act:
“One would not think that that small head could carry so much.” And
then the choruses, when the people, during the storm, utter their cry
of horror! The members of the orchestra said that this chorus could
not but freeze the blood in one’s veins. And yet the third act was
incomparably richer. Mozart himself says: “There is scarcely a scene
which is not exceedingly interesting,” and that “his head and hands
were so full of it that it would be no wonder if he were to become
the third act himself.” He thinks, however, that it would prove as
good as the first two. He says: “but I believe infinitely better, and
that it may be said: _Finis coronat opus_ (the end crowns the work).”
For the address of the high priest on the sufferings of the people,
caused by the sea monster, the solemn march, and the oracle itself,
Gluck’s Alceste may have served as a model. The magnitude of these
tragic elements at least were well understood; and no one can, even
to-day, remain unmoved by these tones. But it became also a school of
the genuine dramatic style in music; and the orchestration was the best
that Mozart had produced. From it, all who followed him learned the
best they knew.
Of the presentation of the opera itself on the stage, in January, 1781,
we have no detailed information. But the impression made by it must
have been in keeping with that created by the rehearsals. That the
_Idomeneo_ lives now only in the concert hall, is due to the Italian
words, which interrupt the acting at almost every step. Mozart put
an end to the absolute rule of the Italian opera by his _Idomeneo_.
It henceforth had only a national character. Mozart compelled the
composers of opera, from this time forward, to take another course, and
to comply with Gluck’s demands, which have lifted the opera of our age
to the height of the genuine drama.
But the first and fully decisive steps in this direction, were the
_Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_. We now turn to them. The _Idomeneo_,
as it was Mozart’s first masterpiece, monumental in its style,
constituted, together with the operas which followed it, the transition
to an entirely new epoch in his life, to the period of his complete
independence, both as an artist and as a man.
CHAPTER IV.
1781-1787.
THE ELOPEMENT FROM THE SERAGLIO--FIGARO--DON GIOVANNI.
Opinions on the Idomeneo--Tired of Salzburg--Goes to Vienna--The
Archbishop Again--Mozart Treated by him with Indignity--Paternal
Reproaches--Assailed by Slander--He Leaves Salzburg--Experiences in
Vienna--Austrian Society--The German Stage--The Emperor Expresses
a wish that Mozart might Write a New Opera--Mozart’s Love for
Constance Weber--Description of Constance--Performance of the
New Opera--Mozart’s Marriage--The Emperor’s Opinion of Mozart’s
Music--Mozart’s Interest in the Figaro--Particulars Relating to its
Composition--Its Success--Mozart’s Poverty--Mozart in Bohemia--His
Popularity in Prague--Meaning of the Don Giovanni--Richard Wagner on
Mozart.
We are told that Mozart, even in his later years, prized the _Idomeneo_
very greatly, and it is certain that connoisseurs have always
entertained a very high opinion of its music. It combines the freshness
of youth, great force and vitality, with a great variety in invention,
and has all the characteristics of art. It is easy to conceive that
the consciousness of being the possessor of so much power, especially
while he was engaged on the work itself, made Mozart’s bosom swell, and
that in such moments the memory of the narrowness and “chicanery” of
Salzburg must have been exceedingly mortifying to him. “Out! out into
the wide world and into the air of freedom!”--he must have heard now
ringing in his ears as he had four years before. And had not Vienna, at
that time the capital of Germany, intellectually advanced, and had not
the Emperor Joseph, established a national opera there?
As early as in December 1780, he had written to inquire how it stood
about his leave of absence. He told his father that he was in Salzburg
only to please him, and that, most assuredly, if it depended on him, he
would have scorned the place; for, he adds, “upon my honor, the prince
and the proud nobility become more intolerable to me every day.” It
would now, he said, be easy for him to get on in Munich without the
protection of the great, and it brought the tears to his eyes when he
thought of the state of things in Salzburg. Yet he could stay longer
than his leave of absence allowed him; for the archbishop remained
some time in Vienna on business, and thus Mozart found leisure, after
the opera was completed, to rest in Munich and to participate in the
pleasures of the carnival, while otherwise his greatest diversion would
have been to be with his beloved Rose and the Cannabichs.
In the midst of this youthful jollity, which seems very natural after
the great strain upon the minds of all during many months, he received
the archbishop’s order to repair to Vienna. This was in the middle
of March, 1781. Jerome was witness of the ostentation of the princes
in that city; and what reason was there why his “illustrious grace”
should not cut a figure also? His eight handsome roan horses were there
already. The members of his household followed him, and who was there
who, in the music at a feast, had a Mozart to show? Thus did our artist
unexpectedly realize his wish to come to Vienna; and circumstances so
had it, that he remained there.
His reception was a good one. He had indeed, as was the custom of the
time, to sit at table with cooks and _valets de chambre_, but these
he kept at a proper distance by “great gravity” and silence. Yet even
now we hear that the archbishop was only giving himself airs with
his attendants; for when an opportunity presented itself for Mozart
to show his powers, in other noble houses, the archbishop refused
him permission to do so; and still, it was only in such houses, that
he could expect to meet the Emperor Joseph--a circumstance on which
everything now depended. Rather did this domineering ecclesiastic do
all in his power to make Mozart feel his dependence more keenly. The
father did all he could to appease him, but Wolfgang felt that the
archbishop used him only to tickle his own ambition; that, in all
other respects, that worthy served only to hide his light. Besides
he had to stand about the room like a servant. Yet Mozart tells us
how, at a performance at prince Galizin’s, he had left the other
musicians entirely, and how he had gone directly up to the host in
the music room, and remained with him. Nothing was paid him for his
compositions for the archbishop’s _soirées_. Mozart, indeed, helped to
lend _éclat_ to a concert for the widows of deceased musicians in the
Haydn Society, because “all the nobility of Vienna had tormented the
archbishop to permit him to do so.” But his grace would not allow him
to give a concert for his own benefit, spite of the fact that he had
been received so well. The hardest blow of all to our artist was the
news that he would have to go back to Salzburg with the rest. He at
first paid no attention to intimations of this nature, for he wanted
to give a concert before he left. He had, besides, a prospect of a
position in the imperial city itself. But his father at home would
agree to nothing.
Mozart now writes “in natural German, because all the world should know
it,” that the archbishop owed it entirely to his father that he did not
lose him yesterday, for all time. He had been annoyed altogether too
much at the concert yesterday. After a little, dissension broke out
in earnest. “I am out of myself. My patience has been tried so long
that it is at an end.” The archbishop had, even before this, called
him “a low fellow,” and told him to go his way. Mozart bore it for his
father’s sake. Then he was ordered suddenly to leave the house, and he
went to old Madame Weber’s, and had to live at his own expense. He,
therefore, did not want to go until this outlay at least was made up
for.
“Well, fellow, when do you go?” snarlingly asked this prince spiritual,
and he then proceeded, in a single breath, to tell him that he was a
dissipated fellow, that no one used him so badly, and that he would
stop his pay. We scarcely believe our ears when we hear a prince-bishop
call our artist a scamp, a young blackguard, an idiot! Wolfgang’s blood
became too hot at last, and he asked whether his illustrious grace was
not satisfied with him.
“What? Threats? You idiot! There’s the door! I will have nothing more
to do with such a miserable villain.”
“Nor I with you.”
“Then go!”
Such was the dialogue between a prince and an artist of the past
century! It tells us something of its culture and civilization.
Mozart’s account of this scene concludes: “I will hear no more of
Salzburg. I hate the archbishop even to madness.”
But this was not the worst. “I did not know,” says Mozart, “that I
was a _valet de chambre_; that overcame me entirely; and my father
should be glad that he has not a man dishonored for his son.” But now
sycophantic flunkies began to busy themselves with the affair. They
knew that the archbishop did not like to lose an artist whom such
efforts had been made, before his eyes, to retain in Vienna. The master
of the household, Count Arco, therefore, did everything that in him
lay to quiet the matter. He refused, “from lack of courage and a love
of adulation,” to accept Mozart’s petition for dismissal. But when the
latter insisted on it, with a brutality not unworthy of his master,
Arco threw the noble artist out the door--with a kick!
After his personal audience with the archbishop, Mozart’s blood boiled;
he trembled from head to foot and reeled on the street like a drunken
man. Now he assures us that, when he meets the count, he will pay him
back the compliment he received from him. In the ante-chamber he did
not, like Arco himself, wish “to lose his respect for the prince’s
apartments,” but then he was determined that “the hungry donkey should
get an answer from him that he would feel,” even if it were twenty
years before a suitable occasion presented itself to give it. And when
his father recoiled at the boldness of such an attempt, our young
artist gave expression to a sentiment which lifted him high above all
that environed him, and stamps him one of the noblest representatives
of human nature. We have chosen that sentiment as the motto of this his
biography: “The heart is man’s title to nobility!”
More painful than all these insults to the manly honor of our young
artist were the heart-aches caused him by the very person who should
have understood him best, by his own father.
The latter had been obliged to write to him: “Do not allow yourself
to be misled by flattery. Be on your guard.” Now reproach was added
to mistrust, and Wolfgang was accused of endangering his father’s
subsistence, in his old age. He compared Wolfgang to Aloysia, who had
scarcely secured a good position in life than she joined her fortunes
to those of a comedian--the celebrated Joseph Lange--and neglected
her own people. He even went so far as to demand that his son should
withdraw his petition, adding that he was in honor bound to do so.
There was not in all of this a single trait by which Mozart could
recognize his father. He could, indeed, he said, recognize “a father,
but not the best, the most loving of fathers, the father solicitous
for his own honor and the honor of his children,--in a word, not my
father.” And he concludes: “Ask me to do anything you want, anything
but that. The very thought of it makes me tremble with rage.” What he
had achieved made Mozart, as an artist, manful and sure of himself; and
these sufferings had a similar effect on him as a man; but, compared
with the latter troubles, all that he had previously undergone was
light indeed. We know how deeply and fully Wolfgang loved his father;
but to understand his state of mind at this trying time, one must read
the father’s own letters. He reproaches his son, even with a want
of love, with being a pleasure-seeker in the great city, and with
keeping company with the frivolous! The slanders of strangers and the
father’s own suspicions conspired to make things worse; and in the
circulation of these slanders, a pupil of the abbe Vogler, J. P.
Winter, subsequently known by his _Unterbrochenes Opferfest_, played a
leading part. The way in which Mozart repelled these slanders, lays his
whole heart open before us. It was what might have been expected of one
whose art was so thoroughly pure and peaceful. He says, with the utmost
modesty and simplicity: “My chief fault is that, apparently, I do not
act as I should act;” and in answer to all other slanders, he replies,
with the most charming consciousness of self: “I need only consult my
reason and my heart to do what is right and just.”
Thus was Mozart’s relations with Salzburg, which had never brought
him much happiness or honor, dissolved for all time. He lost, it is
true, by this dissolution, the loving confidence of his father; but
painful as this loss was to him, it was not without compensation. He
obtained personal freedom and conquered for himself a place in which
his already highly developed individuality as an artist was at liberty
to act, room for the workings of his creative genius. This and his love
and marriage, which put him in possession of something which he could
permanently call his own, are further decisive events in our artist’s
life. We shall see their effects on his art, and, in the creation of
such magnificent works as the “Elopement from the Seraglio,” “Figaro”
and “Don Giovanni.” His recent personal experience had given him
that insight and that inward freedom without which his towering,
life-experienced style and his supreme power of depicting character are
impossible.
The time and place were favorable to the production of such works.
And it was not simply the oppressive feeling of the humiliating and
narrowing circumstances of his position hitherto, but the joyful
consciousness that, as his genius soon perceived, he was at last in the
place in the world best suited to his taste, in Vienna, that this time
caused him to conceive and hold fast to his desire. _Und wenn die Welt
voll Teufel waer!_--“And though the world were full of devils!”--we
may discover something of the desperate resolution which these words
imply, in his struggle at this time with his dearest of fathers; a
resolution generated, doubtless, by the circumstances in which he
now saw himself suddenly and accidentally placed, and which were so
favorable to his art, and to a becoming mode of living. He felt that he
had come here to grow to his full stature; and the instinct of artistic
creation, like the instinct of love, is involuntary and irresistible.
The father did not understand this. He had to be won over by prospects
of material success, and this success Wolfgang was able confidently
to promise himself and his father. Nor was he wanting here. And if we
are obliged to confess that Mozart, even in the rich city of Vienna,
almost starved, and that he died before his time, the cause was, in the
first place, that his genius was too great to be fully appreciated by
his contemporaries and his environment, and then that he was so wrapped
up in his sublime task, that the world gradually receded from him, and
it became an easy matter for the envious and his enemies to rob him of
the visible fruits of his success, and to limit him to the joys and
sunshine of his art. His art, indeed, throve even in Vienna, far beyond
what he had hoped. It was more than his contemporaries could appreciate
or understand. And, indeed, where would we be to-day without Mozart? As
well as Goethe, he touched the purest, the ultimate feeling of beauty
in art, and opened to our view the innermost and deepest depths of the
human soul. It was more than all else, Vienna and Austria that helped
him to do this.
During the period, beginning with 1780, Austria had recovered from the
effects of the wounds it received in the Seven Years’ War. The people
were well-to-do, and the rich nobles of the eastern provinces, the
Esterhazys, Schwarzenbergs, Thuns and Kinskys left immense amounts of
money in the capital. The state of society was not yet disturbed. The
nobility and middle class lived in harmony with one another. Above all
and dearly loved by all, sat throned, the Emperor Joseph II., an ideal
Austrian, whose like had not been seen since the time of Maximilian
I. The emperor Joseph was, so to speak, the counterpart, both in
disposition and education, of old Fritz (Frederick the Great), who
was the ablest representative at that time of practical German energy
and intelligence. This it was that gave the Austrian, and above all
the Viennese, disposition that peculiar character from which sprang a
style of art which had no predecessor and no counterpart that could be
called its equal save in Raphael and the antique--German chamber music.
Haydn’s, Mozart’s and Beethoven’s quartets alone sufficed to make this
Viennese period, from 1775 to 1825, a stretch of fifty years, forever
memorable. But besides, there was the instrumental music of this
brilliant musical triad whom Gluck had preceded.
Life at this time in Vienna was overflowing with a warm sensuousness,
unpolluted by the coarseness of vice. Men gave themselves up
unconstrained to their emotions. This itself is the most natural and
most fertile soil for productions of the mind, intended, primarily, to
operate on the senses, and through the senses to speak to our heart
of hearts and to our mind of minds. It is the most fitting soil for
art. And hence, we find here the first and most indispensable of all
conditions precedent to the full bloom of music. Life in the Austrian
capital, sunk apparently in sensuousness, had, like a reflection of the
ever brightening and warming sun, in its depths, that German, joyous
good-nature, that _deutsche Gemueth_, that leveling peace, and that
beautiful disposition which allow every living creature to do what
pleases him best and go his own way. Added to this was the high degree
of education which distinguished Vienna at the time, and which was
influenced, in part, by direct contact with the period of the highest
Italian culture, the renaissance. It had noble houses, wealthy and
refined families of the middle class and of the learned, and above all,
its emperor--if not in music, in all else the most nobly cultured! We
have only to think of the other capitals at the time, Paris, London,
and even Berlin, to be convinced that a Gluck, a Haydn, a Mozart, or
a Beethoven, could never have thrived in any of them. They thrived in
Vienna; and the last two artists asserted that it was in Vienna only
that they could have thrived, that is developed that art, the germ’s of
which they felt themselves to possess as a talent confided to them.
We may inquire, more particularly now, how it stood with music and the
theatre in those days. Many of the great houses had music of their own;
the wealthiest princes had not unfrequently their private orchestra;
other families string-quartets or the piano; and the latter was, as
Ph. E. Bach says, intended for music that went direct to the heart, and
not simply for children to practice on. No such golden age of music
had been seen since the days of the North German School for organists,
which had produced that eighth wonder of the world, Sebastian Bach; and
Beethoven recalled it, with a feeling of melancholy, when, with the
great wars of the Revolution a desolate period began, in which men’s
souls and with them music, the soul’s own art, were struck dumb. Philip
Emanuel Bach, the younger son of John Sebastian Bach, it was, who had
led music out of the stage which had religion for its center, and
opened to it by his sonatas _fuer Kenner und Liebhaber_, the domain of
purely human thought and feeling. “He is the parent, we the children,”
said Mozart, speaking of himself, and J. Haydn. Haydn also made a
similar admission.
It was these two men indeed, who, so to speak, gave expression to
the whole of human life in this unrestrained language of music, and
who, together with Beethoven, opened the hearts of their age and of
humanity, by their sonatas, symphonies, and quartets. This explains
why Mozart was able to write that the ladies detained him at the piano
a whole hour after the concert, adding: “I think I should be sitting
there still, if I had not stolen away!”
Again, he writes to his sister: “My only entertainment is the theater.
I wish you could see a tragedy played here. I know no theater in
which all kinds of plays are very well produced, unless it be here.”
Shroeder no doubt contributed largely to produce this effect. Then
Shakespeare’s plays had begun to attract attention in Germany, and
German dramatic literature to blossom forth in Lessing and Goethe.
No wonder that “Figaro” and “Don Giovanni,” now began to engage his
attention. We have already spoken of a national German theater. It is
not to be supposed that the Emperor Joseph II. sympathized with the
Germans in music. His early impressions caused him to favor the Italian
school, and, cultivated as was his talent for music, it was not great
enough to enable him to overcome them. But he was compelled to assist
the nation in its endeavors in this sphere, since Frederick the Great
had anticipated him in almost every other. Thus Vienna, together with
Mannheim and Weimar, constituted the glorious triad, the creators
of German music and of a German stage; and the full significance of
German endeavors, in this direction, may be inferred from the path of
light beginning with Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” followed by Beethoven’s
Symphonies, and ending with the “Ring of the Niebelungen” in Bayreuth
in 1876. Verily a cycle of art, of which Germany may well be proud!
Mozart came just in time for the German operatic stage. Gluck had
stopped composing; his victory was a decided one; he had almost reached
his zenith; he was approaching his seventieth year. True, his pupil,
Salieri, was the “idol of the emperor;” but he was an Italian, and
the remaining Viennese composers of the time were of little or no
importance. Haydn, properly speaking, did not busy himself in this
sphere of the drama, and besides, he lived the greatest part of the
time in Eisenstadt with prince Esterhazy. Northern Germany had no
longer anything to show of those things which mark an epoch in history;
and, what is more its preponderantly “learned” or formal music would
not have pleased the taste of the Viennese. What then could be more
natural than that they should open their arms to the young _maestro_
who, in a new field, had just given evidence of his transcendent power?
And, indeed, shortly after Mozart’s arrival in Vienna, the Emperor
himself had given expression to a wish that he might write a German
opera of this kind; and we are informed that after Count Rosenberg,
the manager of the theatre, had heard the _Idomeneo_ at a private
rehearsal, he ordered the writing of a libretto for Mozart. This was
“Belmonte and Constance,” or the “Elopement from the Seraglio.” Mozart
tells how he was so cheered by this, that he hastened to his writing
table with the greatest eagerness and sat at it with the greatest
pleasure. He finished, at this first sitting, one of the arias of
the Belmonte, and that the most beautiful of them all--the _O wie
aengstlich, o wie feurig!_
The whole matter was postponed for a time, but to no disadvantage;
for, in the meanwhile, Mozart experienced things which gave him
that wonderful depth of coloring and that golden, mature sweetness
which, besides himself and Raphael, scarcely another possesses--love
moved him to the innermost depths of his soul. This love had as much
influence on his life as on his music. It led to that most decided
union of human hearts, marriage; and hence we have here to consider
this important bit of the life of our artist, in his case as in all
others, made up of anguish and bliss.
We have seen already that when Mozart was compelled to leave the
archbishop’s palace, he hastened to the house of the Webers. Of his
removal thither he wrote: “There I have my pretty room, am with
obliging people ready to assist me in everything, when necessary.”
After the death of her husband, Madame Weber supported herself by
renting rooms, so that her daughters might remain with her. She lived
in the _Auge Gottes_, which is still standing in the _Petersplatz_.
The father’s suspicions were immediately awakened; and Mozart writes
in answer to his expression of them: “In the case of Aloysia [Lange] I
was a fool, but what may not a man become when he is in love!” For the
present, Mozart was concerned only with finding comfortable lodging
quarters and people who might take a personal interest in his father
and in the devouring anger and sorrow which possessed him, on account
of the course pursued towards him by the archbishop; and this interest
he found here. And, indeed, now that he had to compose incessantly in
order to eke out a livelihood, he needed a “clear head and a quiet
mind.” His father, however, insisted on his leaving the Webers, and in
the fall, he finally consented to quit them. But he greatly deceived
himself when he said that he left them only on account of “the gossip
of the people,” and wanted to know why he should be so recklessly
taken to task, because he had moved into the house of the Webers, as
if that meant that he was going to marry the daughter. The tender care
which the third daughter Constance took of him and the disposition she
manifested to do him every service in her power, generated in him the
desire to care for and serve her, in like manner.
We cannot here enter into the minute details of the origin and tenacity
of this beautiful affair of the heart; and we, therefore, confine
ourselves to that which is most essential.
Constance Weber was born in 1764. She was now in her eighteenth year,
and eight years younger than Mozart. She had been one of his pupils
in Munich. He gave her lessons on the piano then, and now he was
teaching her vocal music as well. Thus Mozart had, on both occasions,
an inducement other than his feelings, to bring him to the house of the
Webers. Music at first threw him and Constance involuntarily together;
but the language of the soul was destined sooner or later to create a
more intimate bond between them. In the evening they had their little
chats; they were joined by friends of Constance’s own sex; and Mozart,
in a letter written long after he was married, tells how they played
“hide and seek” with them. Then again, a great many circumstances
conspired to decide him to make choice of a partner for life. There
were his years, and his temperament which inclined him to a quiet mode
of life. From his earliest youth, he had never been taught economy, and
as a consequence now had many unnecessary expenses. He felt lonely and
desolate, when, tired by the exhausting labors of the day, he was not
with the Webers. When he left their house in September, he was like a
man who has left his own comfortable carriage for a stage-coach. And
when, with that instinct which belongs only to our deepest feelings,
he became gradually conscious that she was “the right one,” he frankly
laid before his father the necessity of his marrying and his settled
purpose to marry.
He writes in December, 1781: “But who is the object of my love? Do not
be horrified, I pray you. Surely, not one of the Weber girls? Yes, one
of the Weber girls, but not Josepha, not Sophia but Constance, the
middle one.” And then he gives us a description which must have been
somewhat exaggerated and colored by his feeling at the time. In no
family, he tells us, had he found such inequality. The eldest daughter
was lazy and coarse, and a little too knowing. Her tall sister was
false and a coquette; and yet he had written in the spring that he
had some liking for her. The youngest, Sophia, of whom we shall have
something to say further on, was still too young to be much. She was
nothing more than a good but giddy creature. He adds concerning her:
“May God preserve her from temptation!” Next comes a description of his
dear Constance. He says of her: “The middle daughter, my dear good
Constance, is a martyr among them, and, on that very account, perhaps,
the best-hearted, cleverest, in a word, the best in every way, among
them. She takes care of everything in the house, and yet can please
nobody.” He could if he desired, write whole pages of the ugly scenes
in that house. It was these very scenes which had made the two so dear
to one another. They tested their mutual affection.
And now he describes Constance herself. She was not ugly, but then she
was far from being beautiful. All her beauty consisted in two small
black eyes, and a fine figure. She had no wit, but common sense enough
to enable her to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother. That she
was not inclined to be lavish in her expenditures, was by no means
true; but she was accustomed to being plain; for the mother used the
little she had on the other two. She could make all her own things,
understood housekeeping, and had the best heart in the world. “I love
her,” he says, “and she loves me with all her heart. Tell me now,
could I desire a better wife?” The best commentary to these words is
furnished by the pieces which were already finished for “Belmonte and
Constance,” but above all by the _O wie aengstlich, o wie feurig_,[6]
which dates from the summer of 1781, and the aria _Ach ich liebte,
war so gluecklich_,[7] the text of which is extant in Constance’s own
handwriting.
But the painful lot of separation was destined at least to threaten
him. First the father, next the daughters’ guardian, then the mother,
and lastly his loved one’s own stubborn willfulness--the willfulness of
youth--menaced him with the destruction of his happiness. His life’s
happiness was indeed at stake here. This is very evident from Mozart’s
letters written during this time of trouble; and no one can know Mozart
thoroughly who does not follow him through this his heart trial.
Turn we now to the artistic results of this new existence in Vienna.
Of course much piano and chamber music had been produced. The craving
for something new continued great in all Viennese circles. And who was
better prepared to satisfy that craving than Mozart whose fame and even
support now depended on the reception he met with in the imperial city?
Everything turned on the opera given him to compose, and fortunately
its composition was resumed in the following spring, that of 1782. And
spite of all the vexation he had to endure from his own father and the
mother of his betrothed, he was ready with it, in time. To accomplish
his task, he had frequently to write until one o’clock at night and to
be up again at six in the morning. And although he could not devote to
it all his time, all his strength, all his mind, all the powers of his
fancy nor such minute labor as he had to the _Idomeneo_, he was able to
tell his father that he felt exceedingly well pleased with his opera.
He generally followed only his own feelings, but on this occasion he
had as much regard as possible for the taste of the Viennese people;
and their taste in such matters inclined to subdued hilarity and to the
comic. These therefore, are the prevailing characteristics of the work.
Of Belmonte’s _O wie aengstlich_ he writes himself: You can see the
trembling, the shaking. You can see how the swelling bosom heaves. It
is expressed by a _crescendo_. You can hear the whispering and sobbing
in the first violins with sordines and a flute in unison. The _O wie
der aengstlich_ was everybody’s favorite aria as well as his own. And
yet the rondo _Wenn der Freude Thraenen fliessen_,[8] was still more
enrapturing. It contains also that celebrated passage:
“Ach Constanze dich zu sehen
Dich voll Wonne und Entzuecken
An dies treue Herz zu druecken.”
in which German music for the first time fully learned the language
of manly love and devotion, just as it first had found the musical
sublimity of religious feeling in the chorale. Through Belmonte, the
character of the “German youth,” was, so to speak, fixed in music for
all time. Think only of Beethoven’s _Florestan_, and Wagner’s _Walther
von Stolzing_.
But the character of the stupid, coarse and wicked master of the
Harem, Osmin, thus comically and powerfully drawn, but with all the
nobility of style as to its form, was new also. He is no other than the
“starched stripling,” the son of a puffed-up Augsburg bourgeois. We
have here a picture of the brutal haughtiness of the Salzburg harem,
with its model steward of the kitchen. But the vengeance of the artist
is noble, and produces an ennobling effect on whole generations. We
must read his letters to see how fully he was conscious of the comic
even in Osmin’s aria: _Drum beim Barte des Propheten_, and that all
folly and excess are their own punishment, and become an object of
derision. We find here in this sketch the entire material from which,
two generations later, the “Dragon” of the _Niebelungenring_ was
built. The heavy rhythm in the very first song, the rudeness of the
entire movement, the almost roaring “trallalara”--are the expression
of the untamed savagery of brute nature, the grandeur of coarseness in
miniature.
We now turn to the performance. This took place on the 12th of July,
1782. It seemed as if the applause of the crowded house would never
cease. The audience was surprised, charmed, and carried away by the
beauty and euphony of the music--music full to overflowing with life,
and which did not sacrifice nobility of form to truth of portraiture,
nor depend for its seductive power on glittering dialogue. Performance
followed performance in quick succession, and this spite of the fact
that intrigue in theatrical circles labored strenuously to prevent
its repetition. The Italians, with Salieri at their head, looked with
displeasure at the rise of the German operatic stage. It disturbed
them, and threatened to do away with their exclusive rule. They went
so far even as to entice the performers away so that the presentation
of the opera became very difficult; whereupon Mozart writes: “I was in
such a rage that I did not know myself.” But they could not prevent the
audience’s crying bravo! and Mozart himself says: “It does one good to
get such applause.” The “Elopement” is the first link in the unbroken
chain of effects and triumphs which ends in the dramatic production
of our days, confined to no one nation--a production destined, in a
generation, to rule Europe more powerfully than did the Italian opera
in those days, and which even now succeeded in impeding the success of
this first German opera and banishing it from the stage.
This actually happened, and the emperor Joseph was weak enough to allow
the Italian school to obtain the upperhand to such an extent that
Mozart himself could not help joining in the chorus of those priests of
Bacchus; but then he gave that chorus a beauty and fullness which it
had not possessed before. This result was attained in the _Figaro_, of
which we shall speak next.
The first thing that occupied his mind after the completion of his
great task was, of course--and it was very natural that it should be
so--his union with Constance. And, indeed, after the success he had met
with, what reason was there why he should not venture to get married
and to found a home of his own? Speaking of the work, Joseph II. had
said: “Too pretty for our ears, and an infinity of notes, my dear
Mozart!” To which the latter with noble frankness replied: “Just as
many notes as are necessary, your majesty!” But Gluck, who was by far
the highest authority in Vienna on theatrical matters, had the opera
performed for himself specially, although it had been given only a few
days before, and he complimented the composer very highly and invited
him to dinner. This augured better for Mozart’s future than all else.
He had, however, other patrons. Prince Kaunitz, known as the “Kutscher
von Europa,” the _Coachman of Europe_, expressed great dissatisfaction
with the emperor because he did not value men of talent more, and
allowed them to leave the country. Among other things he told the
archduke Maximilian, on one occasion when the conversation turned on
Mozart, that men like him appeared in the world only once in a century,
and that for that reason some effort should be made to keep them.
Mozart now brought every influence he could to bear on his father. The
vexation already caused him by the girl’s mother brought it to such a
pass, that he was forced to take her to his friend and patroness Frau
von Waldstaedten. He writes about this time: “My heart is troubled, my
brain is crazed! How can a man think or work under such circumstances?”
But the father looked upon the marriage as a misfortune to him, and
instead of his consent to it, he gave “only well-meant advice.”
Mozart, therefore, made short work of it, and, with the assistance of
his patroness, he acted the _Elopement from the Auge Gottes_, as he
afterwards jocosely called his marriage. The baroness herself wrote
to the father, smoothed over the difficulties in the way as best she
could, even procured the money necessary to have the marriage contract
drawn and dispensation from having the bans called in the church. The
two who loved each other so well, were married on the 4th of August
1782. We must turn to Mozart himself for an account of it.
He tells us that, shortly after, the father’s consent was received.
There was no one present at the marriage ceremony but the mother, the
youngest sister, the guardian and two witnesses. And he adds: “The
moment we were made one, my wife as well as myself began to weep,
which touched every one, even the priest; and they all cried when they
witnessed how our hearts were moved.” The marriage feast consisted of
a supper at Frau von Waldstaedten’s, of which Mozart writes: “It was
more like a prince’s than a baron’s.” A few days later, he writes:
“For a considerable length of time, while we were yet single, we went
together both to mass and communion, and I find that I never confessed
and communicated as devoutly as by her side; and the same was the case
with her. In a word, we are made for one another, and God who ordains
all things, and who therefore has brought about all that has passed
with us will not forsake us.” And He did not forsake them. Their
marriage was blessed, truly blessed; for it had its foundation in love;
and even leaving his music out of consideration, we shall hear this
sweetest echo of life, the joyful notes of pure, tender love, echo as
clearly through the world as the name of Mozart, himself a minstrel of
love.
For an account of the cheering and touching tenacity of the love of our
artist, we must refer the reader to our large work on Mozart, in which
we have endeavored to give a picture or rather a history of a part of
his life of which the world has entertained an entirely false idea.
There is no reason why a single trait in Mozart’s character should be
concealed. Its every feature is human, and even his weaknesses are
amiable and readily excusable. If that highest of all moral precepts:
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, be applicable
anywhere, it is here. We shall have something more to say on this
subject below. We now turn to Mozart’s subsequent achievements.
The emperor, indeed, valued Mozart’s _talent decidé_ very highly,
and one day summoned him to meet Clement, in single combat, that his
majesty might enjoy his immense superiority over the more formal talent
of that renowned Roman. But the emperor did not recognize the full
value of the _Elopement from the Seraglio_, which he once characterized
by saying of it: _non era gran cosa_--“it did not amount to a great
deal.” This grieved Mozart sorely. He even thought of leaving Vienna in
consequence of it, and of going first to France and then to England.
In the meantime, the Italian musicians in Vienna, probably because of
the steady and great success of the _Elopement from the Seraglio_,
had induced the emperor to order a new and excellent _opera buffa_,
which gave great satisfaction. Mozart wrote of it: “The _basso buffo_
is remarkably good; his name is Benucci.” Lorenzo da Ponte, known
to-day as the poet of the two greatest _opere buffe_ of the world--our
_Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ had been in Vienna for some time, and
was there now. He had promised Mozart, who of course had an eye on
this Italian opera, a new subject as soon as he had finished one for
Salieri. Two years passed away, but Da Ponte’s word was kept at length.
In the meantime, Mozart had, on the occasion of his visit to Salzburg,
in the fall of 1783, begun a comic opera, “Die Gans von Cairo”--“The
Goose of Cairo.” It was, however, never completed. The libretto was too
bad and the goose-story too “stupid.”
To this epoch, ending with the _Figaro_, belongs a large abundance
of purely instrumental music. The quartet for the piano with
wind-instruments was ready on the 24th of March, 1784; the fantasy
in C major, which was never surpassed even by Beethoven, and the
_Veilchen_, in the spring of 1785; the piano quartet in G minor, which
Mozart called the best he had written in his whole life, in July of
the same year; and the six quartets, dedicated to Joseph Haydn, the
creator of that species of music, in the fall of that year (1785), a
year which must be considered among the most fertile of his life. And
yet, even at this time, Mozart was engaged on the comic opera above
named, and had begun another, the _Il Sposo deluso_, “The derided
Bridegroom,” which he dropped, to work on the _Figaro_. Scarcely had
this last subject begun to occupy his mind, than it took possession of
it entirely. Not even to the _Idomeneo_ and the _Elopement from the
Seraglio_ did he devote himself so entirely as to the _Figaro_. Into
this last he put all his individuality. It was the first subject which
occupied all his mind and soul, and, at the same time, afforded him an
opportunity to show the real brilliancy of his wit and of his musical
capacity. In this work, we have a perfect whole, a gem which shines
with dazzling brightness. A few weaknesses due to its derivation from
the Italian opera are cancelled by its excellences. It is a picture of
life which seems indeed to belong to one particular period, but which,
after all, shows us human nature itself with all its weaknesses, the
butt of ridicule or the object of pity.
Count Almaviva, who, with the assistance of Figaro, the barber of
Seville, had won his beautiful countess, is enamoured of her more
charming waiting-maid, Susanna; and the latter is in love with Figaro.
An effort must be made to cure the count of his folly. His jealousy is
first excited against the page. To accomplish this, the help of a great
many other persons becomes necessary; and thus we get a whole series
of exquisite scenes ending in the total bewilderment of the count. The
second part--the _opera buffa_ has generally only two parts, having
been originally nothing more than an “intermezzo,” between the three
acts of the grave opera, _opera seria_--finds Susanna at the count’s,
arranging a secret rendezvous with him for the evening, in the garden.
The ladies had so arranged it that the countess herself, disguised
as Susanna, should be in the garden at the time of the rendezvous,
and that Susanna should play the countess and surprise the two by
her sudden appearance on the scene. The page arrived too. The count
gives him a box on the ear for his dainty attentions to the disguised
countess. The page carries his grievance to the jealous Figaro, who,
warned of the infidelity of his Susanna, had approached too near,
notwithstanding the darkness. He makes a passionate declaration of
love to the supposed countess, although she had given him to understand
who she was, in the presence of the count. This of course, brought
matters to a crisis. The count orders lights to be brought. Covered
with shame at the discovery he makes, and lovingly forgiven by the
countess, he is, as we may reasonably assume, cured of his wicked
weakness for all time.
Such was the course of Mozart’s opera. It was attractive and cheerful,
and for the time, not too daring. Mozart invested the female characters
of the piece with the utmost goodness of heart and purity of soul. Even
from the haughty giddiness of the count, he took the sting in such a
way that we leave the presentation of this piece of human weakness
entirely satisfied.
It was otherwise with the original work, the _Le Mariage de Figaro ou
la folle Journée_, of the same Beaumarchais from whom Goethe borrowed
his Clavigo. In it we find the vices and above all the high-handed
violence of the nobility scourged with such a regardlessness of
consequences, that the piece must be looked upon as a species of
prelude to that historic night in August, 1789, on which every
privilege of the nobility was wiped out with a stroke of the pen. It
shows us at the same time the cordial gentleness and dignity of the
man, Mozart, who had himself personally experienced the brutal pride
of the privileged classes, and this in the most revolting manner. He,
however, solved the whole problem in the kindest of humor, with a
sympathy which may be seen shining through tears; explaining it by the
limitations and weaknesses of human nature. This work was Mozart’s own
even from the ordering of the libretto; and he it was that made choice
of it.
The following are the particulars relating to its composition. Lorenzo
da Ponte, of whom we made mention above, and who was at first so
completely on the side of Salieri and the Italians, now turned to
Mozart, in order to save his place, as libretto-poet, which he was
in danger of losing. Paisiello, at this time a man of world-wide
reputation, had come to Vienna, and achieved the greatest success with
an opera--“King Theodore.” In order to supplant the poet of the opera,
Casti, Da Ponte composed a libretto for Salieri, with which, however,
Salieri made so complete a failure, that he swore he would rather
have his fingers cut off, than set another verse written by Da Ponte
to music. Salieri now turned to Casti and met with great success in
his “Grotto of Trophonius.” Da Ponte who saw his position as poet for
the theater in peril, in consequence of this, had recourse to Mozart.
Thus it was the intrigue and jealousy of the Italians which eventually
helped Mozart to the place which he was born to fill; and thus
Salieri’s blow recoiled upon himself, for Mozart proposed Beaumarchais’
piece which had been given in Paris, in the spring of 1784, and had
produced an immense sensation there. But the king had forbidden the
piece in Vienna because of its “immoral style.” Besides, he had some
doubts as to Mozart’s capacity. Mozart, he said, was a good composer of
instrumental music, but had written an opera which did not amount to
much. On this account, Mozart went quietly to work. He first composed a
part of his opera, and Da Ponte then took occasion to have the emperor
hear the part thus composed. His imperial majesty immediately ordered
the completion of the work, and subsequently its performance.
Such is the story as it is to be gathered from the memoirs of the
writer of the libretto and of one of the singers, O’Kelley, an
Englishman. Both prove that the Italians now moved heaven and earth
to shut Mozart out from the stage, and that, as a matter of fact,
the emperor was obliged personally to interfere in his behalf, in
the case of the _Figaro_. Moreover, just at this time he gave Mozart
a token of his favor by commissioning him to write an opera called
the _Shauspieldirector_, or “The Manager of the Theater,” for a
garden-festival at Schœnbrunn. The subject of this opera is the
competitive trial of two prima donnas before the manager--a comic piece
which his enemies subsequently endeavored to interpret as a picture of
scenes in his own life.
The Italians, indeed, had reason enough for fear. Salieri subsequently
gave expression to their feelings when he said, it was well that Mozart
was dead, since, if he had lived, it would soon have come to such a
pass that not one of them would get as much as a mouthful of bread for
his compositions. These compositions are, indeed, valueless to-day,
while Mozart’s work is immortal, and while arias like _Will der Herr
Graf ein Taenzlein wagen_, _Neue Freuden neue Schmerzen_ and _Ihr die
ihr Triebe_, will live as long as music lives.
We shall now hear what an effect the actual performance of the opera
which took place on the first of May, 1786, had on him. The following
account, which has in it something of a Mozart-like amiability, is by
the singer Kelley:
“Of all the performers of the opera at that time, there is only one
still living--myself. [He sang the parts of Basilio and the stuttering
judge.] It must be granted that no opera was ever better performed.
I have seen it at different times and in all countries, and well
performed; and yet the very first performance of it compared with all
others is like light to darkness. All the original players had the
advantage of being instructed by the composer himself, who endeavored
to transfer his own way of looking at it, and his own enthusiasm to
their minds. I shall never forget his little, vivacious face glowing
with the fire of genius. It is just as impossible to describe it as to
paint the sunbeam.
“One evening, when I visited him, he said to me: ‘I have just finished
a little duet for my opera, and you must hear it.’ He seated himself
at the piano and sang it. I was carried away, and the musical world
will understand my transport--when I say that it was the duet of the
countess, Ulmaviva with Susanna: _So lang hab’ ich geschmachtet_.
Nothing more exquisite had ever before been written by human being. It
has often been a source of pleasure to me to think that I was the first
who heard it. I can still see Mozart in his red fur hat trimmed with
gold, standing on the stage with the orchestra, at the first rehearsal,
beating time for the music. Benucci sang Figaro’s _Dort vergiss leises
Fleh’n, suesses Wimmern_, with the greatest enthusiasm and all the
power of his voice. I stood beside Mozart, who repeatedly cried ‘bravo!
bravo! Benucci!’ in subdued tones. When Benucci came to the beautiful
passage: _Bei dem Donner der Karthaner_, he allowed his stentorian
voice to resound with all his might. The players on the stage and in
the orchestra were electrified. Intoxicated with pleasure, they cried
again and again, and each time louder than the preceding one, ‘bravo!
bravo! maestro! Long live the great Mozart!’ Those in the orchestra
beat the music stands incessantly with the bows of their violins, thus
expressing their enthusiasm. It seemed as if this storm of applause
would never cease. The little man returned thanks for the homage paid
him by bowing repeatedly. The finale at the end of the first act was
received with similar delight. Had Mozart written nothing but this
piece of music, it alone would, in my humble opinion, have stamped him
the greatest master of his art. Never was there a greater triumph than
that of Mozart and his _Figaro_.”
This is the only detailed account which we possess. The father had
heard enough of the astonishingly powerful intrigues caused by his
son’s great talent and the respect in which he was held. Now he was
able to write to his daughter, that five and even seven parts of the
opera had been repeated, and that one duet had to be sung three times.
The Italians induced the emperor to forbid these repetitions. But when
he spoke to the singers of “this favor he had done them,” the person
playing the part of Susanna frankly replied: “Do not believe that, your
Majesty. They all wish to hear _dacapo_ cried. I at least can assert
that of myself.” Whereupon the emperor laughed.
But we may ask, was Mozart’s fortune now made? He was, indeed, at
this time, in such pinching circumstances that he had to apply to his
publisher, Hofmeister, for such petty advances as a few ducats.
The house was always full to overflowing, and the public never tired
of applauding Mozart and calling him out. But care was now taken that
the performances should not follow one another too frequently or too
rapidly, the effect of which would soon have been an improvement in the
taste of the public. Moreover, the success of a new opera, _Una Cosa
rara_--it serves in the _Don Giovanni_ as table-music--by Martin, the
Spaniard, was enough to throw the _Figaro_ into the shade both with
the emperor and with the people, and then to displace it entirely.
The success of that opera was incredible, and such as might have been
expected from a public whose noblest representative, the emperor Joseph
himself, told Dittersdorf the composer of _Doctor and Apotheker_,
that he liked Martin’s light, pleasant melodies better than Mozart’s
style, who drowned the voice of the singers with the noise of the
accompaniment. “Happy man,” said Mozart to the young composer Gyrowetz,
who went to Italy in the fall of 1785, “if I could only travel with
you, how glad I would be! I must give a lesson now in order to earn a
pittance.” He thought again of going to England, but no inducement to
go there offered.
And yet the _Figaro_ was attended by very immediate success even to
its composer. It gave occasion to the writing of the _Don Giovanni_;
and this leads us to the conclusion of a chapter in Mozart’s life
descriptive of a portion of that life as important as it was replete
with action.
The love of the Bohemians for music and their skill in the art are
well known. After Mozart had made his first appearance in Vienna, the
people of Prague appropriated him just as they have Richard Wagner in
our own day, and the _Figaro_ which followed the _Elopement from the
Seraglio_ was received with an amount of applause which can be compared
only with that subsequently accorded to the _Magic Flute_. It was given
almost without interruption during the whole of the winter 1786-87.
The enthusiasm of the audiences was unparalleled. They never tired of
hearing it. Arrangements for the piano, for wind-instruments, quartets,
dances, etc., were made from it. _Figaro_ was re-echoed in the streets,
in gardens, and even the harper had to play its _Dort Vergiss_ if he
wished to be heard.
It was the orchestra and a society of “great” connoisseurs and amateurs
that invited him to Prague. Nothing could have been more agreeable
to Mozart than to be able to show his enemies in Vienna that he was
not yet without friends in the world. His wife accompanied him. It
was in January, 1787. Count Thun, one of the first chevaliers and
musical connoisseurs of Prague, was his host. He gave every day a
musical entertainment at his own home. He found great delight in the
intercourse of loving friends of his art, friends who recognized his
genius. The very first evening, a ball was given by a well-known
society in Prague--the “elite of the beauties of Prague.” Writing of
it himself, Mozart says: “I was delighted to see all these people
moving about so truly happy, to the music of the _Figaro_ transformed
into counter dances and waltzes. Nothing is talked of here but the
_Figaro_. The people visit no opera but the _Figaro_. It is nothing but
_Figaro_!”
He was to direct the work in person, to the infinite delight of all. He
himself paid a high compliment to the execution of the orchestra. They
always played with great spirit. Two concerts followed. An eye-witness
writes: “The theatre was never seen so full of human beings. Never
was delight more universal. We did not, indeed, know what most to
admire, the extraordinary composition or the extraordinary playing.
The two together produced an impression that was sweet enchantment.
But when Mozart, towards the close, played a number of fantasias
alone, this condition was resolved into one of overflowing expressions
of approval.” Mozart appeared, his countenance radiant with genuine
satisfaction. He began with an enthusiasm that kept increasing from the
first, and had accomplished greater things than had ever before been
heard, when a loud voice cried out: “From Figaro!” whereupon Mozart
played the favorite aria, _Dort vergiss_, improvised a dozen of the
most interesting and artistic variations and closed this remarkable
production amid thunders of applause.
This was certainly one of the brightest days in Mozart’s life. He had
reached the climax of success. In the applause of the multitude, he
saw a reflection of his own intellectual features which called that
applause forth. Strange thoughts now possessed his soul. Feelings never
felt before stirred within him. When a person has reached a height
like that now obtained by Mozart, he is in a position to embrace in
his horizon all that lies below and around him. It was the first time
that his life-sparkling mind did this, but we shall see that it did so
now. The incessant intrigues of his opponents and enemies--intrigues
so violent and great, that, when he died, it was rumored he had been
poisoned--devoured his life like a vulture, and ended it before
his time. The consciousness of this first came to him with all its
melancholy amid the infinite jubilation we have just described, in the
midst of all this joy and recognition of his genius. He now, for the
first time, had a perception of life’s close, of life’s tragic play, as
reflected in _Don Giovanni_; and this was the result of his journey
to Prague. For when, in the overflowing joy of his heart, Mozart said
that he would like to write an opera expressly for such a public, the
director of the theatre, Bondini, took him at his word, and closed the
contract with him for the following autumn, at one hundred ducats.
Da Ponte relates that, on this occasion, he proposed the subject-matter
himself. He had perceived that Mozart’s genius required a sublime and
many-sided poem. And, indeed, this, like _Faust_, was a subject-matter
on which writers of all nations had long labored. _Don Giovanni_
represents the indestructible instinct of life, as _Faust_ does the
instinct of knowledge, showing how that instinct is ever annihilating
and reproducing itself. The hero is given up to the fullest enjoyment
of life regardless of consequences. Cheerfully and freely he surrenders
himself to it. No shackles bind him. Opposition only adds to his
strength. But this very wantonness is, at last, the cause of his ruin.
This was the conclusion of the whole, extended, original Spanish play
chosen by the poet of the libretto.
Don Giovanni rushes into the apartment of Donna Anna, who is waiting
for the arrival of her beloved Don Octavio. Her cry for help calls out
her father. A duel puts an end to his aged life. On the street, Don
Giovanni and his servant Leporello, are met by the forsaken Elvira. She
complains, gives expression to her grief and loads him with reproaches.
He hastens on his way in the search after pleasure. Zerline, the bride
of the young Marsetto is next snatched away from him by Elvira’s
jealousy. But he has invited the whole company to the castle. He is
again met, (everything even now foreshadows the catastrophe) by Donna
Anna with Octavio. They seek his assistance on account of the murdered
father. But Donna Anna, whose suspicions had been already awakened by
Elvira, recognizes him as the murderer. They next appear masquerading
in black at the banquet, and just as Don Giovanni is on the point
of carrying away the rustic beauty, they come up to him; a struggle
ensues, and master and servant are saved only by the most masculine
boldness. This is the first act of this opera, which is also considered
an _opera buffa_.
The second act finds Don Giovanni engaged in a quarrel with Leporello.
Leporello does not want to serve so dangerous a master any longer.
But money atones for the anxiety he endures. Elvira appears on the
balcony. Don Giovanni changes clothes with Leporello and swears love
to her anew. She comes down and at an artificial noise, made by Don
Giovanni, flees with Leporello into the darkness. This is followed by
a serenade to her waiting-maid, Leporello’s beloved. Marsetto and his
peasants, armed with guns, now appear. But Don Giovanni, dressed as
Leporello, succeeds in getting his friends away, and in coaxing the
weapons from Marsetto himself. He then cudgels him soundly, whereupon
Zerline consoles him with her promises. Elvira now looks in the dark
for the supposed lover. The anxious Leporello endeavors to escape. Don
Octavio and Donna Anna suddenly appear with torches and see that this
time they have the servant instead of his master. The former escapes
and according to agreement meets Don Giovanni in the churchyard. Their
godless conversation is suddenly interrupted by a voice which says:
“Presumptuous man, let those rest who have gone to sleep!” It is the
statue of the Comthur. Don Giovanni haughtily forces Leporello to
invite him to dinner. In the midst of the revels of the table--for
which Martin’s _Cosa rara_ furnished a part of the music, as, in
Prague, did the _Dort vergiss_--in the midst of the most luxurious joys
of life, which not even the warning voice of the loving Elvira could
dispel, the stony guest approaches him, and announces his sentence to
him:
“Down into the dust and pray!”
“Tell women to pray!”
“Be converted!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Now thy end has come!”
Yawning abysses open, and spirits of hell drag the dastard into the
dismal grave, alive.
We know what the cheerful phase of the life of the past century was.
It has found a more fiery expression in _Don Giovanni_ than even in
the _Figaro_. The Renaissance had introduced anew the free enjoyment
of life of the ancient world. Think only what the Borgias were! From
Italy and Spain it had made its way to France, when people there, for
the first time, became conscious that they were “dancing on a volcano.”
The feeling that there hangs a necessary and tragic sentence over the
mere sensuousness of life, which is, after all, but a powerful picture
of the transitoriness of all things earthly--a transitoriness which
will always remain a dark enigma to the living themselves, and which
therefore fills the proudest life with a certain melancholy--this
feeling, which constitutes the poetic nucleus of the whole story of
_Don Giovanni_, no one of all who have treated the subject, in an
artistic manner, has fathomed or shown the power of, even in a remote
degree, as did Mozart. The music, on the appearance of the stony guest,
springs from the same fountain as Faust’s most beautiful and profound
monologues. It is the consciousness, the heart-felt knowledge of the
permanent duration of human life; and we have seen how life itself led
Mozart, the artist and the man, to this heart-felt knowledge and to the
feeling of something really eternal in the changes that surround us.
The following further details as to the origin of _Don Giovanni_ are
not devoid of interest.
Da Ponte’s boasting in his memoirs is indeed exquisite, and shows
that, after all, he had no idea what the value of the material of _Don
Giovanni_ was. He had the three distinguished opera composers of Vienna
at the time to write for, and he quieted the doubts of the emperor
as to the success of such a task, by telling him that he would write
during the night for Mozart and keep thinking of Dante’s Hell, in the
morning for Martin, and read Petrarca, in the evening for Salieri, when
Tasso should be his companion. With a bottle of tokai and some Spanish
tobacco before him, and the sixteen-year-old daughter of his hostess,
as his muse beside him, he says he began his work, and in two months
the whole was finished.
And how about Mozart? When at the beginning of April, the libretto of
this poetical judgment on human life had come into his hands, his soul
was directed with redoubled energy to its serious meaning. He received
at that time, the news of the grave illness of his father, which led
him to give expression to some remarkable sayings about death as the
“true goal of our life--man’s true, best friend.” We shall yet see
what suggested this. Besides, he had shortly before lost his “best and
dearest” friend, Count Hatzfeld, and now, on the 28th of May 1787, he
lost his beloved father also. The quintet in G minor dates from this
time. The depths of his soul open up before us here. This quintet is
a prelude to _Don Giovanni_. At this time, too, it was that the court
organist, Ludwig Beethoven of Bonn, now in his sixteenth year, paid him
a visit. Mozart paid no attention to Beethoven beyond predicting his
world-wide fame, so entirely was he pre-occupied with his new work. The
following September, his friend Dr. Barisoni, who had attended him two
years before, when he was very dangerously sick, died; and Mozart wrote
under some of his verses in his album: “It is well with him!--but it
will never be well with me, with us and with all who knew him so well,
until we are happy enough to see him in a better world, never to part
again!” His thoughts went beyond the grave and endeavored to fathom
the eternal relations of things. This was the mood in which he wrote
_Don Giovanni_. Even into the brightest light of life, creep at last
the dark shadows of annihilation!
In the beginning of September 1787, composer and poet were in Prague.
Constance also had traveled with them. She had to see that no
disturbance from without interfered with the workings of our artist’s
laborious mind. Personal intercourse with the singers increased his
intellectual activity. The first singer who took the part of Don
Giovanni was lauded to the deaf Beethoven, almost forty years later, as
a “fiery Italian.” The female singers were not by any means remarkable.
Yet it was said that our artist had been guilty, during this sojourn in
Prague, of all kinds of gay adventures; and this while he was writing
himself to a friend in Vienna: “Is there not an infinite difference
between the pleasure of a fickle, whimsical love and the bliss of a
really rational one?” In after years, his acquaintances remembered the
happy hours they had spent with him in Prague. He played at nine-pins
with them in a wine-garden, which is now adorned with his bust, while
at the same time he wrote out his score at the table in the place. And
in the evening before the performance he was exceedingly cheerful and
full of jokes. Finally, Constance told him it was eleven o’clock, that
the overture was not yet written. At his home, with his glass of punch,
such as he liked, he proceeded to perform the task which was so irksome
to him. He had the work long since finished in his head. He had even
already played it as well as two other drafts of it for his friends.
On this account, Constance, in order to keep his thoughts flowing, was
obliged to tell stories to him. These were fairy tales, like Aladdin’s
Wonderful Lamp, and Cinderella. Mozart frequently laughed over them
until the tears came. Fatigue, however, overpowered him at last, and
his wife allowed him to sleep a few hours. Yet the copyists received
their work in the early morning. He had, moreover, according to his own
confession to the director of the orchestra, never allowed himself to
be prevented from producing something excellent for Prague, and at the
same time assured him, that he had not acquired his art easily. No
one, he said, had been more industrious to acquire it than he, and it
would be hard to find a celebrated master whom he had not diligently
studied.
It is said that he set the celebrated _Reich mir die Hand_ to music
five times for _Don Giovanni_. He made the singers rehearse to him
separately. He danced the minuet for them himself; for, strange to
say, he once told Kelly that his achievements in dancing were more
remarkable than his achievements in music. Hence, the players were
full of good will and enthusiasm, the consequence of which was, that
the performance this time, also, was a very good one. It took place
on the 29th of October, 1787. The house was full to overflowing, and
Mozart was received with a flourish of trumpets, repeated three times,
and applause which it seemed would never cease. Such was the reception
accorded the opera itself, that the director of the theatre wrote to
the composer of the libretto, who, in the meantime had returned to
Vienna: “Long live Da Ponte! Long live Mozart! Praise them, all ye
directors and all ye singers! So long as they live theatres cannot
fail to do a thriving business.” As usual, Mozart himself speaks
modestly of “the loudest kind of applause,” and remarks to his friend
in Vienna, mentioned above: “I could wish that my friends were here a
single evening to share my pleasure. But probably the opera will not be
performed in Vienna. I wish so. People are doing all in their power to
prevail upon me to remain here a few months and write another opera;
but, flattering as the invitation is, I cannot accept it.”
And now, as to the work itself. Schiller wrote to Goethe on the 29th
of December, 1797, that he had always entertained the confidence
that out of the opera as out of the choruses of the old feasts of
Dionysos, tragedy would develop a nobler form. By the power of music,
it attuned the heart to a finer susceptibility, and, in this way, it
might happen that, at last, even the ideal might stealthily make its
way to the stage. Goethe answered curtly: “You might have seen your
hopes recently realized to a great extent in _Don Giovanni_. But in
this respect, that piece stands entirely alone, and Mozart’s death has
rendered all hope of anything like it, idle.” We owe it to _Figaro_
and _Don Giovanni_, more than to anything else, that we are able
to-day, to assert the contrary, and that we witness the real dramatic
art which was attained to by Italy in the revival of antiquity in a
truly flourishing condition about us. What Gluck required should be the
characteristic points of dramatic composition is here complied with to
the fullest extent; to an extent which, in many particulars, has not
been yet surpassed. This perfection Mozart owed to his more accurate
acquaintance with the exigencies of the drama and his supreme command
of all the capabilities of music. The separate and distinct pieces
of music, indeed, with their pitiful, recurring cadences, remind us
continually that it is with a musician we have to do, and one whose
style was a development from the Italian school. But then such is the
poetical intuition of this musician that the poetical material helps
him always to some new invention in his own art. And while this art
seems to demand that it should be necessarily confined to its own
sphere and possess definite forms, genius is able to so arrange it that
the dramatic action may lose nothing that properly belongs to it, and
yet that the music may not become simply “the obedient daughter of
poetry.”
Richard Wagner, the great master, who, in this sphere, is Mozart’s
only real successor, says: “Mozart in his operas demonstrated the
inexhaustible resources of music most fully to meet every demand of
the poet on its power of expression; and considering his completely
original course, this glorious musician did a great deal more to
discover this power of music, both in respect to truth of expression,
and in the endless varieties of its causes, than Gluck and all his
successors.” And in this dramatic respect, the _Figaro_, and _Don
Giovanni_, unquestionably occupy the first place. Who is there that
does not recognize in _Keine Ruh’ bei Tag und Nacht_, _Wenn du fein
artig bist_, _Treibt der Champagner_, a new language in tones? We
here again witness the noblest acquisitions of the _Idomeneo_ and the
_Elopement from the Seraglio_, in the highest possible perfection
concentrated in all their energy. It is a miracle of strength and
grace, of spirit and euphony, of buoyant force, of nobleness, and at
the same time, of truest, deepest feeling.
Thus the _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_, together with Germany’s classic
poetry, occupy a place at the beginning of a great dramatic epoch
which commenced one hundred years ago. They are a part of the life of
modern humanity in general. In them Mozart first fully developed his
inexhaustible genius. And thus it is that these works, like the antique
and the art of the Renaissance, belong to the whole cultured world.
Mozart’s concluding labors are a condensation of all the impressions of
his life, and of all the perceptions of his mind, in their very depths.
The _Magic Flute_, especially by its purely human and ethico-religious
tendency, became the starting point of the efforts of an art which was
peculiarly German, but of which the universal art-creations of the
present day were born. This leads us to the fifth and last chapter of
our biography.
CHAPTER V.
1787-1791.
THE MAGIC FLUTE--TITUS--THE REQUIEM.
Haydn’s Opinion of Mozart--Made Court Composer by Joseph II.--Don
Giovanni in Vienna--Mozart’s Extreme Poverty--His Cheerfulness
under Adverse Circumstances--“The Song of the Swan”--Other
Compositions--Mozart’s Opinion of Handel--He becomes Acquainted
with Sebastian Bach--Mozart’s Opinion of Church Music--Traveling
Again--Some of Mozart’s Characteristics--Audience with the
Emperor--Petition to his Imperial Majesty--His Religious
Feelings--Joins the Free Masons--History of the Composition of the
Magic Flute--The Mysterious Stranger--The Requiem--Success of the
Magic Flute--Mozart as Reflected in his Music--His Industry--Last
Illness--Strange Fancies--Incidents of his Last Days--His Death.
The composer of _Figaro_, Mozart himself, writes in 1785: “If there
were only a single German patriot in a position of influence, with him
things would wear a different aspect. But, then, perhaps, our national
theatre, now only in bud, would come to full bloom; and, of course,
it would be an everlasting shame for Germany, if we should seriously
begin to think German, act German, speak German, and even to sing
German!” Chance would have it, that, towards the close of his days he
was able to give his pen and not merely his tongue, as he did here,
free rein on this point. And the very fact that his circumstances
became poorer, and that the parties, which prevailed at the time,
succeeded in relegating him to an inferior social position, was here of
decisive influence.
Haydn now writes to Prague, where Mozart had declined the composition
of another opera: “You ask me for another opera. With all my heart,
if you wish to have something for yourself alone.” But he would have
had too much to risk in writing for the theatre there, inasmuch as
scarcely any one could be compared with the great Mozart. The noble
master continues: “For if I could impress on the souls of all lovers
of music, but above all on the great, the inimitable works of Mozart;
could I endow them with a proper comprehension of music, and impart to
them the feeling with which I understand and feel them, the nations
would emulate one another for the possession of that jewel.” Prague,
he said, should keep such a man, but at the same time, it should
remunerate him properly, for when not properly remunerated the history
of genius is sad indeed. And he concludes: “It grieves me sorely that
Mozart, who has no equal, has not yet been engaged at some royal or
imperial court.... Pardon me for not keeping to my subject, but I am so
fond of the man.”
Schwind, the painter, who, during his youth in Vienna, knew very many
of Mozart’s friends, writes: “People spoke of him as one speaks of the
person he loves. Why was it that ‘the great’ did nothing for him?”
The success of the _Don Giovanni_ in Prague had a good effect in
Vienna, and when it was learned that Mozart was going to leave that
city for England, Joseph II. named him--it was on the 7th of December,
1787--his court composer with a salary of 800 guldens in all; of which
Mozart once wrote on his tax-returns: “too much for what I do, too
little for what I might do.” In his position, he had no duties but
to write the dancing music for the imperial masquerades! And yet,
the position which Gluck held from the emperor with a salary of two
thousand guldens had just become vacant by that composer’s death!
Mozart must have had wicked enemies and enviers and only half friends,
at this court. His patron, Maximilian Francis, elector of Cologne,
was now in Bonn, where he had found young Beethoven, and the emperor
himself liked the lighter music better than Mozart’s. Thus Salieri
again gained the advantage; and before the opera _Azur_, which had been
ordered by the emperor, was given, _Don Giovanni_ was not to be thought
of.
Yet, the emperor finally ordered its performance also. It took place
on the 7th of May, 1788; but the opera did not give satisfaction. Da
Ponte writes: “Everybody, Mozart alone excepted, was of opinion that
the piece would have to be re-written. We made additions to it, changed
pieces in it, and yet, a second time, _Don Giovanni_ did not give
satisfaction.” According to Da Ponte, however, this did not keep the
emperor from saying, that the “work was magnificent, more beautiful
than _Figaro_, but no morsel for the Viennese.” Mozart, to whom this
saying of the emperor had been carried, replied: “Only give them time
to taste it;” and, indeed, every performance of the opera added to
its success. Haydn said, in a company at the house of Count Rosenberg,
which was no rendezvous for Mozart’s friends, that he could not settle
their dispute about the faults of the work, but he knew that Mozart was
the greatest composer which the world then had.
And yet, at this very time, Mozart was suffering from want, actual
want! The first of those mournful letters to his friend Puchberg, the
merchant, is dated the 17th of June of this year. These letters afford
us a picture of his condition during the last years of his life. They
even foreshadow the sad, premature end of our artist. He received from
_Don Giovanni_, in Vienna, altogether two hundred and twenty-five
guldens. His compositions were in contents and execution too difficult
for the dilettanti, and his feeling and views on art did not allow
him to write otherwise; so that the publishers were not able to pay
him much. Besides, those parts of his compositions which were really
popular, were everywhere republished. Concerts could not be given all
the time, and his receipts from all sources were too irregular. His
household expenses, spite of his simple way of living, were great. He
had several children, in quick succession, and Constance was taken,
repeatedly, very seriously ill--in one instance, for eight whole
months. He closes one of his letters, asking for, and imploring a
little “momentary assistance,” according to his friend’s pleasure, as
follows: “My wife was sick again yesterday. To-day, thank God, she is
better: yet I am very unhappy, always wavering between worry and hope.”
This affliction of body and mind was a constant trial of his better
nature. His letters next to his music afford us the most beautiful
proof of the purity of his soul and the depth of his feelings. Yet the
last years of Mozart’s life disclose to us a mournful picture of the
existence of a German artist; and it is only Mozart’s own spirit that
can lift us high above the sadness and acrimony which we are disposed
to feel here.
His mind did not grow gloomy. Like the phœnix, he always rose out of
the ashes of the want that consumed him--more brilliantly arrayed and
fitted for a grander flight. And it is truer of scarcely any artist
than of him, that his last note was like the dying strains of the
swan, an echo from another and higher world, a sound at once joyful and
melancholy such as had never been heard before.
The symphony in E major which was finished in these summer days of
1788, has in fact, been called the Song of the Swan. Of it Hoffman, in
his celebrated _Phantasiestuecken_, beautifully says: “The language of
love and melancholy are heard in the sweet voices of spirits. The night
breaks into a bright purple light, and, with an unspeakable longing, we
follow the forms which invite us with friendly glances into their ranks
as they fly through the clouds to the eternal music of the spheres.”
Immediately following this came the exceedingly powerful and life-like
symphony in G minor, and the Jupiter symphony. Did mortal ever before
hear the quiet jubilation of all beings as it is heard in the _andante_
of this last? The man who can write such works has higher joys than
the world can give or take away. His eye full of the truest happiness,
is directed towards an eternal ideal which refreshes, preserves and
blesses him. The grave little _adagio_ in H minor for the piano was
also written in this same year, 1788.
At this time, Handel, with his vigorous and manly nature entered
Mozart’s domain. He was preparing for a friend and patron, the former
ambassador to Berlin, Baron von Swieten, _Acis and Galatea_ and the
_Messias_. Mozart’s opinion of Handel was, that he understood better
than any one else the power of music, and that when he chose, he could
use chorus and orchestra with overwhelming effect; even his airs in
the Italian style always betokened the composer of the Messias. But
he was destined soon to become acquainted with a greater genius, a
man all imposing to him--Sebastian Bach. Handel’s freer form and his
dramatic characterization were not new to him; and we may judge from
the _Idomeneo_ that Mozart possessed a power not unlike that which was
peculiar to Handel. Yet Bach opened to him, both as an artist and a
man, a new world, but one which he had long half suspected and half
known--that ocean of polyphony governed with such sovereign power. And
yet the matter lay deeper.
Some one in Leipzig itself--he probably had reference to Bach--had,
in a conversation, called it a burning shame, that it was with so
many great musicians as it had been with the old painters: they
were compelled to employ their immense powers on the fruitless and
mind-destroying subjects of the church. Mozart was highly displeased
at the remark, and said in a very sad manner, that that was some more
art-twaddle. And he continued in some such strain as this: “With you,
enlightened Protestants, as you call yourselves, when all your religion
is the religion of the head, there may be some truth in this. But with
us, it is otherwise. You do not at all feel the meaning of the words,
_Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem_. [Lamb of God
who takest away the sins of the world; grant us peace.] But when one
has, from his earliest childhood, been introduced into the sanctuary of
our religion, and attended its service with fervor, and called those
happy who knelt at the touching strains of the _Agnus Dei_ and received
the communion, while the music gushing in tender joy from the hearts of
the faithful, said, _Benedictus qui venit_, [Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord,] it is very different; and, when now, these
words, heard a thousand times, are placed before one to be set to
music, it all returns and stirs the soul within him.” On this occasion,
he recalled that first composition for the consecration of a church in
his childhood, in Vienna, and the religious impressions he carried away
from Italy of which we spoke above.
He was now in Leipzig and became acquainted with Sebastian Bach in his
church compositions. Necessity had again started him on an artistic
journey. His friend and pupil, prince Charles Lichnowsky, who was
soon destined to play an important part in Beethoven’s life also, had
asked Mozart to travel with him to Berlin where he might probably be
of some use to him with the music-loving Frederick William II. Our
information concerning this journey and one that followed it, is to be
found in those letters to his wife, of which she herself subsequently
wrote that these unstudied epistles were the best indication of his
way of thinking, of his peculiar nature and of his culture. She
says: “The rare love for me which these letters breathe is supremely
characteristic of him. Those written in his later years are just as
tender as those which he must have written during the first years of
our married life, are they not?” In those letters, indeed, we have the
man, Mozart as he really was, and what he had gone through in life,
before us.
In Prague, the director of the theatre had almost so arranged it that
he was to get two hundred ducats for a new opera, and fifty ducats
for traveling expenses. This gave him new life. One of his old Munich
friends, the hautboyist Ramm, who had come from Berlin, had also told
him, in Prague, that the king had asked him “very often and very
anxiously” if it was sure that Mozart was coming, and when he saw that
he had not come, said: “I am afraid that he is not going to come.”
“Judging from this,” says Mozart, “my affairs will not go ill.” In
Dresden, he formed the acquaintance of Schiller’s friend, Koerner, the
father of the poet, whose sister-in-law, Doris Stock, made a drawing of
his picture. But all the affection he met with only turned his thoughts
more lovingly to his wife and child at home. He writes, on the 13th of
April, 1789: “My dearest wife, if I only had a letter from you....
If I could only tell you all I have to say to your dear picture!...
And when I put it away I let it slide from me gradually, while I say:
Well! well! well! and, at the last, good night, pet, pleasant dreams!”
The same complete ingenuousness of a really child-like soul, of which
his friends in Prague were wont to speak. One of them, Professor
Niemetschek, to whom we are indebted for the first biography of
Mozart, says of him: “Brimming over with the pleasantest humor, he
would surrender himself to the drollest fancies, so that people forgot
entirely that they had the wonderful artist, Mozart, before them.”
Closing the letter to his wife, above referred to, he says: “Now, I
think I have written something which the world at least will think very
stupid; but it is not stupid to us who love one another so tenderly.”
We shall yet see what a treasure for his art was this heart of his,
which always loved, as it did, the day he was married. Only genius can
manifest so much innocence and, at the same time, such depth of feeling.
In Dresden he played at court and was presented with “a very pretty”
snuff-box. Here, too, was one Haessler, a pupil of Sebastian Bach,
whose forte was the piano and the organ. This served to stimulate
Mozart’s ability to a higher pitch. He had already become acquainted,
through Van Swieten, with a number of Bach’s and Handel’s fugues. He
also had frequently improvised such fugues himself, or noted them down
at the request of his wife. The man who understands polyphony as Mozart
shows he did in the ensembles of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_--which
testify to the magnitude of his technic powers chiefly by the fact
that it is only the connoisseur that notices these marvels--must
really insist on perfect art in this point, also. Mozart writes: “Now,
the people here think that because I come from Vienna I know nothing
whatever of this kind of music or this manner of playing. I, therefore,
seated myself at the organ and played. Prince Lichnowsky, who knew
Haessler well, persuaded him, after a great deal of trouble, to play,
too.” It then appeared that Haessler had simply learned harmony and
some modulations by rote from old Sebastian Bach, and was not able to
execute a harmony properly; that, as Mozart expresses himself, he was,
by no means, an Albrechtsberger--a man well known as one of Beethoven’s
thorough-bass teachers. But, when Haessler sat down at the piano, he
fared worse yet.
Mozart now went to Leipzig, itself, and the successor of the great
Sebastian, the cantor Doles, master of the choir in the church of
Saint Thomas, was very friendly to him. He first displayed his powers
at the organ here. Says an eye-witness: “Doles was charmed with the
artist’s playing, and imagined Sebastian Bach returned to life.” “With
the greatest facility,” Mozart had put all the arts of harmony in
operation, and improvised the chorale, “Jesus my trust,” in a masterly
manner. This way of working up a chorale was the peculiar art of the
North German school of artists. As a token of gratitude, Doles caused
Bach’s motetto for eight voices, _Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied_,
to be sung for him. Our artist was overjoyed, and exclaimed: “That is
something full of suggestion!” When Beethoven heard this same motetto
with all its elemental power and magnitude, he exclaimed, referring to
its composer: “His name should not be Bach (_brook_), but Meer (_the
sea_).” A similar expression of opinion is ascribed to Wagner, who
performed the same motetto, in 1848, in Dresden.
When Mozart heard that the church of Saint Thomas had several other
such motettoes, he asked for them all, and laid the several parts on
his knees--there being no score--and on the chairs about him, and gave
his whole soul to their study until he had thoroughly mastered them. At
his request Doles gave him a copy of them.
Can we imagine what now passed in Mozart’s soul? The artist recognized
the artist. Of predecessors, with like creative powers, he could have
named only Palestrina. But what moved him still more, and stirred him
to the very depths of his heart, was the sublimity of the religious
feeling which lives in this spirit, and which laid hold of and lifted
Mozart, the Catholic, up all the more because Bach was a Protestant.
“Then he grew suddenly quiet, turned bitter, drank a great deal of
strong wine, and spoke not another rational word,” writes Rochlitz,
who became acquainted with him at this time, and who subsequently
distinguished himself as a writer on Mozart. The opera here afforded
him no opportunity to display his power, and writing for his own church
had little attraction, since, through the reforms of Joseph II.,
the expenses allowed for music, even for a divine service, the very
exigencies of which had created the art, were curtailed to the very
utmost. But we shall soon see from his own compositions that he was
deeply affected by the sublime peace of this great choir-master. And
here, in Leipzig, we notice that he did not allow melancholy, at least
externally, to lord it over him. He dined the last evening he spent
there at Doles’ house. His host and hostess were very sad, and begged
for a memento from his hand. He wrote, in at the most from five to six
minutes, on two small leaves of paper, a canon or round for each, one
in long notes and very melancholy, the other exceedingly droll. “When
it was noticed,” says Rochlitz, “that they could be sung together, he
wrote under the one: ‘Farewell, we shall meet again,’ and under the
other, ‘Wail away like women old.’ It is impossible to describe what a
ridiculous and yet profound, not to say angry and cutting effect this
made upon us all, and if I do not mistake, upon himself, for, in a
somewhat wild voice, he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Good-bye, children,’ and
vanished.”
A closer acquaintance with “old Bach,” was the only lasting gain
of this long-extended journey. Frederick William I. had, after the
frank opinion Mozart had given of his private band, of which J. F.
Reichardt was the leader, tendered him that position, at a yearly
salary of three thousand thalers. But Mozart asked himself: “Shall I
forsake my emperor?” This was the expression of the home-feeling he
had for Austria--a feeling the fruitful and fostering soil of which
would certainly have been lost in the sands of a margrave. One hundred
Frederick sd’or, in a golden snuff-box, and a commission for three
quartets--the king, who himself played the cello, was very fond of this
kind of music--were, however, a moderate remuneration.
His friends at home urged him at least to lay the case before the
emperor; for the king of Prussia had left his offer open a whole year.
Mozart had an audience with his imperial majesty. The emperor said:
“How, do you want to leave me?” To which Mozart replied: “I beg
your majesty’s pardon; I shall remain.” And this was the only result
of the audience. To a friend, who alluded to a possible increase of
salary, he gave the characteristic reply: “Who on earth would think
of that at such a time?” Mozart was an Austrian and idealized his
emperor, especially at this time, when Joseph’s best intentions were
misunderstood in his own country, and Turkey and Belgium caused him
equal anxiety. Was he, who now felt himself forsaken by his own, to
see himself separated from one of the very best of his subjects? That
was more than Mozart’s feelings could stand. However, the emperor
now ordered that _Figaro_ should be put on the stage again. Mozart
had added to it the great aria of the countess in F major, and the
renewed success of the work determined the emperor to charge him with
the writing of a new opera, the words of which were suggested by the
thoughtless bet of two officers. It was the _Cosi fan tutte_ (So They
All Do, or The Lover’s School.)
Two officers and a bachelor make a wager as to the fidelity of their
intended wives, and actually succeed, with the assistance of the
waiting-maid, and by desperately intimidating them, in rendering them
faithless, each to the other, whereupon they take refuge in the sorry
consolation: _Cosi fan tutte_--so they all do.
It is hard to imagine a subject more frivolous. But, leaving out of
consideration the tone of the time--a time when it was palpably evident
that the _deluge_ was impending, and when people thoughtlessly enjoyed
all that was to be enjoyed--Mozart did not treat it seriously. He
rather illustrated by it the masquerade character of the _opera buffa_,
made of it a species of magic-lantern performance, the excuse for, and
the basis, so to speak, of his dream-like music. And, indeed, that
music is wonderfully balmy, like a half-veiled sunny-cloudy morning,
on which every object is still concealed, or only duskily seen shining
through the air--such music as only a Mozart could write. But the
words were so trifling and frivolous that it was soon all over with
this opera, and all efforts to resuscitate it have proved vain. It was
not until life, which had become a deceptive play to the profoundly
thoughtful mind of our artist, arose before him like a picture of
fairy-land, that he was able to infuse into that picture the full
breath of the higher truth, which is not to be found in such a coarse,
hollow-eyed and worm-eaten reality as the wager of those two officers.
This brings us to the _Magic Flute_, and to the final perfection and
full concentration of Mozart’s purposes and powers.
_Cosi fan tutte_ was given on the 26th of January, 1790, and was very
successful. The work was written entirely in the light style of Italian
music, so popular at the time. But the man who had prompted it never
saw it. The emperor Joseph was sick at the time it was given, and fell
a victim to the grief and worry of the last years of his reign, in
February, 1790, without having done anything further for Mozart. In
no year of his life did Mozart write fewer musical compositions. He
ascribes this fact himself to his extreme pecuniary distress. To his
shame, and still more to ours, who have come after him, he was obliged
to write, just at this time, to his “dearest friend,” Puchberg: “You
are right in not deigning to answer me. My importunity is too great....
I can only beg you to consider my circumstances in all their bearings,
to pity and forgive my warm friendship and my trust in you.” Even
his industry did not avail him. His compositions found no purchasers.
They were above the comprehension of the people of his time, and thus
he was soon left entirely without the means of support. The keeper of
a neighboring inn surprised him one morning early, waltzing about his
room with Constance. They were without fuel, and took this strange way
of protecting themselves against the cold. O the mortal pilgrimage of
genius!
A petition to the new emperor, Leopold I., and a memorial to an
archduke, were drawn up, the draft of each of which is still extant.
The court had its own orchestra in the court chapel of Saint Augustine;
and, mindful of the church of Saint Thomas, in Leipzig, Mozart says,
in his petition to the emperor: “A desire for fame, love of action,
and a conviction of my abilities, embolden me to petition for a second
place as _Capellmeister_, especially, as the very able _Capellmeister_,
Salieri, never devoted himself to the church style of music, while I
have made that style a favorite study from my youth.” He also requested
to be allowed to instruct the royal family “because of the little fame
the world had accorded him for his skill at the piano.” He had great
hopes because the emperor retained his petition. But Gluck’s former
patron was not friendly to Mozart, and, besides, it was scarcely to be
expected that any one who had stood in close relations with Joseph I.
would find favor in his eyes.
On the 17th of May, 1790, the composer of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_
was obliged to write: “I have now two scholars. I would like to
bring the number up to eight. Try to spread it abroad that I am
giving lessons.” In the meantime, he finished at least three quartets
for Frederick William I., and, through Swieten, received Handel’s
_Alexander’s Feast_, and the _Ode for Saint Cecilia’s day_, to
re-arrange. When Mozart saw that, on the occasion of the presence of
the King of Naples, in September, 1790, he was passed over entirely,
and that Salieri, as well as his pupil, Weigl, were preferred to him,
he became convinced that he would have to seek his fortune in foreign
parts. The emperor was to be crowned in Frankfurt, in October. Mozart
decided on going there. He took his eldest sister-in-law’s husband, the
violin player, Hofer, with him; for he had no doubt of his success on
this occasion. It was not vouchsafed to him, however, to attach himself
to the court as its composer of chamber music, and his silver-ware had
to go to the pawn-shop, that he might procure as much as a vehicle to
travel in. This journey for the purposes of his art--it was destined to
be his last--is described in his letters to his “best and dearest wife
of my heart.” They breathe the deepest melancholy. In reading them,
we cannot fail to see that the shadows of death were even now playing
about his head.
As if he had not been the most industrious of workers, he writes to
his wife at this time: “I am now firmly resolved to do my very best
here, and then I shall be heartily glad to be with you again. What a
glorious life we shall live after this! I shall work--O how I shall
work! that I may never again get into such a fatal state in consequence
of unexpected contingencies.” He was, indeed, literally “immersed”
in music. His application had so distracted him, and his mind was so
unhinged in consequence, that he did not dare even to cut his own meat
in eating, lest he might injure himself. His strange contortions of
countenance and his strange gestures showed that his thoughts were far
from being in the world about him. He had fallen into the hands of
usurers, and that “un-christian class of people,” as he called them,
succeeded in involving him completely in their meshes.
But, unfortunately, he was soon forced to the conviction, that, even in
Frankfort, there was not much for him to do. In a letter of the 30th
of September, 1790, to his wife, he says: “I am exceedingly glad to
go back to you again. If people could only look into my heart I would
be almost forced to blush. I am so cold, so icy cold to everything.
If you were with me, perhaps I would find more pleasure in the kind
treatment I receive from people; but, as it is, my heart is empty.”
On his journey home, he visited Mayence where Tischbein, Goethe’s
friend, painted his picture. He was going to Mannheim. “O the golden
days of a heart’s first love!” What thoughts must have possessed him
at this time! For, did not all Vienna know how happily he lived with
his Constance, while the unhappy relations of Aloysia with her husband
were matter of discussion in the public press? But why was it that the
man who, at that time, gave promise of such a career of happiness, was
now obliged to travel about the world in search of his daily bread?
The thought of this filled his soul with bitterness, at the very time
that he was invited to Munich, on account of the King of Naples, to a
concert at court. He writes: “A pretty honor for the court of Vienna
that the King has to hear me in a strange country!” And, indeed, the
court’s neglect of him was the chief cause of the sad plight he was in.
His journey had cheered and strengthened him, but it had not improved
his pecuniary condition. He could, in consequence, redeem only a
portion of the silver-ware he had pledged, and the rest of it was lost
entirely through his too great confidence in a Masonic friend. At this
time, one of the directors of a London concert company, J. P. Salomon,
had come to Vienna to take Haydn--his old patron prince Esterhazy
having died--to London. Mozart was to follow after. His parting with
the “old papa” was touching in the extreme. We saw above how deep his
feeling of affection was for Mozart. The latter, with tears in his
eyes, and at a time when he might well have thought rather of his own
death, said to Haydn who was so much older: “This is probably our last
good-bye, in this life.” He divined only too well. Haydn shed bitter
tears of sorrow when he heard of Mozart’s premature death a year later,
in London. He now wrote: “Posterity will have to wait a hundred years
for another like him;” and again, many years afterwards: “Pardon me,
but I must always weep when I hear my dear Mozart’s name.”
Mozart’s soul was deeply affected. But his mind soared into regions
beyond this life, where compensation for its inequalities would be
found. The debt that weighed upon him now was light in comparison
with the wealth he had labored so industriously and devotedly to give
the world, and which he was still bestowing on it. And hence it has
genuine melancholy, not pain nor plaintive sighs that filled his soul.
The golden light of consolation tinged all his work. A friend had once
written in his album. “Love! love! love! is the soul of genius.” He
now interpreted these words in the sense of eternal love and merciful
goodness. A spirit of wonderful sweetness and reconciliation henceforth
animates all his music. We need only remind the reader of the two
“fantasias” for four hands in F minor. They were written in the winter
of 1790-91 “at the urgent solicitation of a friend, a great lover of
music,” for an orchestration, in which one Count Dehm produced, for
the benefit of his countrymen, a number of distinguished historical
characters in wax; and which was intended for the “mausoleum” of the
celebrated Field-marshal Laudon. In it we reach the sunny heights of
Mozart’s genius, and see how he dived down into, and was absorbed by,
his own hard and chequered life, and how he was again lifted up to that
eternal spring from which his own as well as Bach’s sublime religious
art proceeded; the union of sanctified personal feeling to the sensible
presentation of the Eternal itself, to which the human soul looks up
in silent, earnest faith and resignation. It was time that another
opportunity were offered to Mozart to give complete expression to this
final and highest feeling of the human breast; and it was afforded him.
Mere accident led to what he aimed at. We are thus brought face to
face with his _Magic Flute_ and _Requiem_; works ushered in by those
fantasias, like bright morning stars, just as the quintet in G minor
had preceded his _Don Giovanni_.
In order fully to appreciate the place these two works fill in Mozart’s
own life, we must turn our gaze backwards, for a time.
We know what Mozart’s heart-felt religious feeling was. He disclosed
it in the frankest way whenever a proper occasion offered. He was just
as honestly attached to his Church. When he was starting on his great
Parisian journey, in the interest of his art, his father wrote him:
“May the grace of God attend you everywhere, may it never forsake you,
and it never will forsake you, if you are industrious to fulfill the
duties of a really good Catholic.” But at this time, the necessity
of examining the great questions of life, death and immortality, and
of disclosing to each other, in earnest conversation, the questions
of the soul, was very generally felt, by people even outside the
Church. And this all the more, because neither the Protestant nor
the Catholic service seemed able to satisfy the spiritual cravings
of the educated. The Protestant Church was divided into the opposing
parties of orthodoxy and rationalism. The Catholic Church had grown
torpid, stereotyped in dogma, and its worship had sunk almost to
the level of mere theatrical mummery. Oneness of spirit soon led to
leagues or unions and orders of which the order of Free Masons attained
the greatest importance. Of the men who constantly bore in mind the
intellectual life and elevation of the German people, Lessing, Wieland,
Herder and Goethe belonged to this order. And since it was its aim to
realize the highest virtues of Christianity, the purification of the
mind and heart by the sacrifice of self, and the assistance of all men,
it was impossible that a man like Mozart should not have felt drawn to
it.
He joined the order in Vienna, and so true did the doctrine of the
sanctifying nature of death as the real “object and aim of life,” and
as the symbol of the self-sacrifice we should be ever ready to make
of ourselves, seem to him that he did not rest until he had induced
his father to join it also. They, indeed, destroyed the correspondence
with one another, on this subject. But the _Magic Flute_ bears witness
to the earnestness with which Mozart held to these sublime truths of
Christianity, even outside the Church. Its history is as follows:
Schikaneder who, as far back as 1780, had known how to make use
of young Mozart in Salzburg, had been some years in Vienna, and
had a small wooden theatre in the Stahremberg _Freihaus_.[9] His
inexhaustible good humor made him very good company, and Mozart
had long enjoyed himself in the circle of his theatrical friends.
Schikaneder had frequently, when acting as theatrical director,
alternately reveled in superfluity, and almost starved. Now, in
consequence of the competition of the theatre in the Leopoldstadt, he
was brought to the very brink of ruin. This was in the spring of 1791.
He applied to Mozart for a “piece that would attract.” He said that he
had a proper subject, a _Magic Opera_, and that Mozart was the man to
write the music for it. It was an unparalleled piece of impudence, and
one which discloses Schikaneder’s whole character, to ask the emperor’s
composer, the author of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ to write a _Magic_
_Opera_ for a board booth in the suburbs. But Schikaneder knew the
world and knew Mozart. And then he was linked to him by the ties of
brotherhood in the order of Free Masons. To that brotherhood, Mozart
himself owed the steady assistance he received from Puchberg. And hence
his objections were soon overcome by the description the sly director
gave of his extreme poverty. “If we are unfortunate in the matter, it
will not be my fault,” Mozart replied; “for I never yet composed a
‘magic opera,’” and with these words, he went immediately to work.
To the clown, Schikaneder, the bird-catcher, Papageno--who understood
so well how to describe the good natured, rather timid, fanciful,
easy-going nature of the average Viennese--was of more consequence than
the other nobler characters of the opera. But to the composer, the
chosen play was a reflection of life such as he had seen it in his own
soul for years, and above all, as it was in the heart of the loving
pair who, separated by adverse fate, were destined to meet again in
more intimate union; and in the _Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schoen_,
we hear once more the first heart-felt love notes of his youth, more
beautiful and more full of soul than ever. But we would call attention
also to the ideal charm and transformation of all the other powers
that appear in this magic play. Mozart really felt the existence of
higher powers, and that they preside over our lives. The rehearsals of
the first act began as early as July; for Schikaneder had the tact to
win Mozart over to himself completely. He had even given up the summer
house in the garden to him, and endeavored to provide him with the most
cheerful society. The accounts that have come down to us representing
Mozart as a frivolous pleasure-seeker originated about this time. But
we need only read the letters which he wrote during this same time
to his wife, who was not far away,--she was in Baden on account of
sickness,--to see that his soul was not in these outer pleasures. Yet
after all, what remained to him whom the great world disdained but the
little world about him? He was now literally at the bottom round of
the ladder, socially. The fact that he had, besides, to strain every
nerve to eke out a mere existence for his wife and child, had an effect
upon his entire system, which could be removed only by good-fellowship
and wine. The increased action and concentration of all the powers
of his mind and body, naturally called for in artistic and above all
in musical invention, necessarily leads to the craving for enhanced
enjoyment, if only for a few moments. And that Schikaneder knew how to
procure such moments of enjoyment for Mozart, that he might own him
entirely, and make the composer serve his purposes, we may infer from
the story, that after Mozart’s death, which followed so soon on this,
Schikaneder went about crying out: “His ghost pursues me wherever I go.
He is always before my eyes!”
But more important than the question, how much of a pleasure-seeker
Mozart was, is the fact that his somewhat irregular mode of life, at
this time had a bad influence on him mentally. Two causes cooperated to
produce this effect.
In May, 1791, he had solicited the position of assistant musician in
the church of St. Stephen, for the reason that “he could consider
himself more competent than others for the position, because of his
more thorough knowledge of the church style of music.” He had long
wished to find something to do in this sphere again, especially
since the new emperor had removed the narrow limits put to it by the
emperor, Joseph. Now he was asked to write a requiem, the most solemn
music in the worship of his church; and the request came to him under
the strangest, nay under mysterious circumstances. A long, lean man,
dressed in gray, with a very serious expression of countenance, handed
him the commission for the requiem in a very flattering letter. Mozart
communicated the matter to his wife, saying, at the same time, that
he longed to write some music of that kind once more, and to produce
a work which friends and foes alike might study after his death. He
took the commission and asked, as the entire price of the work, fifty
ducats, without however, fixing the time when the work should be
delivered. The messenger came once more, paid the money and promised an
additional sum, the composer to write precisely as he felt, and only
when he felt like writing, but to make no effort to discover the person
who gave the commission, since any effort of the kind would be in vain.
We now know that it was one count Walsegg who gave the commission for
the work, intending to have it performed as his own at the death of his
wife. But the mysteriousness surrounding the commission took complete
hold of Mozart’s mind. He looked upon it as a commandment from on high.
His soul was already filled with thoughts that lead beyond the limits
of this life. Added to this was the other circumstance referred to
above.
The first act of the _Magic Flute_ was finished as far as the finale
when Schikaneder was informed, to his sorrow, that the same thing
was being played with the greatest success by the competing theatre.
But he did not despair; it was resolved to change the point of the
play, to transform the wicked wizard who had stolen the princess whom
Tamino was to recover, into the sage and philanthropist Sarastro, and,
instead of the disconsolate mother, to put the evil-minded “queen of
the night” with her Moors and the three ladies in black. These changes
occasioned a noticeable disparity and much that was contradictory in
the opera as a whole; but, on the other hand, Mozart could now put
his whole soul into it, and to this incident we are indebted for the
most earnest and beautiful effusions of his mind and heart. The whole
work now centered about the idea of free-masonry. By the earnest trial
of their moral power, mortals must win their higher immortal portion,
and with it their happiness. The bonds that unite the two lovers
are purified and sanctified, transmuted into the more powerful and
lasting life-bonds of marriage, which freed from all passion by the
labors of love and resignation, discloses the real object and meaning
of love. And, indeed, who had ever more purely tasted the sweets of
this ever-virginal, marital love than Mozart, who even now, so many
years after he was married, closed a letter to his wife with these
words: “Good-bye, my dear, my only one. Two thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine and a half kisses are flying from me through the air. Put
out your hands and catch them; they are waiting for you. A thousand
sweet kisses. Thy Mozart forever.”
And now as to the character of Sarastro. Of all the human shapes
that Mozart had met in life, his father’s, after that of his beloved
Constance, had the firmest hold upon him, and this spite of his
misunderstandings of, and even want of confidence in, his son, in his
declining years. And had not his personal experience with men, next to
his artistic experiences, come to him, in real life and even in public
life, in the guise, so to speak, of the rulers of his existence? Was
not the emperor Joseph and the order of Free Masons the highest ideal
of purely humanitarian aims that his imagination could conceive? All
this had nothing whatever to do with his religious feelings. His Church
and his own personal faith were things apart. He thought, indeed, that
their abuses, as for instance the immoderate increase of the religious
orders, might be attacked, but that which constituted their very core,
and their truth, were sublimely beyond the reach of doubt. But while
these last, in that which is imperishable in them, now found their
holiest expression in the _Requiem_, it could not but be, that those
parts of the new opera descriptive of those higher purely human aims,
should participate in the solemn sacred tones that poured from Mozart’s
soul. And hence we need not hesitate to say that the _Requiem_ and the
_Magic Flute_ tell us all that Mozart’s heart knew and felt of heaven
and of earth, that it transfigured the earthly in the light of heaven,
and sought from heaven to bring down peace to earth. We know this both
from the chorus: _O goldene Ruh’ steig hernieder, Kehr in den Menschen
Herzen wieder_, as well as from Tamino’s painful, longing exclamation:
_O ew’ge Nacht, wann wirst du schwinden? Wann wird das Licht mein Auge
finden?_ It is the expression of a homesickness divine, a craving for
God, the highest good for the human soul.
Obstacle after obstacle was placed in the way of the completion of
both works. The Bohemians had ordered a great opera, _Titus the Mild_,
for Leopold’s coronation. There were only a few weeks remaining during
which it could be written. Mozart started immediately on his journey.
It was the middle of August. Constance again accompanied him. As they
were entering the carriage, the mysterious messenger in gray stood
before them. Mozart quieted him with the assurance that the _Requiem_
was the first task that would engage him after his return. Yet this
seemed to him a new warning not to postpone the last work of his
life; for such he considered the _Requiem_ to be. He felt unwell even
now. He overworked himself in Prague--_Titus_ was written and put
in rehearsal within a fortnight--and thus accelerated the breaking
down of his already over-taxed, vital energies. Added to this was the
want of success of the opera. He had this time forgotten the rule
“hasten slowly,” and the quintet in great dramatic style in the first
finale, could not conceal from his Prague audience, who were certainly
indulgent, the absence of the artist’s peculiar skill. Titus remained
an _opera seria_, a bundle of arias, and the applause Mozart was wont
to meet with, failed him, even in Prague. He was very much depressed in
consequence. He again, indeed, recovered his native cheerfulness, but
in leaving Prague the tears flowed abundantly. He had a presentiment
that he would never see those friends again.
In the middle of September, he was in Vienna once more. The _Magic
Flute_ was to be put on the stage, and might serve to make up what he
had lost of reputation in Prague. Besides, it was part of his great
life task. King Leopold had abolished the order of Free Masons, and
it, therefore, now seemed to Mozart, simply a duty he owed to his
order to put its humane aims in their true light, by every means in
his power. And what a refulgence streams from the choruses of the
second act, from the overture which, as well as the introductory march
of the same act, so suggestive of _Idomeneo_, was only just written!
“Through night to light!”--such is the sense in which Mozart wrote
and understood the entire work, the accidental garb of which did
not mislead him in the least. Into one of the pieces descriptive of
this earnestness of moral trial of the heart, Mozart went as far as
to weave a Protestant chorale. It is the song of the _Geharnischten
Maenner_--the “men in mail;” and its “figuration” shows that Mozart
had added Bach’s artistic characteristics to his own. But he had also
appropriated his spirit of deep piety and genuine virtue! Nothing
exhibits more clearly how solemn and high his vocation as an artist was
to him, nor proves more forcibly that, for him, there was no secluded
spot where alone the ideal and the divine were to be taught. The ideal
and the divine should, like the sun, shed their rays everywhere, and
the stage was the place where our artist felt that he could address,
from his inmost heart, his nation and his contemporaries.
And what a work we have before us here! There never was a greater
contrast between an ideal work of art and the place and occasion to
which it owed its origin, than between the _Magic Flute_, one of the
starting-points of the most ideal efforts of the German nation, and the
audiences of a board booth in a suburb of Vienna!
We must, indeed, leave the trivialities and absurdities of the libretto
out of consideration. And even here, Mozart’s music succeeded in
turning deformity into ideal beauty; and this spite of the fact that
the “bird-catcher,” Schikaneder, is said to have suggested many of the
melodies to him which have since come into such universal favor. There
is still a note of his extant in which we read: “Dear Wolfgang! In the
meantime, I return your pa-pa-pa to you. I find it about right. It will
do. We shall meet this evening. Yours--Schikaneder.” A church hymn was
afterwards put to the air: _Bei Maennern welche Liebe fuehlen_. How
ideal must not those lines have been when the higher moral sentiments
could be awakened by so simple an air!
That best known of all solemn songs: _In diesen heil’gen Hallen_, has
this very tone of the dignity of a heart that has mastered itself, and
wisely and lovingly thinks only of humanity. Only the fact that it is
as well known and as familiar to us as light and air, allows us to
forget that it is as lustrous as the one and as ethereal as the other.
The character of Sarastro personifies what Mozart conceived to be the
deeper meaning of life. Pamina is the most beautiful expression of
pure love and tenderness. Tamino is the ideal character of a youth who
restrains his own feelings under life’s stern rule--and thus insures
for himself and those confided to him by fate, the happiness of life.
We need only ask the attention of the reader to the exclamation in the
conversation with the priest, _der Lieb und Tugend Eigenthum!_--“love’s
and virtue’s prize!” With the fullest expression of heart-felt
conviction, these few tones describe the whole moral stability of
Mozart’s nature.
It is not hard to see in what relation these characters stand to the
heroes and female characters of Richard Wagner, and it is not without
reason that Francz List has called the _Ring of the Niebelungen_ the
_Magic Flute_ of our day. Wagner here filled out the clear outline
of the human ideals which Mozart drew in the _Magic Flute_ from his
knowledge of the German nature. All the sublime ideal powers which
move and lead us, from the conscious emotions of our own hearts to the
elemental, primeval forces which determine our will are here found, in
the faintest outlines, it is true, but still as the first features of
the surest characterization; and as Osmin points to Fafner, the “three
boys” who lead Tamino point to the three daughters of the Rhine who
warn Siegfried of his death. It was the first time that that which
lives in every human breast as the consciousness of the most intimate
knowledge of the real constitution of the world, and fills us with the
feeling of the eternal, was portrayed with such Rafaelite, ideal art in
opera. This it is that gives to the whole work its peculiar tone. Like
the golden light of creation’s first morning, it plays about the opera
of the _Magic Flute_.
The reception accorded to the work, the popularity of which is
unequalled in any nation, was in keeping with its merits. The first
representation of it took place on the 30th of September, under
Mozart’s own direction. After the overture, the audience was perfectly
motionless: for who could have expected such solemn, thrilling notes
in a _Magic opera_? Schenk, who afterwards composed the _Dorfbarbier_,
the teacher of Beethoven, who still occupied a place in the orchestra,
crept up to the director’s chair, and kissed Mozart’s hand, who,
continuing to beat time with the other, gave him a friendly look
of recognition and gently stroked his cheek. Our artist felt that,
even here, in this board booth, he was in his own dear Vienna, in
his own beloved Austria. But, even after the close of the first act,
the applause was not great, and it is said that Mozart went pale and
perplexed to Schikaneder, who quieted and consoled him. During the
second act, however, this motley multitude discovered the message that
this music conveyed to the soul. It was, indeed, with difficulty that
Mozart could now be moved to appear on the stage. It wounded him to
the quick to think that the best he could do was so little appreciated.
But he was soon able to write to his “best and dearest wife” at Baden,
that, spite of the fact that it was mail day, the “opera was played
before a very full house and met with the usual applause.” His feeling
for the work is expressed at the close of the letter, in the words of
the incomparable terzetto, when Sarastro dismisses the two lovers to
make proof of their love: “The hour is striking farewell! we shall
meet again.” With the unconcern of his own magnanimity he himself
ushered in his mortal enemy, Salieri, and the latter found the work
“worthy of being produced before the greatest monarch at the greatest
festivities.” And how frequently this very thing has happened since!
But the people continue Mozart’s real sovereign, the people in the most
ingenuous innocence of their every impulse and emotion and of the most
ideal view of life’s ultimate nature. And Mozart belongs to the people.
To them, he is not dead.
But the hour of our parting ourselves with this phenomenal artist and
phenomenal man will soon strike.
He now worked uninterruptedly on his _Requiem_, and the theatre was
left to a younger _Capellmeister_. He frequently wrote until two
o’clock in the morning. He even refused to give lessons in music to a
lady for a very dear Vienna friend. He had, he said, a piece of work in
hand which was very urgent and which he had very much at heart; and,
until it was finished, he could do nothing else. Even while engaged on
the last pieces of the _Magic Flute_, such as the march and the chorus,
“O Isis and Osiris,” he sometimes sank exhausted in his chair, and had
short fits of fainting; for his whole heart and soul were wrapped up in
his work. But he cared less than ever now about physical exhaustion,
since he was directly concerned with the erection of a worthy monument
to his sentiment and feeling of the Eternal in the holy sanctuary
itself. He had an earnest feeling of the terror of guilt, even if the
feeling seemed to him no more than a weakness. But he felt also, and
infinitely more deeply, the power of forgiving love which was the life
of his own soul. That mighty mediæval, Christian poem, the _Dies irae_,
inspired and stimulated his fancy. He wished to show the world its
own painfully tragic meaning and its blessed reconciliation. Certain
it is that no composer ever went to work with a more honest intention
to give a true artistic form to religious expression in the mass for
the dead. True, it is only certain parts that are in complete keeping
with this deep, religious feeling; while his secular compositions are
throughout appropriate to the subject treated. The explanation of this
difference is the fact, that Mozart was too long and too exclusively
engaged in writing operatic music, and that the operatic character had,
as we have already seen, crept into the music which was now in favor
in the service of the Catholic Church. But these parts, especially the
thrilling accords descriptive of man’s consciousness of guilt, the
_Gedenke gnaedig meines Endes_, and the close of the _Confutatis_, the
touching prayer for loving mercy in the _Lacrimosa_--these parts were
in entire harmony with the religious feeling of their author and with
his unsurpassed artistic power. And this it was that made the work so
very dear to himself. It was his favorite, his dying song. Art had
subsequently to take another and very different direction in this
department of music, but the language of the heart overflowing with the
feelings of its God and of the purest confidence in his undying love,
will always be heard in this _Requiem_. That language is its very soul.
We are rapidly approaching the end. The funeral bell is already
tolling. Melancholy is the last picture in the life of an artist who
never had an equal.
Constance observed the growing infirmity and melancholy of her beloved
husband with increasing alarm. She did all in her power to take him
away from his work and to brighten him up by cheerful society. But
Mozart, who was wont to be so social, was turned in upon himself,
depressed, and could give only wandering answers to the questions put
to him. She rode out into the open air with him. Nature had always
had the effect of relieving and cheering him, so that he worked best
traveling, when he insisted on having his “portefeuille,” as he called
his leather case filled with music paper, in the side-fob of the
carriage, at hand. They rode out in this manner, one beautiful November
day, into the _Prater_. The aspect of dying nature and the falling
of the leaves suggested to him thoughts of the end of all things. He
now began to speak of death, and said, with tears in his eyes: “I know
very well I am writing the _Requiem_ for myself. I am too conscious
of myself. Some one must have poisoned me; I cannot rid myself of
that thought.” His utter debility without any noticeable external
cause readily suggested that suspicion. He could not imagine that his
strength had been exhausted by sheer intellectual labor. And then, had
not care and sorrow gnawed at his vitals for years?
Constance was exceedingly alarmed, and succeeded in getting the score
of the _Requiem_ from him. She consulted a physician, who recommended
complete rest. This had so favorable an effect, in a short time, that
Mozart was able to write the cantate _Das Lob der Freundschaft_--“the
praise of friendship”--for a newly established lodge, and, shortly
afterwards, to direct its production himself. The success of the
work,--which itself bears internal evidence to a feeling of greater
calmness and cheerfulness in its author--had a refreshing and
comforting effect upon him. He now declared his suspicions that he had
been poisoned, the effect of his ill-health, and demanded the _Requiem_
back. But a few days later, he again fell a victim to his melancholy
feelings, and his strength left him. “I feel that I shall soon have
done with music,” he said one morning to the faithful person who had
once surprised him waltzing about his room with Constance, gave him
back his wine and made an appointment to meet him next morning on some
matters of business. When the latter reached the threshold of Mozart’s
house, on the following day, he was met by the servant maid with the
news that her master had been taken seriously sick during the night.
Mozart himself looked at him fixedly from his bed, and said: “Nothing
to-day, Joseph. To-day we have to do with doctors and apothecaries.”
He did not leave his bed any more after this. It was not long before
worse symptoms appeared. His consciousness did not leave him for a
moment. Neither did his loving sweetness and kindness. But the thought
of his wife and children filled his heart with melancholy. New and
better prospects were now before him. The Hungarian nobility and
some rich Amsterdam gentlemen, lovers of music, asked him to write
compositions for them, in consideration of a large annual honorarium.
And then there was the success of the _Magic Flute_, in which he was
deeply interested. “Now the first act is over! Now they have come to
the place _Dir, grosse Koenigin der Nacht_”--he was wont to say in the
evening with the watch at hand. The day before his death, he exclaimed:
“Constance, if I could only hear my dear _Magic Flute_ once more!”
And he hummed away the air of the “bird-catcher,” in a voice that was
scarcely audible.
But he had the _Requiem_ still more at heart, and he had so far
sketched its principal features, that his pupil, Suessmayer who
had also written the recitative for Titus was subsequently able to
complete it. During the afternoon that preceded the last night of his
life, he had the score of the _Requiem_ brought to him in bed. The
Tamino of Schikaneder’s troop took the soprano, Sarastro the bass, his
brother-in-law, Hofer the tenor, and Mozart, as usual, the alto. They
sang until they reached the _Lacrimosa_ when Mozart burst into tears
and put the score aside. The thought of his approaching end and of
God’s all-merciful, eternal love, filled his heart with an unspeakable
feeling which made it overflow with a melancholy joy. This is plainly
evident from the infinitely mild, conciliating tones in which Mozart
has described that day of tears on which eternal grace and goodness are
to make compensation for the eternal guilt of men.
His sister-in-law, Sophie, came in the evening. He said to her: “Ah, my
dear, good Sophie, how glad I am you are here! You must stay to-night,
and see me die. I have the death-taste on my tongue. I have the odor
of death in my nostrils. And who will then help my dear Constance?”
Constance hereupon asked her sister to go for a clergyman, but it was
no easy matter to induce one to come. The patient was a Free Mason, and
the order of Free Masons was opposed to many of the institutions of the
Church.
When she returned she found Suessmayer at his bedside. Mozart was
explaining to him how to finish the _Requiem_, remarking as he did
so: “Did I not say that I was writing it for myself?” In the evening,
the crisis came. Cold applications to his burning head so shattered
him that he did not regain consciousness any more. Thirty-five years
after his death, his sister-in-law Sophie wrote: “The last thing he
did was to endeavor to imitate the kettle-drums in the _Requiem_. I
can hear him still.” About midnight he raised himself up. His eyes had
a fixed gaze. He then turned his head towards the wall and seemed to
drop asleep. He died at one o’clock in the morning, on the 5th day of
December, 1791.
The last account we have of him says: “It is impossible for me to
describe with what an expression of infinite wretchedness his devoted
wife cast herself on her knees and called on the Almighty for aid.”
She threw herself on his bed, that she might die of the same sickness,
as if the cause of his death was some accidental disease. The three
medical opinions assigned each a different cause for Mozart’s premature
death--inflammation of the brain, purple fever and dropsy!
The people walked about his house in the _Rauhenstein’gasse_ in crowds
and wept. The poem of the order of Free Masons on the occasion refers,
in touching terms, to the way in which he carried assistance to many
a poor widow’s hut. The owner of the art-cabinet for whom the two
fantasias in F minor were written, came and took an impression of his
“pale, dead face” in plaster of Paris. The two sublime funeral odes
were now made to serve as his own mausoleum.
Van Swieten took charge of his burial. But as he left only sixty
guldens, a common grave had to be selected for his body; and thus it
happens that we do not know to-day where Mozart’s last resting place
is. When Constance, sick and sorrowful, went to the churchyard, some
time after the grave-digger had been replaced by another, who could not
point out where all that was mortal of our artist lay. Not a friend
followed his bier to the cemetery. All turned back at the gate, on
account of the bad weather. Mozart’s skull, however, was saved, and is
preserved in Vienna. The churchyard keeper’s son secretly abstracted it
from the grave.
As the parting words of our great artist, who, spite of all the sorrows
he had to bear, preserved, throughout a cheerful, joyous nature, we
may cite the following lines from a note of his, written near the close
of his life--lines eloquently indicative of his sweet composure during
his last days. They run thus: “Dear sir,” he replies to the admonitions
of a friend--the original autograph, in Italian, is preserved in
London--“willingly would I follow your advice, but how can I do it?
My brain is distracted. It is with difficulty that I can collect my
thoughts, and I cannot dismiss the picture of that unknown man from
my mind. He is ever before me, praying for, urging me for, demanding
that _Requiem_. I continue working because work does not exhaust me as
much as the absence of employment. I know by my feelings that my hour
has come. It is striking even now. I am in the region of death. I have
reached my end, without having reaped the pleasure my talent should
have brought me. And yet life was so beautiful! My career opened under
such happy auspices; but one cannot change his destiny. No one can fix
the number of his days. We must be resigned and do what Providence
decrees.”
“Wir wandeln durch des Tones Macht
Froh durch des Todes duestre Nacht.”
Thus gravely and solemnly sing the soulfull and ideally transfigured
lovers in the _Magic Flute_--Mozart’s own confession. It is the
expression of the new and deep spring of life given to humanity in his
music; and Mozart remained to his latest breath a consecrated priest
of the purifying and sanctifying influence of his own melodies. His
creations will live as long as humanity clings to the life of its own
soul, and seeks higher nutriment for that life.
THE END.
TALES FROM FOREIGN TONGUES,
COMPRISING
=MEMORIES; A STORY OF GERMAN LOVE.=
BY MAX MÜLLER.
=GRAZIELLA; A STORY OF ITALIAN LOVE.=
BY A. DE LAMARTINE.
=MARIE; A STORY OF RUSSIAN LOVE.=
BY ALEX. PUSHKIN.
=MADELEINE; A STORY OF FRENCH LOVE.=
BY JULES SANDEAU.
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_Sold separately, per volume_, _Price, $1.50._
Of “Memories” the London _Academy_ says: “It is a prose poem. * * * It
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‘Graziella’ is a book to be loved.”
Of “Marie” the Cincinnati _Gazette_ says: “This is a Russian love tale,
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schoolboy._”--_Saturday Review, London._
Tales of Ancient Greece.
BY THE REV. SIR G. W. COX, BART., M.A.,
Trinity College, Oxford.
_12mo., extra cloth, black and gilt_, _Price, $1.60._
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“The author invests these stories with a charm of narrative entirely
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“In Mr. Cox will be found yet another name to be enrolled among those
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in the investigation of Greek history.”--_Edinburgh Review._
“It is doubtful if these tales, antedating history in their origin,
and yet fresh with all the charms of youth to all who read them for
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SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE,
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
BY MISS E. S. KIRKLAND.
AUTHOR OF “SIX LITTLE COOKS,” “DORA’S HOUSEKEEPING,” ETC.
_12mo., extra cloth, black and gilt_, _Price, $1.50._
“A very ably written sketch of French history, from the earliest times
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LIFE OF BENEDICT ARNOLD:
HIS PATRIOTISM AND HIS TREASON.
BY HON. I. N. ARNOLD,
AUTHOR OF “LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”
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This Life of Arnold is full of new facts, now first given to the
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“The biographer discriminates fairly between Arnold’s patriotism and
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Genealogical Register._
“After a careful perusal of the work, it seems to us that Mr. Arnold
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_Sold by booksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by_
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] A _capellmeister_ is the director of a choir or band.
[2] Mozart Museum.
[3] My heart and thy sweet voice, dear,
Understand each other too well--too well.
[4] “I gladly leave the maiden who doesn’t care for me.”
[5] “This picture is charmingly beautiful.”
[6] “O how anxiously, O how fiery!”
[7] Ah, I loved and was so happy.
[8] When the tears of joy are flowing.
[9] A _Freihaus_ is a house subject to a jurisdiction other than that
in which it is situated.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.
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