Mozart's charming letters reveal to us such a gentle, sparkling,
affectionate nature, as to inspire as much love for the man as
admiration for his genius. Sunny humour and tenderness bubble in
almost every sentence. A clever writer says that "opening these is
like opening a painted tomb.... The colours are all fresh, the figures
are all distinct."
No better illustration of the man Mozart can be had than in a few
extracts from his correspondence. He writes to his sister from Rome
while yet a mere lad:--
"I am, thank God! except my miserable pen, well, and send
you and mamma a thousand kisses. I wish you were in Rome; I
am sure it would please you. Papa says I am a little fool,
but that is nothing new. Here we have but one bed; it is
easy to understand that I can't rest comfortably with papa.
I shall be glad when we get into new quarters. I have just
finished drawing the Holy Peter with his keys, the Holy Paul
with his sword, and the Holy Luke with my sister. I have had
the honour of kissing St. Peter's foot; and because I am so
small as to be unable to reach it, they had to lift me up. I
am the same old
"Wolfgang."
Mozart was very fond of this sister Nannerl, and he used to write to
her in a playful mosaic of French, German, and Italian. Just after his
wedding he writes:--
"My darling is now a hundred times more joyful at the idea
of going to Salzburg, and I am willing to stake--ay, my very
life, that you will rejoice still more in my happiness when
you know her; if, indeed, in your estimation, as in mine, a
high-principled, honest, virtuous, and pleasing wife ought
to make a man happy."
Late in his short life he writes the following characteristic note to
a friend, whose life does not appear to have been one of the most
regular:--
"Now tell me, my dear friend, how you are. I hope you are
all as well as we are. You cannot fail to be happy, for you
possess everything that you can wish for at your age and in
your position, especially as you now seem to have entirely
given up your former mode of life. Do you not every day
become more convinced of the truth of the little lectures I
used to inflict on you? Are not the pleasures of a
transient, capricious passion widely different from the
happiness produced by rational and true love? I feel sure
that you often in your heart thank me for my admonitions. I
shall feel quite proud if you do. But, jesting apart, you
do really owe me some little gratitude if you are become
worthy of Fräulein N----, for I certainly played no
insignificant part in your improvement or reform.
"My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my
great-grandmother, who in turn told it to her daughter, my
grandmother, who again repeated it to her daughter, my
mother, who repeated it to her daughter, my own sister, that
it was a very great art to talk eloquently and well, but an
equally great one to know the right moment to stop. I
therefore shall follow the advice of my sister, thanks to
our mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, and thus
end, not only my moral ebullition, but my letter."
His playful tenderness lavished itself on his wife in a thousand
quaint ways. He would, for example, rise long before her to take his
horseback exercise, and always kiss her sleeping face and leave a
little note like the following resting on her forehead--"Good-morning,
dear little wife! I hope you have had a good sleep and pleasant
dreams. I shall be back in two hours. Behave yourself like a good
little girl, and don't run away from your husband."
Speaking of an infant child, our composer would say merrily, "That boy
will be a true Mozart, for he always cries in the very key in which I
am playing."
Mozart's musical greatness, shown in the symmetry of his art as well
as in the richness of his inspirations, has been unanimously
acknowledged by his brother composers. Meyerbeer could not restrain
his tears when speaking of him. Weber, Mendelssohn, Rossini, and
Wagner always praise him in terms of enthusiastic admiration. Haydn
called him the greatest of composers. In fertility of invention,
beauty of form, and exactness of method, he has never been surpassed,
and has but one or two rivals. The composer of three of the greatest
operas in musical history, besides many of much more than ordinary
excellence; of symphonies that rival Haydn's for symmetry and melodic
affluence; of a great number of quartets, quintets, etc.; and of
pianoforte sonatas which rank high among the best; of many masses that
are standard in the service of the Catholic Church; of a great variety
of beautiful songs--there is hardly any form of music which he did not
richly adorn with the treasures of his genius. We may well say, in the
words of one of the most competent critics:--
"Mozart was a king and a slave--king in his own beautiful realm of
music; slave of the circumstances and the conditions of this world.
Once over the boundaries of his own kingdom, and he was supreme; but
the powers of the earth acknowledged not his sovereignty."
_BEETHOVEN._