The greatest musician the world has yet known--Mozart. The greatest?
Yes, the greatest; greater than Bach, because less studied, less
artificial, professional, and _doctrinaire_; greater than Beethoven,
because Mozart's was a blither, a more serene spirit, and a spirit whose
eyes had been anointed by beauty. Beethoven is not beautiful. He is
dramatic, powerful, a maker of storms, a subduer of tempests; but his
speech is the speech of a self-centered egotist. He is the father of all
the modern melomaniacs, who, looking into their own souls, write what
they see therein--misery, corruption, slighting selfishness, and
ugliness. Beethoven, I say, was too near Mozart not to absorb some of
his sanity, his sense of proportion, his glad outlook upon life; but the
dissatisfied peasant in the composer of the _Eroica_, always in revolt,
would not allow him tranquillity. Now is the fashion for soul
hurricanes, these confessions of impotent wrath in music.
Beethoven began this fashion; Mozart did not. Beethoven had himself
eternally in view when he wrote. His music mirrors his wretched, though
profound, soul; it also mirrors many weaknesses. I always remember
Beethoven and Goethe standing side by side as some royal nobody--I
forget the name--went by. Goethe doffed his bonnet and stood uncovered,
head becomingly bowed. Beethoven folded his arms and made no obeisance.
This anecdote, not an apochryphal one, is always hailed as an evidence
of Beethoven's sturdiness of character, his rank republicanism, while
Goethe is slightly sniffed at for his snobbishness. Yet he was only
behaving as a gentleman should. If Mozart had been in Beethoven's place,
how courtly would have been the bow of the little, graceful Austrian
composer! No, Beethoven was a boor, a clumsy one, and this quality
abides in his music--for music is always the man. Put Beethoven in
America in the present time and he would have developed into a dangerous
anarchist. Such a nature matures rapidly, and a century might have
marked the evolution from a despiser of kings to a hater of all forms of
restrictive government. But I'm getting in too deep, even for myself,
and also far away from my original theme.
Suffice to say that Bach is pedantic when compared to Mozart, and
Beethoven unbeautiful. Some day, and there are portents on the musical
horizon, some day, I repeat, the reign of beauty in art will reassert
its sway. Too long has Ugly been king, too long have we listened with
half-cracked ear-drums to the noises of half-cracked men. Already the
new generation is returning to Mozart--that is, to music for music's
sake--to the Beautiful.
I went to Salzburg deliberately. I needed a sight of the place, a
glimpse of its romantic surroundings, to still my old pulse jangled out
of tune by the horrors of Bayreuth. Yes, the truth must out, I went to
Bayreuth at the express suggestion of my grandson, Old Fogy 3d, a
rip-roaring young blade who writes for a daily paper in your city. What
he writes I know not. I only hope he lets music alone. He is supposed to
be an authority on foot-ball and Russian caviar; his knowledge of the
latter he acquired, so he says, in the great Thirst Belt of the United
States. I sincerely hope that Philadelphia is not alluded to! I am also
informed that the lad occasionally goes to concerts! Well, he begged me
to visit Bayreuth just once before I died. We argued the thing all last
June and July at Dussek Villa--you remember my little lodge up in the
wilds of Wissahickon!--and at last was I, a sensible old fellow who
should have known better, persuaded to sail across the sea to a horrible
town, crowded with cheap tourists, vulgar with cheap musicians, and to
hear what? Why, Wagner! There is no need of telling you again what I
think of _him_. You know! I really think I left home to escape the
terrible heat, and I am quite sure that I left Bayreuth to escape the
terrible music. Apart from the fact that it was badly sung and
played--who ever does play and sing this music well?--it was written by
Wagner, and though I am not a prejudiced person--_ahem!_--I cannot stand
noise for noise's sake. Art for art they call it nowadays.
I fled Bayreuth. I reached Munich. The weather was warm, yet of a
delightful balminess. I was happy. Had I not got away from Wagner, that
odious, _bourgeois_ name and man! Munich, I argued, is a musical city.
It must be, for it is the second largest beer-drinking city in Germany.
Therefore it is given to melody. Besides, I had read of Munich's model
Mozart performances. Here, I cried, here will I revel in a lovely
atmosphere of art. My German was rather rusty since my Weimar days, but
I took my accent, with my courage, in both hands and asked a coachman to
drive me to the opera-house. Through green and luscious lanes of foliage
this dumpy, red-faced scoundrel drove; by the beautiful Isar, across the
magnificent Maximilian bridge over against the classic _façade_ of the
Maximilineum. Twisting tortuously about this superb edifice, we tore
along another leafy road lined on one side by villas, on the other
bordered by a park. Many carriages by this time had joined mine in the
chase. What a happy city, I reflected, that enjoys its Mozart with such
unanimity! Turning to the right we went at a grand gallop past a villa
that I recognized as the Villa Stuck from the old pictures I had seen;
past other palaces until we reached a vast space upon which stood a
marmoreal pile I knew to be the Mozart theater. What a glorious city is
Munich, to thus honor its Mozart! And the building as I neared it
resembled, on a superior scale, the Bayreuth barn. But this one was of
marble, granite, gold, and iron. Up to the esplanade, up under the
massive portico where I gave my coachman a tip that made his mean eyes
wink. Then skirting a big beadle in blue, policemen, and loungers, I
reached the box-office.
"Have you a stall?" I inquired. "Twenty marks" ($5.00), he asked in
turn. "Phew!" I said aloud: "Mozart comes high, but we must have him."
So I fetched out my lean purse, fished up a gold piece, put it down, and
then an inspiration overtook me--I kept one finger on the money. "Is it
_Don Giovanni_ or _Magic Flute_ this afternoon?" I demanded. The man
stared at me angrily. "What you talk about? It is _Tristan und Isolde_.
This is the new Wagner theater!" I must have yelled loudly, for when I
recovered the big beadle was slapping my back and urging me earnestly to
keep in the open air. And that is why I went to Salzburg!
Despite Bayreuth, despite Munich, despite Wagner, I was soon happy in
the old haunts of the man whose music I adore. I went through the Mozart
collection, saw all the old pictures, relics, manuscripts, and I
reverently fingered the harpsichord, the grand piano of the master. Even
the piece of "genuine Court Plaister" from London, and numbered 42 in
the catalogue, interested me. After I had read the visitors' book,
inscribed therein my own humble signature, after talking to death the
husband and wife who act as guardians of these Mozart treasures, I
visited the Mozart platz and saw the statue, saw Mozart's residence, and
finally--bliss of bliss--ascended the _Kapuzinberg_ to the Mozart
cottage, where the _Magic Flute_ was finished.
Later, several weeks later, when the Wagner municipal delirium had
passed, I left Salzburg with a sad heart and returned to Munich. There I
was allowed to bathe in Mozart's music and become healed. I heard an
excellent performance of his _Cosi Fan Tutti_ at the _Residenztheater_,
an ideal spot for this music. With the accompaniment of an orchestra of
thirty, more real music was made and sung than the whole _Ring Cycle_
contains. Some day, after my death, without doubt, the world will come
back to my way of thinking, and purge its eyes in the Pierian spring of
Mozart, cleanse its vision of all the awful sights walled by the
dissonantal harmonies of Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, and Richard
Strauss.
I fear that this letter will enrage my grandson; I care not. If he
writes, do not waste valuable space on his "copy." I inclose a picture
of Mozart that I picked up in Salzburg. If you like it, you have my
permission to reproduce it. I am here once more in Mozartland!
V