In February 1787, Mozart was back in Vienna in a joyous frame of mind.
One may question that this jubilant mood was of long duration. That the
new opera was to be ready as early as the following October was hardly
the greatest of his worries, for Mozart, like Haydn, Bach, and other
masters of that century, was accustomed to a speed of creative
production that puts our machine age to shame. The welcome the Viennese
accorded the returning traveler, flushed by the recollection of his
recent triumphs, was frosty. Also, there came the news that his father’s
health was failing. “Naturally,” reflected Leopold, “old people do not
grow younger!” Wolfgang wrote his parent in words that nobly convey the
essence of his own mature philosophy:
“_I need not tell you with what anxiety I await better news from you ...
although I am wont in all things to anticipate the worst. Since death is
the true goal of our lives, I have made myself so well acquainted during
the past two years with this true and best friend of mankind that the
idea of it no longer holds any terror for me, but rather much that is
tranquil and comforting. And I thank God that He has granted me the good
fortune to obtain this opportunity of regarding death as the key to our
true happiness. I never lie down in bed without considering that, young
as I am, perhaps I may on the morrow be no more. Yet not one of those
who know me say that I am morose or melancholy, and for this I thank my
Creator and wish heartily that the same happiness may be given to my
fellow men._”
One is moved to think of Shubert’s words to his father a few years later
when, looking upon the lakes and peaks of the Austrian Alps, he wrote:
“_As if death were the worst thing that could befall one ... could one
but look on these divine lakes and mountains ... he would deem it a
great happiness to be restored for a new life to the inscrutable forces
of the earth!_”
All the same, Mozart was profoundly shaken when, on May 28, his father
passed away without the opportunity to see his son once more. “You can
realize my feelings,” he wrote his friend Gottfried von Jacquin. We
shall not go far wrong when we surmise that these deep and solemn
emotions colored to a considerable degree some of the more tragic pages
of the nascent _Don Giovanni_, the book of which Da Ponte was now
writing for him while working at the same time on librettos for Salieri
and Martin!
In the spring of 1787 the composer had a brief but memorable encounter;
for at this time there came briefly to Vienna from Bonn a
sixteen-year-old youth—Ludwig van Beethoven, a protégé of the Count
Waldstein—presumably to study with Mozart. The latter heard his visitor
improvise and was at first unimpressed because he believed the
extemporization had been “memorized,” but was converted as soon as he
gave the young Rhinelander a complicated theme to treat on the spot. The
originality and seriousness of what he heard stirred the older musician
to the prophecy: “This young man is going to make the world talk about
him!” But Mozart had, at the moment, no leisure for this prospective
pupil, who returned shortly to Bonn and on his later trip after Mozart’s
death placed himself under the direction of Haydn.