With the accession of the new emperor, Mozart briefly imagined the
“gates of his good luck were about to open.” He was quickly
disillusioned. Leopold II was hard, cold, unmusical. He instantly
dismissed some of his predecessor’s most faithful artistic servitors. Da
Ponte, for one, was dropped. Mozart’s opponent, Salieri, cautiously
withdrew into obscurity and waited behind the scenes for a new
opportunity. Van Swieten tried to obtain for Mozart a position as
teacher of the Archduke Franz, but nothing came of the well-meant
effort, and presently the composer found his pupils reduced to two. His
health began to trouble him alarmingly, with headaches and tooth
troubles. He had the mortification of being ignored when the King of
Naples visited Vienna, while Salieri and Haydn enjoyed special honors.
He was not even asked to participate in the musical festivities in
connection with the Emperor’s coronation in October 1790, or to travel
to Frankfurt, where the ceremony was to take place. So he decided to
make the journey at his own expense, hoping against hope for some
distinction or reward. Though he did not obtain either, he at least had
the satisfaction of knowing that his _Don Giovanni_, _Figaro_,
_Entführung_, and even the early _Finta giardiniera_, were relished in
neighboring Mainz. The opera chosen for the actual coronation was
Wranitzky’s _Oberon_. However, the Frankfurt town council “graciously”
allowed Mozart to give a concert “on his own responsibility” at a local
theater, October 13 at 11 in the morning! “Plenty of honor, but little
money,” he wrote. He played two concertos (probably the F major, K. 459,
and the D major, K. 537) and a rondo. As ever, his improvisation
impressed deeply—only a royal luncheon party and a maneuver of Hessian
troops were counter attractions that cut down the attendance. On the way
home he stopped off in Mannheim and Munich, saw his old friends
Cannabich and Ramm, played at an academy the Elector Carl Theodor gave
for the returning King of Naples, and went home to Vienna, where
Constanze had moved their effects into a new apartment in the
Rauhensteingasse—destined to be his last home on earth!
In his new dwelling the composer completed by December two superb
works—the String Quintet in D (K. 593) and the stunning Adagio and
Allegro in F minor (K. 594) “for an organ cylinder in a clock.” About
that same time the director of the Italian Opera in London, one
O’Reilly, suggested that he come for half a year to England, to write
two operas for that theater and give concerts, and promised him 300
pounds sterling. Nothing stood in the way of O’Reilly’s suggestion,
except operas that the master was soon to provide for Vienna and Prague.
Soon afterwards, Haydn on his way to London took leave of his younger
friend who bade him farewell with the heart-shaking words: “I fear,
Papa, this is the last time we shall see each other!” Salomon, Haydn’s
manager, had planned to bring Mozart to England on the older composer’s
return to the Continent.
To be sure, there was other work to be done, if in large part trifling.
But early in January 1791, Mozart completed his last clavier concerto,
the singularly affecting one in B flat (K. 595), which harks back to
earlier models and lacks some of the more original and dramatic elements
of the incomparable ones in D minor, E flat, A major, C major, and C
minor. And in June 1791, on a visit to Constanze in Baden (where she had
gone for another cure!), he wrote for a local choirmaster, Anton Stoll,
that short _Ave Verum_ motet, than which nothing of Mozart’s is more
unutterably seraphic.
_The Magic Flute_
He was ill and despondent but his activity was untiring. It is an
infinite pity that he did not take the hint of Da Ponte and others who
were urging him to come to England, where he might easily have made a
fortune and become a British idol like Handel before him and Haydn and
Mendelssohn after him. He went on writing because, as he was soon to
say, “composition tires me less than resting.” In the spring of 1791 he
was commissioned to compose another opera, which was to be his last and,
in a number of respects, his most epoch-making—_The Magic Flute_ (_Die
Zauberflöte_). And with it he was to write one of the most extraordinary
works of operatic history, to create German opera in accordance with a
long-cherished ambition of his but, like Moses, never to do more than
cross the frontier of the promised land he had beheld in vision.
Emanuel Schikaneder, who had known Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart in
Salzburg, was a wandering actor and a playwright of sorts. The head of a
traveling company, which gave Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing,
and, for better or worse, operas by Gluck and _Singspiele_ by Haydn and
Mozart, he had like numberless barnstormers a keen knowledge of the
tastes of audiences, particularly of the plebeian ones to which his
players catered. In his own way as adventurous a person as Da Ponte,
Schikaneder took over in 1789 the direction of a playhouse on the
Starhemberg estates, the Freihaus-Theater, in the Wieden district. There
he produced comic shows, _Singspiele_, and operettas. With his grasp of
suburban tastes he combined a thorough understanding of what could be
done with his brother Mason and old acquaintance, Mozart. A business
rival of the impresario Marinelli, who ran a theater in the Leopoldstadt
quarter and made a specialty of “magic plays,” he now approached the
composer with his own _Singspiel_.
[Illustration: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1789
_Drawing in silver on ivory by Dora Stock_]
[Illustration: Mozart’s wife, Constanze, about 1783
_Lithograph from a drawing by Joseph Lange, Constanze’s brother-in-law_]
We cannot here examine the sources from which he assembled his libretto.
There ran through it a powerful strain of Masonic influence, love
interest, low comedy in abundance (Schikaneder took care to tailor to
his own measure the role of the wandering bird-catcher Papageno), and
other surefire theatrical ingredients. He asked Mozart to supply the
music, and the latter, after warning him that since he had never yet
written a “magic opera” he hesitated to court failure in this sphere, at
length complied. Between March and the end of September 1791, _The Magic
Flute_ was written. Schikaneder, aware of the glorious bargain he had
struck, strove to be the soul of complaisance. He supplied the composer
with every comfort at his disposal—a charming summerhouse on the grounds
of the theater where he could work at the score, with food, wine, and
pretty actresses to divert him—in short, whatever promised to humor the
musician and promote the flow of inspiration. He even hummed or sang the
sort of tunes he considered appropriate to the role he designed for
himself.
Let us at this stage dispose of a few legends that, in the course of 160
years, have accumulated about the work. One is that the play is a
farrago of childish nonsense, made tolerable only by the variety and
grandeur of Mozart’s music; another, that the plot was altered at a late
hour because another manager was about to produce a work similar in its
story; a third, that the piece was a failure. As a matter of fact, the
book of _The Magic Flute_ happens to be one of the best librettos in
existence from the point of view of good theater. The imagined
“revision” never took place, for considerations of “parallels,” let
alone plagiarisms, never bothered theater directors at this epoch. On
the contrary, if a play or opera had one feature that pleased its
public, a rival manager was quick to copy this very point on an even
broader scale. Although at the first performance _The Magic Flute_ did
not achieve such an overwhelming triumph as its composer had hoped,
before many months had passed it was attracting throngs; and not many
years later Schikaneder was able to build out of the wealth it brought
him that famous Theater an der Wien which still stands and was to become
the cradle of various storied masterworks. As for the much-maligned
book, it appealed so powerfully to none other than Goethe that he set
out to write a sequel!
While the sick and harried Mozart worked with still inexhaustible
fertility at the score of his magic opera he was interrupted by a
sufficiently distasteful order from Prague for an opera to be produced
there at the coronation of Leopold II as “King of Bohemia.” With no more
than eighteen days to compose the music and assist in the production of
this “occasional piece,” he was ordered to set an old text of
Metastasio’s (retouched, it is true, by one Caterino Mazzolà)—_La
Clemenza di Tito_, an antiquated specimen of _opera seria_, such as the
composer had not bothered with since the period of _Idomeneo_. The
available time being so short, Mozart took along with him his pupil
Süssmayr, who was asked to perform the almost secretarial job of writing
the _secco_ recitatives, leaving the more important parts of the music
to the master. His good friend, the impresario Guardasoni, mounted the
opera in sumptuous fashion. But good will did not supplant genuine
inspiration and, for all its craftsmanship, _La Clemenza di Tito_ did
not strike fire. The Empress dismissed it as _porcheria tedesca_ (German
rubbish). A correspondent of _Studien für Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde_
reported that the “beloved Kapellmeister Mozard” did not obtain this
time the applause he had a right to expect! For once, clearly, “his
Praguers did not understand him.” Doubtless, _Tito_ is not a _Figaro_ or
a _Don Giovanni_, but those unfamiliar with the work may well ask
themselves if it is as bad as history paints it. Anyway its reception
did not raise the master’s spirit. And he took leave of his friends with
tears.
He was now seriously ill. He had fainting fits and accesses of
exhaustion. On September 28, 1791, he finished _The Magic Flute_—the
March of the Priests and the overture being the last numbers set down.
The Masonic symbols and meanings with which the opera is filled
(comprehensible, however, only to initiates) are heard in the
thrice-reiterated three chords at the opening of the superb tone piece.
This overture is a fully developed sonata movement built on a fugal
plan, the mercurial subject having been borrowed from a clavier sonata
of his old friend and rival, Clementi. At the first performance the
composer Johann Schenk (later, one of Beethoven’s teachers) crept
through the orchestra to Mozart, who was conducting, and reverently
kissed his hand, while the composer, continuing to conduct with his
right hand, affectionately patted Schenk’s head with his left. He took
pleasure in playing the glockenspiel during Papageno’s air “Ein Mädchen
oder Weibchen” and once, in fun, introduced an unexpected arpeggio which
threw Schikaneder completely out for a few minutes.
_The Requiem_
As he was boarding his coach on the trip to Prague, Mozart was startled
on being accosted by a gaunt, gray-clad stranger of mysterious mien who
asked him if he were willing to undertake, for a certain sum, the
composition of a requiem mass to be delivered at a specified time. He
agreed but from this moment the weird visitor, whose identity he was
admonished not to try to discover, gave him no rest. He became convinced
that a messenger from the Beyond had sought him out, that the incident
had a supernatural aspect, that he was, indeed, ordered by a higher
power to compose a death mass for _himself_! And the certainty that his
time was at hand grew steadily upon him.
The incident, in reality, had nothing macabre or mysterious about it.
The “gray messenger” was a certain Leutgeb, steward of the Count Walsegg
zu Stuppach who had lately lost his wife and who, aspiring to be known
as a composer, planned to perform the requiem as his own work. But
Mozart knew nothing of this. He had a letter from his old friend, Da
Ponte, entreating him to join him in England. But it was too late and
Mozart’s tragedy had to be played out to the bitter close that was now
swiftly approaching. To Da Ponte he dispatched this pathetic missive:
“_I wish I could follow your advice, but how can I do so? I feel
stunned, I reason with difficulty, and cannot rid myself of the vision
of this unknown man. I see him perpetually; he entreats me, he presses
me, he impatiently demands the work. I go on writing.... Otherwise I
have nothing more to fear. I know from what I suffer that the hour is
come; I am at the point of death; I have come to the end before having
had the enjoyment of my talent. Life was so beautiful, my career stood
at first under so auspicious a star! But one cannot change one’s
destiny!_”
What tortured him more than anything was the thought that, as furiously
as he worked, the _Requiem_ might remain unfinished at the death he knew
was imminent. He had numberless discussions with his pupil, Xaver
Süssmayr, but it was daily becoming clearer to him that he had small
chance of completing the mass himself. On a walk in the Prater with
Constanze in the early autumn he exclaimed: “It cannot last much longer
... Certainly, I have been given poison; that is a feeling I cannot
shake off!” And this, presumably, is the basis of the age-old slander
that Salieri had been his murderer! At all events growing weakness
forced him to take to his bed on November 20. He was never to leave it.
“I know,” he had said shortly before, “that my music-making is about at
an end. I feel a constant chill which I cannot explain. I now have no
more to do save with doctors and apothecaries!”
His hands and feet were beginning to swell. Yet he struggled desperately
to get on with the composition of the mass. The visits of a few friends
seemed to comfort the sick man, and he asked them to try over in his
presence certain completed pages of the score. At the beginning of
December he himself struggled to sing some of the alto part of the work.
When the _Lacrymosa_ was reached he gave up the attempt after a few
measures and, overcome by the certainty that he was doomed never to
finish the music, he broke down in a fit of weeping. And in these days,
with tragic irony, there dawned a promise of better things! The rapidly
growing popularity of _The Magic Flute_ augured a carefree future; a
group of Hungarian nobles began to raise a subscription that would have
assured Mozart an annual income of 1000 Gulden; and from Holland there
came, almost at the twelfth hour, news of an even more gratifying
project.