the manager of a small theatre at Vienna, being in embarrassed
circumstances, proposed to Mozart to write an opera on a magic
subject, of which he, Schickaneder, would prepare the libretto.
Mozart, always ready to help a friend, agreed, though with some
little hesitation, saying that he had never written a magic opera.
The work was _Die Zauberflöte_, and Mozart began its composition at
once. Various causes interfered with its rapid progress. It was
while working at it that the first signs of the breaking up of his
vital powers showed themselves. He suffered from fainting fits, and
in June he was obliged to suspend work on the opera and go to Baden,
a suburb of Vienna, to recruit his health.
It was while engaged on the composition of _Die Zauberflöte_ that
Mozart received from a mysterious stranger the commission to write a
_Requiem_ Mass. He was asked to name his own terms, but was enjoined
to make no effort to discover who it was that had ordered the work.
Mozart, who had written no church music since his Mass in C minor
eight years before, eagerly accepted the commission, and began work
at once. It is now ascertained beyond a doubt that the individual
who visited Mozart was the steward of a certain Count Walsegg, an
amateur musician who desired to be thought a great composer, and who
actually copied the score of the _Requiem_ and had it performed as
his own work.
Mozart's work on the _Zauberflöte_ and the Requiem were alike
interrupted in August by a commission which it was needful to execute
at once. This was the composition of an opera for Prague, to be
performed there on the occasion of the coronation of the Emperor
Leopold II. as King of Bohemia. The libretto selected was
Metastasio's _La Clemenza di Tito_, which had been already set to
music by several eminent composers. As the coronation was to take
place in the following month, Mozart had but little time for
composition; according to Jahn, the opera was completed in eighteen
days. Its first performance took place on September 6, and was not a
success. Mozart, who was in bad health when he arrived in Prague,
and who had become still worse through his arduous exertions in
getting the work ready in time for the performance, was greatly
depressed at its failure.
Returning to Vienna in September, with health and spirits alike
failing him, Mozart resumed work on _Die Zauberflöte_, which was
produced on the 30th of the same month, the composition of the
overture and the march which opens the second act having been only
completed two days previously. Though the success of the first
performance was less than had been anticipated, the public soon began
to appreciate its beauties; it was given twenty-four times in the
following month and reached its hundredth performance in a little
more than a year.
[Illustration: PART OF THE SCORE OF THE "DE PROFUNDIS." (_British
Museum._)]
As soon as the opera was off his mind, Mozart returned to his still
incomplete _Requiem_, a work which now engrossed all his attention
and energy. In his enfeebled and depressed state he formed the idea
that he was writing the _Requiem_ for himself, and had a firm
conviction that he had been poisoned. By the advice of his doctor
his wife took away the score from him, and a temporary improvement
resulted, which enabled him to write a small cantata for a masonic
festival--the last work which he entered in the thematic catalogue
already mentioned. At his request his wife returned him the score of
the _Requiem_, but as soon as he resumed work upon it all the
unfavourable symptoms returned with increased violence, and partial
paralysis set in. In the latter part of November he took to his bed,
from which he was never to rise again. By a sad irony of fate, it
was during his last illness that fortune smiled upon him for the
first time: some of the Hungarian nobility joined to assure him of an
annual income of 1,000 florins, while music publishers at Amsterdam
gave him commissions for compositions which would have insured him
against want for the future. But all came too late for the dying
composer, and his last hours were embittered by the thought of
leaving his wife and children unprovided for at the very time when he
would have been able to support them in comfort. To the last his
mind was full of his unfinished _Requiem_, and on the afternoon
before his death, he had the score laid on his bed, and the music
sung by his friends, he himself taking the alto part. When they
reached the opening bars of the "Lacrymosa," Mozart burst into a
violent fit of weeping, and the score was laid aside. In the evening
the physician told Mozart's pupil, Süssmayr, in confidence that there
was nothing more to be done; but he ordered cold bandages to be
applied to the head, which brought on such convulsions that Mozart
lost consciousness; he never recovered it, but died at one o'clock on
the morning of December 5, 1791. He was buried the next day in the
churchyard of St. Marx in so violent a storm that the mourners all
turned back before reaching the graveyard, where the great composer
was laid, not in a grave of his own, but in that allotted to paupers.
When the widow was sufficiently recovered from the first shock to be
able to go to the burial-ground to look for the grave, a new sexton
was there who knew nothing about the matter, and the exact spot under
which Mozart's remains rest has never been identified with certainty.
THE ART OF MOZART
In surveying Mozart's art work as a whole, one of the first things to
strike the student is the comprehensiveness of his genius. There is
hardly another of the great composers who has produced so many
masterpieces in so many different styles. It may be at once conceded
that in certain directions he has been surpassed by one or other of
those who have succeeded him. Very few musicians will be found who
will place him, either as a symphonist or as a writer for the piano,
by the side of Beethoven; but, on the other hand, the latter is far
inferior to Mozart in his treatment of the voice. Again, Mozart's
songs, taken as a whole, will not compare with those of Schubert, but
as an operatic composer Schubert has written nothing to approach,
still less to equal, _Figaro_ or _Don Giovanni_. There is hardly one
department of musical composition on which the genius of Mozart has
not left its mark. From this point of view, it will be scarcely too
much to call him the most wonderful "all-round" musician that the
world has ever yet seen.
Without underestimating his remarkable natural gifts, it can hardly
be doubted that Mozart's surroundings conduced not a little to the
versatility of his genius. Both in Salzburg and in Vienna Italian
music was in the ascendant; and in this the vocal element was of far
more importance than the instrumental. With his extraordinary power
of assimilating all that was best in whatever he heard, and the
almost supernatural facility in composition which seems to have come
to him instinctively, it is not surprising that his earliest works
show strong traces of Italian influence. This was no doubt to some
extent modified by the journeys which, as a child, he made with his
father to Paris and London, in which cities he learned to know much
of both French and German music; but nearly to the end of his life
his style, especially in his vocal music, was rather Italian than
distinctively German.
One of the most striking features of Mozart's music is the perfect
command of form seen in even his earliest works. He was never a
great innovator in the sense in which that word may be applied to
Haydn, Beethoven, or Schumann; he worked on lines that had been
already laid down by others, contenting himself with improving as far
as possible on his models. If his earlier operas be compared with
the works of his Italian contemporaries, it will be found that the
form of the songs and concerted pieces differs in no material respect
from that to be seen in the operas of Cimarosa, Paisiello, or Sarti;
that which distinguishes Mozart's work is its wonderful flow of
melody, its perfect feeling for euphony, and the true dramatic
instinct displayed wherever the libretto affords an opportunity. But
his later operas, beginning with _Idomeneo_, stand upon an altogether
higher footing. Mozart had at this time come under the influence of
Gluck, whose works he had learned to know in Paris.
If we compare the score of _Idomeneo_ with that of Gluck's _Alceste_,
we cannot but see the similarity of style. True, Mozart's flow of
melody is more abundant--we might even say more spontaneous; it is in
the more dramatic treatment of the orchestra, and especially in the
large amount of accompanied recitative (as distinguished from
_recitativo secco_) that we note the resemblance. Yet while the
influence of the older master is clearly to be traced, there is an
essential difference in the method of the two composers. Gluck
sometimes sacrifices his musical forms for dramatic effect; Mozart
treats the accepted forms in such a way as to make them capable of
expressing the emotions of the drama.
An important point, in which Mozart surpassed not only Gluck, but all
other composers of his day, was his treatment of the orchestra. In
his earlier works his employment of the instruments was somewhat
conventional; but he soon freed himself from the trammels of
tradition, and tried experiments in tone combination that were as new
as they were striking. These novelties are to be seen less in his
operas and symphonies than in his serenades and divertimenti.* It was
not till his visit to Paris in 1779 that his command of orchestration
reached its highest development. In his works from this time
forward, whether purely instrumental, or vocal with orchestral
accompaniment, are seen a richness and a feeling for beauty of
colouring in advance of anything previously heard. It was the
elaborate accompaniments of his operas, as compared with those of
other composers of his day, that caused Gretry to reproach him with
having placed the pedestal on the stage and the statue in the
orchestra. At the present time we are so accustomed to the rich
instrumentation of the modern school that Mozart's scores seem
comparatively thin.
* As examples, may be named the serenade for two orchestras, one
consisting of two violins, viola, and double-bass, and the other of
string quartett and kettle-drums, and the very curious little pieces
for two flutes, five trumpets, and four drums.
If we compare Mozart's instrumental works with those of Haydn, it
will be seen that the difference between them is one of spirit rather
than of form. Haydn's music flows on in a clear stream, of no great
depth in general, but always pleasing, always intelligible, and most
logical and coherent in its thematic developments. In Mozart's music
the lyrical element predominates. His slow movements are in general
more emotional than those of Haydn, both melody and harmony are
richer, and the workmanship more finished. This statement must be
taken only as a generalization, for in the later years of Haydn's
life the influence of Mozart on his style is clearly to be seen, and
some of the slow movements in the Salomon symphonies or the later
quartetts are not unworthy to be placed by the side of Mozart's best.
On the other hand, we find in Haydn's minuets and finales an element
of humour, sometimes even of broad fun, which is rarely seen in
Mozart's instrumental music, though abundant enough in the lighter
scenes of his operas.
With a few important exceptions, Mozart's pianoforte works do not
rank among his greatest achievements. Many of his sonatas,
variations, etc., were written for his pupils, and possess little
more than historical interest. Mozart lived at the transitional
period in which the harpsichord was giving place to the piano, and in
his earlier sonatas, etc., the style of harpsichord music is often to
be seen. Yet some of his later works for the piano, such as the two
fantasias in C minor, the sonatas in B flat and C minor, the rondo in
A minor, and the adagio in B minor, though now, owing to the changes
in popular taste, seldom heard, are far from deserving the neglect
into which they have fallen. The same may be said of the best
sonatas for piano and violin, and of many of the concertos. It is
hardly a generation since the latter were often to be heard in
public; the modern love of sensationalism and of display for its own
sake seems to have banished them--it is to be hoped not
permanently--from the concert room.
In estimating Mozart's Church music, it is needful to bear in mind
that much of it, more especially the Masses composed at Salzburg, was
written under special and in some respects arbitrary restrictions.
In a letter written in 1776 to Padre Martini, Mozart tells him that a
Mass, including the regular five sections, besides an offertory or
motett and a sonata at the epistle, was not allowed to last longer
than three-quarters of an hour; for this reason most of his Masses
are very concise in their form as compared with the later masses of
Haydn or with Beethoven's Mass in C. Besides this, the Archbishop of
Salzburg loved a showy and brilliant style of music, and Mozart was
bound, to some extent, to make concessions to his taste. Yet it is
going too far to say, as some German critics have done, that these
masses are their composer's weakest works. Some of them, especially
those in F and D major, both of which were written at Salzburg in
1774, are in every way worthy of Mozart, while there are but few of
the others which do not contain movements of the greatest beauty.
The same may be said of his litanies, vespers, and smaller sacred
works. But his power as a composer of Church music is best shown in
portions of the great Mass in C minor, which he began at Vienna in
1783, but never completed, and most of all in the _Requiem_, in which
his genius rises to a greater height than in any of his other sacred
compositions. There is little reason to doubt that, had he been
allowed free scope, his works in this field of art would have been
little, if at all, inferior to those on which his fame most securely
rests.
As a contrapuntist Mozart undoubtedly ranks second only to J.
Sebastian Bach, of whom, indeed, his astounding facility in solving
the most complex musical problems at times reminds us. Nowhere is
the _ars celare artem_ more perfectly exemplified than in the best
specimens of Mozart's fugal and canonic writing. The example most
frequently referred to as an illustration is the finale of the
"Jupiter" symphony, but such pieces as the "Rex tremendæ" of the
_Requiem_, with its quadruple canon, the final fugue in the _Davidde
penitente_, or the "Laudate pueri" of the second Vespers, are
scarcely less remarkable. The large number of canons for
unaccompanied voices which he wrote show his preference, no less than
his aptitude, for the stricter forms; yet, however elaborate, in his
hands they never become dry, but are always full of melodic beauty.
With Mozart technique is always the means, never the end.
The influence of Mozart on the music of the first half of the last
century can hardly be fully estimated. It is clearly to be seen in
the earlier works of Beethoven. By this it is not meant that the
younger master borrowed, or even imitated, the actual themes of his
predecessor; his individuality was from the first too strongly
marked. But many of the works of what is known as Beethoven's "first
manner" are clearly modelled upon corresponding works by Mozart.
Thus, his trio for strings in E flat, Op. 3, was evidently suggested
by Mozart's trio in the same key, while the septett and the quintett
for piano and wind instruments clearly show traces of Mozart's
manner. The same may be said of the adagio of the first piano
sonata, and of the whole of the sonata in D for piano and violin--to
name but a few examples of many. Not the least disparagement of
Beethoven is intended in saying this: every great composer has begun
his career by imitating more or less closely the works of his
predecessors, and it was inevitable that Mozart should have
influenced one who had so many points of affinity with him. In
Beethoven's later works the similarity of style is no longer to be
noticed.
[Illustration: MOZART. (_From a portrait by Jäger._)]
Passing over with a mere word of mention such composers of the second
rank as Andreas Romberg and Hummel, we find two composers of marked
individuality--Schubert and Mendelssohn--in whose earlier works the
influence of Mozart is more or less traceable. As a song-writer,
Schubert was original from the first; even in his instrumental works
it is only occasionally that one is reminded of other composers. The
suggestions of Mozart are chiefly to be found in Schubert's earlier
symphonies. The variations which form the slow movement of the
symphony in B flat might be inserted in one of Mozart's serenades
without seeming out of place. In the works of Mendelssohn's youth
the Mozart influence is more distinct,* though, like Schubert, he
soon emancipated himself.
* The first subject of the finale of Mendelssohn's first piano
quartett is a very close, though probably unconscious, imitation of
the opening bars of the finale of Mozart's sonata in C minor.
Among composers of the present day one would seek in vain for any
traces of Mozart's influence. Times have changed, and the classical
style has been supplanted by the romantic. Whether this is
altogether to the advantage of modern music is a question which
cannot be discussed here; but an energetic protest may at least be
entered against the superficial criticism sometimes to be heard that
Mozart's works are weak and old-fashioned. That music has made much
progress since Mozart's days nobody will deny; the operatic reforms
of Wagner are far-reaching, while Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms--not
to mention more recent composers--have enlarged the harmonic
resources of the art. But on all those whose musical palates have
not been vitiated by the highly-spiced viands of the ultra-modern
school, Mozart's pure, natural, soulful music can never cease to
exert its charm. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," and, in
spite of the proverbial danger of prophesying, it is hardly rash to
predict that Mozart's best symphonies will outlive those of Berlioz
or Tschaïkowsky, and that his _Don Giovanni_ and _Figaro_ will
continue to be the delight and admiration of true musicians, even
though changes in the popular taste should banish them from the
stage. Mozart's place among the immortals is as secure as that of
Bach or Beethoven.
LIST OF WORKS.
Of all the great composers, Mozart was one of the most prolific. The
chronological thematic catalogue of his works, by Kochel, published
at Leipzig in 1862, contains 626 numbers, varying in length from
short pieces of only a few bars to operas, the manuscripts of which
fill hundreds of pages. Even a clearer idea of the enormous quantity
of music written by Mozart in his short life of thirty-six years will
be gained when it is said that the complete collection of his works,
published by Breitkopf and Hartel, of Leipzig, fills nearly 13,000
folio pages. The following list, compiled from Kochel's catalogue,
will show not only the extent, but the variety of the ground covered
by the composer. A few of the works mentioned by Kochel have been
lost, and are therefore not included in Breitkopf's edition.
1. VOCAL MUSIC.
1. Nineteen Masses, and the _Requiem_. Of the Masses three are
incomplete, and the genuineness of one is doubtful.
2. Four Litanies and three Vespers.
3. Forty short pieces of sacred music (offertories, motetts, etc.).
4. Two oratorios (_La Betulia Liberata_ and _Davide Penitente_) and
four cantatas.
5. Twenty-three operas and other dramatic works. This list includes
the incidental music to the play _König Thamos_, and the two
unfinished operas, _L'Oca del Cairo_ and _Lo Sposo Deluso_.
6. Sixty-six concert arias, trios, etc., with orchestral
accompaniment. Many of these were written by Mozart for his personal
friends; others were intended to be introduced, according to the
custom of the time, into operas by other composers.
7. Forty songs, with accompaniment for the piano.
8. Twenty-two canons for voices without accompaniment. Of these one
is for two voices, eight are for three, ten for four, two for six,
and one for three four-part choirs.
2. INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.
9. Forty-nine symphonies for orchestra.
10. Thirty-three serenades and divertimenti for various combinations
of instruments.
11. Twenty-seven miscellaneous instrumental works of various
kinds--symphony movements, minuets, marches, etc.
12. Thirty-nine collections of dances, containing 194 separate
numbers.
13. Six concertos for violin, one for two violins, and one for violin
and viola; also four single movements for a solo violin with
orchestra.
14. Twelve concertos, or single movements, for various wind
instruments with orchestra.
15. Nine string quintetts, of which one is with horn and another with
clarinet.
16. Twenty-seven quartetts for strings, two for strings with flute,
and one for strings with oboe.
17. One trio and three duets for strings.
18. Twenty-seven pianoforte concertos, including one for two and
another for three pianos; also two rondos for piano and orchestra.
19. A quintett for piano and wind instruments; two quartetts and
seven trios for piano and strings, and one trio for piano, clarinet,
and viola.
20. Forty-three sonatas, and two sets of variations for piano and
violin.
21. A fugue and a sonata for two pianos; five sonatas and a set of
variations for piano duet.
22. Seventeen sonatas for piano solo.
23. Four fantasias, fifteen sets of variations, and twenty various
pieces for piano solo.
24. Seventeen sonatas for organ, with other instruments, written for
Salzburg.
In addition to the above works, Kochel's catalogue gives a list of
ninety-eight works which Mozart began, but, for some unknown reason,
never completed.