It may well be doubted whether Vienna thought even so much of
Capellmeister Mozart as Leipzig thought of Capellmeister Bach. Bach,
it is true, was merely Capellmeister; he hardly dared to claim social
equality with the citizens who tanned hides or slaughtered pigs; and
probably the high personages who trimmed the local Serene Highness's
toe-nails scarcely knew of his existence. Still, he was a burgher,
even as the killers of pigs and the tanners of hides; he was
thoroughly respectable, and probably paid his taxes as they came due;
if only by necessity of his office, he went to church with regularity;
and on the whole we may suppose that he got enough of respect to make
life tolerable. But Mozart was only one of a crowd who provided
amusement for a gay population; and a gay population, always a
heartless master, holds none in such contempt as the servants who
provide it with amusement. So Mozart got no respect from those he
served, and his Bohemianism lost him the respect of the eminently
respectable. He lived in the eighteenth century equivalent of a "loose
set"; he was miserably poor, and presumably never paid his taxes; we
may doubt whether he often went to church; he composed for the
theatre; and he lacked the self-assertion which enabled Handel,
Beethoven, and Wagner to hold their own. Treated as of no account,
cheated by those he worked for, hardly permitted to earn his bread, he
found life wholly intolerable, and as he grew older he lived more and
more within himself and gave his thoughts only to the composition of
masterpieces. The crowd of mediocrities dimly felt him to be their
master, and the greater the masterpieces he achieved the more
vehemently did Salieri and his attendants protest that he was not a
composer to compare with Salieri. The noise impressed Da Ponte, the
libretto-monger, and he asked Salieri to set his best libretto and
gave Mozart only his second best; and thus by a curious irony stumbled
into his immortality through sheer stupidity, for his second best
libretto was "Don Giovanni"--of all possible subjects precisely that
which a wise man would have given to Mozart. When Mozart laid down the
pen after the memorable night's work in which he transferred the
finished overture from his brain to the paper, he had written the
noblest Italian opera ever conceived; and the world knew it not, yet
gradually came to know. But the full fame of "Don Giovanni" was
comparatively brief, and at this time there seems to be a hazy notion
that its splendours have waned before the blaze of Wagner, just as the
symphonies are supposed to have faded in the brilliant light of
Beethoven. At lectures on musical history it is reverently spoken of;
but it is seldom sung, and the public declines to go to hear it; and,
though few persons are so foolish as to admit their sad case, I
suspect that more than a few agree with the sage critic who told us
not long since that Mozart was a little _passé_ now. Is it indeed so?
Well, Mozart lived in the last days of the old world, and the old
world and the thoughts and sentiments of the old world are certainly a
little _passés_ now. But if you examine "Don Giovanni" you must admit
that the Fifth and Ninth symphonies, "Fidelio," "Lohengrin," the
"Ring," "Tristan," and "Parsifal" have done nothing to eclipse its
glories, that while fresh masterpieces have come forth, "Don Giovanni"
remains a masterpiece amongst masterpieces, that in a sense it is a
masterpiece towards which all other masterpieces stand in the relation
of commentaries to text. And though this, perhaps, is only to call it
a link in a chain, yet it is curious to note how very closely other
composers have followed Mozart, and how greatly they are indebted to
him. Page upon page of the early Beethoven is written in the
phraseology of the later Mozart; in nearly every bar of "Faust," not
to mention "Romeo and Juliette," avowedly the fruit of a long study of
"Don Giovanni," a faint echo of Mozart's voice comes to us with the
voice of Gounod; Anna's cries, "Quel sangue, quella piaga, quel
volto," with the creeping chromatic chords of the wood-wind, have the
very accent of Isolda's '"Tis I, belov'd," and the solemn phrase that
follows, in Tristan's death-scene. Apart from its influence on later
composers, there is surely no more passionate, powerful, and moving
drama in the world than "Don Giovanni." Despite the triviality of Da
Ponte's book, the impetus of the music carries along the action at a
tremendous speed; the moments of relief occur just when relief is
necessary, and never retard the motion; the climaxes are piled up with
incredible strength and mastery, and have an emotional effect as
powerful as anything in "Fidelio" and equal to anything in Wagner's
music-dramas; and most stupendous of all is the finale, with its
tragic blending of the grotesque and the terrible. Or, if one
considers detail, in no other opera do the characters depict
themselves in every phrase they utter as they do in "Don Giovanni."
The songs stamp Mozart as the greatest song-writer who has lived, with
the exception of Handel, whose opera songs are immeasurably beyond all
others save Mozart's, and a little beyond them. The mere musicianship
is as consummate as Bach's, for, like Bach, Mozart possessed that
facility which is fatal to many men, but combined with it a high
sincerity, a greedy thirst for the beautiful, and an emotional force
that prevented it being fatal to him. For delicacy, subtlety, due
brilliancy, and strength, the orchestral colouring cannot be matched.
And no music is more exclusively its own composer's, has less in it of
other composers'. Beethoven is Beethoven _plus_ Mozart, Wagner is
Wagner _plus_ Weber and Beethoven; but from every page of Mozart's
scores Mozart alone looks at you, with sad laughter in his eyes, and
unspeakable tenderness, the tenderness of the giants, of Handel, Bach,
and Beethoven, though perhaps Mozart is tenderest of them all. He
cannot write a comic scene for a poor clownish Masetto without
caressing him with a divinely beautiful "Cheto, cheto, mi vo' star,"
and in presence of death or human distress the strangest, sweetest
things fall from his lips. And finally, he is always the perfect
artist without reproach; there is nothing wanting and nothing in
excess; as he himself said on one occasion, his scores contain exactly
the right number of notes. This is "Don Giovanni" as one may see it a
century after its birth: a faultless masterpiece; yet (in England at
least) it only gets an occasional performance, through the freak of a
prima donna, who, as the sage critic said of Mozart, is undoubtedly "a
little _passée_ now."
After all, this is hardly surprising. Perfect art wants perfect
listeners, and just now we are much too eager for excitement, too
impatient of mere beauty, to listen perfectly to perfect music. And
there are other reasons why "Don Giovanni" should not appeal to this
generation. For many years it was the sport of the prima donna, and
conductors and singers conspired to load it with traditional
Costamongery, until at last the "Don Giovanni" we knew became an
entirely different thing from the "Don Giovanni" of Mozart's thought.
Not Giovanni but Zerlina was the principal figure; the climax of the
drama was not the final Statue scene, but "Batti, batti"; Leporello's
part was exaggerated until the Statue scene became a pantomime affair
with Leporello playing pantaloon against Giovanni's clown. Such an
opera could interest none but an Elephant and Castle audience, and
probably only the beauty of the music prevented it reaching the
Elephant and Castle long ago. So low had "Don Giovanni" fallen, when,
quite recently, serious artists like Maurel tried to take it more
seriously and restore it to its rightful place. Only, unfortunately,
instead of brushing away traditions and going back to the vital
conception of Mozart, they sought to modernise it, to convert it into
an early Wagner music-drama. The result may be seen in any performance
at Covent Garden. The thing becomes a hodge-podge, a mixture of drama,
melodrama, the circus, the pantomime, with a strong flavouring of
blatherskite. The opera _is_ largely pantomime--it was intended by
Mozart to be pantomime; and the only possible way of doing it
effectively is to accept the pantomime frankly, but to play it with
such force and sincerity that it is not felt to be pantomime. And the
real finale should be sung afterwards. Probably many people would go
off to catch their trains. But, after all, Mozart wrote for those who
have no trains to catch when this masterpiece, the masterpiece of
Italian opera, is sung as he intended it to be sung.
The Requiem is a very different work. There is plenty of the gaiety
and sunshine of life in "Don Giovanni." The Requiem is steeped in
sadness and gloom, with rare moments of fiery exaltation, or
hysterical despair; at times beauty has been almost--almost, but never
quite--driven from Mozart's thought by the anguish that tormented him
as he wrote. While speaking of Bach's "Matthew" Passion, I have said
it "was an appeal, of a force and poignancy paralleled only in the
Ninth symphony, to the emotional side of man's nature ... the æsthetic
qualities are subordinated to the utterance of an overwhelming
emotion." Had I said "deliberately subordinated" I should have
indicated the main difference as well as the main likeness between
Bach's masterwork and Mozart's. The æsthetic qualities are
subordinated to the expression of an overwhelming emotion in the
Requiem, but not deliberately: unconsciously rather, perhaps even
against Mozart's will. Bach set out with the intention of using his
art to communicate a certain feeling to his listeners; Mozart, when he
accepted the order for a Requiem from that mysterious messenger clad
in grey, thought only of creating a beautiful thing. But he had lately
found, to his great sorrow, that his ways were not the world's ways,
and fraught with even graver consequences was the world's discovery
that its ways were not Mozart's. Finding all attempts to turn him from
his ways fruitless, the world fought him with contempt, ostracism,
and starvation for weapons; and he lacked strength for the struggle.
There had been a time when he could retire within himself and live in
an ideal world of Don Giovannis and Figaros. But now body as well as
spirit was over-wearied; spirit and body were not only tired but
diseased; and when he commenced to work at the Requiem the time was
past for making beautiful things, for his mind was preoccupied with
death and the horror of death--the taste of death was already in his
mouth. Had death come to him as to other men, he might have met it as
other men do, heroically, or at least calmly, without loss of dignity.
But it came to him coloured and made fearful by wild imaginings, and
was less a thought than an unthinkable horror. He believed he had been
poisoned, and Count Walsegg's grey-clad messenger seemed a messenger
sent from another world to warn him of the approaching finish. As he
said, he wrote the Requiem for himself. In it we find none of the
sunshine and laughter of "Don Giovanni," but only a painfully pathetic
record of Mozart's misery, his despair, and his terror. It is indeed a
stupendous piece of art, and much of it surpassingly beautiful; but
the absorbing interest of it will always be that it is a "human
document," an autobiographical fragment, the most touching
autobiography ever penned.
The pervading note of the whole work is struck at the beginning of
the first number. Had Mozart seen death as Handel and Bach saw it, as
the only beautiful completion of life, or even as the last opportunity
given to men to meet a tremendous reality and not be found wanting, he
might have written a sweetly breathed prayer for eternal rest, like
the final chorus of the "Matthew" Passion, or given us something equal
or almost equal to the austere grandeur of the Dead March in Saul. But
he saw death differently, and in the opening bar of the "Requiem
æternam" we have only sullen gloom and foreboding, deadly fear
begotten of actual foreknowledge of things to come. The discord at the
fifth bar seems to have given him the relief gained by cutting oneself
when in severe pain; and how intense Mozart's pain was may be
estimated by the vigour of the reaction when the reaction comes; for
though the "Te decet hymnus" is like a gleam of sweet sunshine on
black waters, the melody is immediately snatched up, as it were, and,
by the furious energy of the accompaniment, powerful harmonic
progressions, and movement of the inner parts (note the tenor
ascending to the high G on "orationem"), made expressive of abnormal
glowing ecstasy. To know Mozart's mood when he wrote the Requiem is to
have the key to the "Kyrie." His artistic sense compelled him to veil
the acuteness of his agony in the strict form of a regular fugue; but
here, as everywhere else in the Requiem, feeling triumphs over the
artistic sense; and by a chromatic change, of which none but a Mozart
or a Bach would have dreamed, the inexpressive formality of the
counter-subject is altered into a passionate appeal for mercy. In no
other work of Mozart known to me does he ever become hysterical, and
in the Requiem only once, towards the end of this number, where the
sopranos are whirled up to the high A, and tenors and altos strengthen
the rhythm; and even here the pause, followed by that scholastic
cadence, affords a sense of recovered balance, though we should
observe that the raucous final chord with the third omitted is in
keeping with the colour of the whole number, and not dragged in as a
mere display of pedantic knowledge. The "Dies Iræ" is magnificent
music, but the effect is enormously intensified by Mozart first (in
the "Kyrie") making us guess at the picture by the agitation of mind
into which it throws him, and then suddenly opening the curtain and
letting us view for ourselves the lurid splendours; and surely no more
awful picture of the Judgment was ever painted than we have here in
the "Dies Iræ," "Tuba minim," "Rex tremendæ," and the "Confutatis."
The method of showing the obverse of the medal first, and then
astonishing us with the sudden magnificence of the other side, is an
old one, and was an old one even in Mozart's time, but he uses it with
supreme mastery, and results that have never been equalled. The most
astonishing part of the "Confutatis" is the prayer at the finish,
where strange cadence upon cadence falls on the ear like a long-drawn
sigh, and the last, longer drawn than the rest, "gere curam mei
finis," followed by a hushed pause, is indeed awful as the silence of
the finish. Quite as great is the effect of the same kind in the
"Agnus Dei," which was either written by Mozart, or by Sussmayer with
Mozart's spirit looking over him. Written by Mozart, the Requiem
necessarily abounds in tender touches: the trebles at "Dona eis"
immediately after their first entry; the altos at the same words
towards the end of the number, and at the twenty-eighth bar of the
"Kyrie"; the first part of the "Hostias," the "Agnus Dei," the
wonderful "Ne me perdas" in the "Recordare." And if one wants sheer
strength and majesty, turn to the fugue on "Quam olim Abrahæ," or the
C natural of the basses in the "Sanctus." But the prevailing mood is
one of depressing sadness, which would become intolerable by reason of
its monotony were it possible to listen to the Requiem as a work of
art merely, and not as the tearful confessions of one of the most
beautiful spirits ever born into the world.
"FIDELIO"
As an enthusiastic lover of "Fidelio" I may perhaps be permitted to
put one or two questions to certain other of its lovers. Is it an
opera at all?--does it not consist of one wonderfully touching
situation, padded out before and behind,--before with some
particularly fatuous reminiscences of the old comedy of intrigue,
behind with some purely formal business and a pompous final chorus?
"Fidelio" exists by reason of that one tremendous scene: there is
nothing else dramatic in it: however fine the music is, one cannot
forget that the libretto is fustian and superfluous nonsense. Had
Beethoven possessed the slightest genius for opera, had he possessed
anything like Mozart's dramatic instinct (and of course his own
determination to touch nothing but fitting subjects), he would have
felt that no meaner story than the "Flying Dutchman" would serve as an
opportunity to say all that was aroused in his heart and in his mind
by the tale of Leonora. As he had no genius whatever for opera, no
sense of the dramatic in life, the tale of Leonora seemed to him good
enough; and, after all, in its essence it is the same as the tale of
Senta. The Dutchman himself happens to be more interesting than
Florestan because of his weird fate; but he is no more the principal
character in Wagner's opera than Florestan is the principal character
in Beethoven's opera. The principal character in each case is the
woman who takes her fate into her own hands and fearlessly chances
every risk for the sake of the man she loves. And just as Wagner wrote
the best passage in the "Dutchman" for the moment when Senta promises
to be faithful through life and death, so Beethoven in the prison
scene of "Fidelio" wrote as tremendous a passage as even he ever
conceived for the moment when Leonora makes up her mind at all costs
to save the life of the wretched prisoner whose grave she is helping
to dig. The tale is simple enough--there is scarcely enough of it to
call a tale. Leonora's husband, Florestan, has somehow fallen into the
power of his enemy Pizarro, who imprisons him and then says he is
dead. Leonora disbelieves this, and, disguising herself as a boy and
taking the name of Fidelio, hires herself as an assistant to Rocco,
the jailer of the fortress in which Florestan is confined. At that
time the news arrives that an envoy of the king is coming to see that
no injustice is being done by Pizarro. Pizarro has been hoping to
starve Florestan slowly to death; but now he sees the necessity of
more rapid action. He therefore tells Rocco to dig a grave in
Florestan's cell, and he himself will do the necessary murder. This
brings about the great prison scene. Florestan lies asleep in a
corner; Leonora is not sure whether she is helping to dig his grave or
the grave of some other unlucky wretch; but while she works she takes
her resolution--whoever he may be, she will risk all consequences and
save him. Pizarro arrives, and is about to kill Florestan, when
Leonora presents a pistol to his head; and, before he has quite had
time to recover, a trumpet call is heard, signalling the arrival of
the envoy. Pizarro knows the game is up, and Florestan that his wife
has saved him. This, I declare, is the only dramatic scene in the
play--here the thing ends: excepting it, there is no real incident.
The business at the beginning, about the jailer's daughter refusing to
have anything more to do with her former sweetheart, and falling in
love with the supposed Fidelio, is merely silly; Rocco's song,
elegantly translated in one edition, "Life is nothing without
money"--Heaven knows whether it was intended to be humorous--is
stupid; Pizarro's stage-villainous song of vengeance is unnecessary;
the arrangement of the crime is a worry. These, and in fact all that
comes before the great scene, are entirely superfluous, the purest
piffle, very tiresome. Most exasperating of all is the stupid
dialogue, which makes one hope that the man who wrote it died a
painful, lingering death. But, in spite of it all, Beethoven, by
writing some very beautiful music in the first act, and by rising to
an astonishing height in the prison scene and the succeeding duet, has
created one of the wonders of the music-world.
Being a glorification of woman--German woman, although Leonora was
presumably Spanish--"Fidelio" has inevitably become in Germany the
haus-frau's opera. Probably there is not a haus-frau who faithfully
cooks her husband's dinner, washes for him, blacks his boots, and
would even brush his clothes did he ever think that necessary, who
does not see herself reflected in Leonora; probably every German
householder either longs to possess her or believes that he does
possess her. Consequently, just as Mozart's "Don Giovanni" became the
playground of the Italian prima donna, so has "Fidelio" become the
playground of that terrible apparition, the Wifely Woman Artist, the
singer with no voice, nor beauty, nor manners, but with a high
character for correct morality, and a pressure of sentimentality that
would move a traction-engine. I remember seeing it played a few years
ago, and can never forget a Leonora of sixteen stones, steadily
singing out of tune, in the first act professing with profuse
perspiration her devotion to her husband (whose weight was rather less
than half hers), and in the second act nearly crushing the poor
gentleman by throwing herself on him to show him that she was for ever
his. A recent performance at Covent Garden, arranged specially, I
understand, for Ternina, was not nearly so bad as that; but still
Ternina scared me horribly with the enormous force of her Wifely
Ardour. It may be that German women are more demonstrative than
English women in public; but, for my poor part, too much public
affection between man and wife always strikes me as a little false.
Besides, the grand characteristic of Leonora is not that she loves her
husband--lots of women do that, and manage to love other people's
husbands also--but that, driven at first by affection and afterwards
by purely human compassion, she is capable of rising to the heroic
point of doing in life what she feels she must do. Of course she may
have been an abnormal combination of the Wifely Woman with the heroic
woman; but one cannot help thinking that probably she was not--that
however strong her affection for Florestan, she would no sooner get
him home than she would ask him how he came to be such a fool as to
get into Pizarro's clutches. Anyhow, Ternina's conception of Leonora
as a mixture of the contemptible will-less German haus-frau with the
strong-willed woman of action, was to me a mixture of contradictions.
Yet, despite all these things, the opera made the deep impression it
does and always will make.
That impression is due entirely to the music and not to the drama.
Dramatic music, in the sense that Mozart's music, and Wagner's, is
dramatic, it is not. There is not the slightest attempt at
characterisation--not even such small characterisation as Mozart
secured in his "La ci darem," with Zerlina's little fluttering,
agitated phrases. Nor, in the lighter portions, is there a trace of
Mozart's divine intoxicating laughter, of the sweet sad laugh with
which he met the griefs life brought him. There is none of Mozart's
sunlight, his delicious, fresh, early morning sunlight, in Beethoven's
music; when he wrote such a number as the first duet, intended to be
gracefully semi-humorous, he was merely heavy, clumsy, dull. But when
the worst has been said, when one has writhed under the recollection
of an adipose prima donna fooling with bear-like skittishness a German
tenor whose figure and face bewray the lager habit, when one has
shuddered to remember the long-winded idiotic dialogue, the fact
remains firmly set in one's mind that one has stood before a gigantic
work of art--a work whose every defect is redeemed by its overwhelming
power and beauty and pathos. There has never been, nor does it seem
possible there ever will be, a finer scene written than the dungeon
scene. It begins with the low, soft, throbbing of the strings, then
there is the sinister thunderous roll of the double basses; then the
old man quietly tells Leonora to hurry on with the digging of the
grave, and Leonora replies (against that wondrous phrase of the
oboes). After that, the old man continues to grumble; the dull
threatening thunder of the basses continues; and Leonora, half
terrified, tries to see whether the sleeping prisoner is her husband.
Then abruptly her courage rises; her short broken phrases are
abandoned; and to a great sweeping melody she declares that, whoever
the prisoner may be, she will free him. These twenty bars are as
great music as anything in the world: they even leave Senta's
declaration in the "Dutchman" far behind; they are at once triumphant
and charged with a pathos nearly unendurable in its intensity. The
scene ends with a strange hushed unison passage like some unearthly
chant: it is the lull before the breaking of the storm. The entry of
Pizarro and the pistol business are by no means done as Wagner or
Mozart would have done them. The music is always excellent and
sometimes great, but persistently symphonic and not dramatic in
character. However, it serves; and the strength of the situation
carries one on until the trumpet call is heard, and then we get a
wonderful tune such as neither Mozart nor Wagner could have written--a
tune that is sheer Beethoven. The finale of the scene is neither here
nor there; but in the duet between Leonora and Florestan we have again
pure Beethoven. There is one passage--it begins at bar 32--which is
the expression of the very soul of the composer; one feels that if it
had not come his heart must have burst. I have neither space nor
inclination to rehearse all the splendours of the opera, but may
remind the reader of Florestan's song in the dungeon, Leonora's
address to Hope, and the hundred other fine things spread over it. It
is symphonic, not dramatic, music; but it is at times unspeakably
pathetic, at times full of radiant strength, and always an absolutely
truthful utterance of sheer human emotion. Wagner hit exactly the word
when he spoke of the _truthful_ Beethoven: here is no pose, no mere
tone-weaving, but the precise and most poignant expression of the
logical course taken by the human passions.