A MIGHTY QUARTETTE
In music Austria has ever taken a foremost place, and numbers among
her sons some of the names that have become part of the world’s
history. Perhaps the greatest of all is that of Mozart, the little
Wolfgang, born in 1756, first of “musical prodigies,” who, as an
innocent curly-haired child, sat up in his little night-shirt, lost in
the melody which overflowed every corner of his being. His father was
a violinist of some repute, and so his case followed the well-known
law that geniuses are often the sons of those who have talent in the
same direction. At three years of age the baby Mozart played on the
harpsichord. He was born at Salzburg, a beautiful city, situated amid
glorious scenery, and often compared with Edinburgh or Stirling.
Neither Edinburgh nor Stirling, however, have the snow-mountains
immediately behind, providing a backing for the castle on its boss of
tree-grown hill, which rises abruptly from the plain. The snow-capped
Alps rise around, in tier after tier, deep pellucid lakes lie in the
shadows of the hills, and thick forests clothe the slopes. As the
sunlight wanders from peak to peak living beauties are revealed, and
the contrast of the glittering snow shining through the blue-black
sharp-pointed firs is one to stir the artist soul to life. Small wonder
that the spirit of music found her son in this ideal spot!
Salzburg has not always been the possession of Austria; indeed at the
time of Mozart’s birth it was not so, but being incorporated in the
Empire during the Napoleonic wars, it has since remained an integral
part of it. The town is at the present time a peculiarly desirable
centre for any visitor, as it stands on the line between Innsbruck and
Vienna over which the Observation Cars run, and is also the terminus of
that other line, similarly favoured, passing from here to Trieste.
At five Mozart performed in public, with his little sister of ten.
All the crowned heads of Europe took note of him, but he remained
unspoilt, being of a gentle and sensitive disposition. At Paris in 1763
he published his first compositions. In the following year the family,
still very poor in spite of his genius, visited England, where they
remained for some time. They eventually returned home, and at fourteen
Mozart was not only a finished musician but a noted composer. He
travelled widely, making a tour throughout Italy, and being everywhere
received with recognition and applause. The Empress Maria Teresa, at
that time reigning in Austria, gave him a watch set with diamonds and
enamelled with her own portrait.
The boy was appointed by the Archbishop of Salzburg, concert-meister,
a merely honorary appointment. Indeed, nothing is more astonishing
than the fact that during his whole life Mozart never was comfortable
in regard to money matters, and in spite of the astonishing number and
excellence of his compositions, in spite of his world-wide fame and
the great favour in which he was held by crowned heads, he was always
poor. In 1772 a new archbishop was appointed in place of the first one,
who had died, and this man was of a temperament not, unfortunately,
uncommon among those who are in positions of supreme authority in the
church, the precepts of whose Founder they set utterly at variance
with their lives. He was a bully, and did his best to make the life
of the simple-natured musician a torment to him. Mozart, who had
poured out concertos, masses, symphonies, cantatas, and even operas,
had apparently received very little payment as the result of all this
work, which indeed came as naturally to him as warbling to the birds.
He asked leave of his nominal employer to go on another tour with his
mother. The tyrannical archbishop refused, with insult, and apparently
kept the young musician by him for the sole purpose of insulting and
annoying him. His irony went so far as to forbid the young man leave
to resign his honorary appointment, to which under pressure a little
later he attached a small salary, but only apparently for the purpose
of binding the young musician more firmly in the toils. He was treated
like a servant by the archbishop, was not allowed to play anywhere
but in the palace, and was left to pay his own expenses. Mozart did
after a struggle get away temporarily, but the tour was not a success;
he fell in love unhappily, and when he returned his mother died. In
1782 he married the sister of his first love, and this step proved
disastrous; his wife was in no way his equal, and became a confirmed
invalid. He produced some of his greatest pieces in Vienna, but without
winning the applause they deserved, and when he was at length appointed
Kammermeister to the Emperor it was with what seems a ludicrously
inadequate salary. King Frederick William of Prussia offered him
five or six times as much, and when Mozart unwillingly informed his
own sovereign of the prospect thus opened to him he was accused of
ingratitude and, with his usual sensitiveness, abandoned the idea.
[Illustration: VIENNA: MOZART’S HOUSE]
He died in 1791 at the early age of thirty-five, and his last work
was the magnificent _Requiem_, which had a strange origin, for it had
been commissioned by a man who appeared incognito, offering to pay for
the work in advance. Mozart firmly believed that this stranger was a
messenger from the other world sent to warn him of his own death. He
accepted the commission and began to carry it out, but in the meantime
undertook other work which occupied his time. The stranger called again
and urged him on, and he made further headway, but when the stranger
came a third time the great composer was dead. The _Requiem_ was
completed by Süssmayer, and the stranger who had commissioned it turned
out to be Count Walsegg.
It is almost incredible to relate that this genius, whose work has
given his country an imperishable name, was buried in a pauper’s
grave, and that even the three “friends” who had set out to follow the
coffin turned back because it rained, and so the body was taken to its
resting-place unhonoured and alone.
During the lifetime of Mozart there was living also in Austria another
of the first-class stars whose appearance in the firmament of music is
so rare. Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 and was thus already a man of
twenty-four when little Wolfgang came into the world. Haydn was born
at Rohrau in Lower Austria, and was the second of the twelve children
of a wheelwright. The boy had a beautiful voice and evidently much
musical talent, so that a relation rescued him from a life of drudgery
and sent him to school, and he afterwards obtained an appointment among
the choir boys of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna--a very different
beginning from that of Mozart, who was accustomed to be familiarly
petted by crowned heads almost from his infancy. When his voice broke
Haydn kept himself by giving music lessons, and after following this
profession for some time, he brought out his first compositions. He was
fortunate enough to find several patrons who recognised his talent,
and chief among them the head of the great family of Esterhazy, who
made him chapel-master with an independent salary. He never broke his
connection with the Esterhazys, even to the day of his death.
Haydn, like Mozart, married the sister of his first love, and like him
also had an unhappy disillusionment. However, while he lived with the
Esterhazys, and particularly when he was at their princely country
seat, he was free from his wife’s unwelcome society. His compositions
were very various, and he lived always in the sunshine of his patron’s
encouragement. After the death of this prince his successor did away
with the orchestra, but treated Haydn handsomely as to money, and the
composer resolved to visit England. This he did in 1790, and he was
well received. It was on his return to Vienna that the great Beethoven
came to be his pupil. Haydn was never so successful in opera as in
his symphonies and oratorios, and the name of “father of instrumental
music” is sometimes given to him on account of his special works for
the orchestra. He died in 1809 at the age of seventy-seven. His life
was much less troubled and disturbed than Mozart’s, and his work is of
a different _genre_ altogether--a difference fully appreciated by those
who understand music.
But greatest of the mighty trio is Ludwig van Beethoven, who was not a
native of Austria, being born in Bonn in Germany in 1770. When he was
only seventeen he went over to Vienna to receive a few lessons from
Mozart, returning there again in 1792. Beethoven was not a prodigy as a
child, though he early displayed a great aptitude for music. His master
does not seem to have inspired him with any particular reverence;
in fact, in after years he is said to have refused him the title of
master, as he said he never learned anything from him. So greatly,
however, did the Austrian capital appeal to him, and so warm was the
reception accorded to him there, that he made it his headquarters, and
afterwards never left it for long. His first compositions, rendered
to an Austrian audience in 1795, placed him in a secure position,
and among his greatest admirers was his pupil the Archduke Rudolf.
Beethoven’s genius was of a different kind from that of Mozart, being
far less spontaneous and owing much more to hard and painful labour.
His originality was greater than that of Haydn, and in spite of
abstruseness and that incomprehensibility which must ever remain to
all but the few in some of the works of a master-spirit, he was always
appreciated and understood. However, in 1797, when only twenty-seven
years of age, a terrible calamity fell upon him for he began to be
deaf, an infirmity which rapidly increased; this did not prevent his
still carrying on the noble compositions, which by a terrible irony of
fate he himself could never hear, but it darkened his life and took
from him much of the joy of living. He never married, and died in 1827.
Beethoven’s compositions, 138 in number, comprise all the
forms of vocal and instrumental music, from the sonata to the
symphony--from the simple song to the opera and oratorio. In
each of these forms he displayed the depth of his feeling, the
power of his genius; in some of them he reached a greatness
never approached by his predecessors or followers. His
pianoforte sonatas have brought the technical resources of that
instrument to a perfection previously unknown, but they at the
same time embody an infinite variety and depth of emotion.
His nine symphonies show a continuous climax of development,
ascending from the simplest forms of Haydn and Mozart to the
colossal dimensions of the choral symphony, which almost
seems to pass the possibilities of artistic expansion, and
the subject of which is humanity itself with its sufferings
and ideals. His dramatic works, the opera _Fidelio_, and the
overtures to _Egmont_ and _Coriolanus_--display depth of pathos
and force of dramatic characterisation. Even his smallest songs
and pianoforte pieces reflect a heart full of love, and a mind
bent on thought of eternal things (_Ency. Brit._, 9th edition).
Six years after the death of Mozart, but while Haydn and Beethoven
were still living, the former a man of sixty-five and the latter
twenty-seven (the year when first the shadow that was to eclipse his
life fell over him), there was born in Vienna a little lad called
Franz Peter Schubert, son of a master at Leopoldstadt. His beautiful
voice and perfect ear soon procured him a place among the choristers
in the Imperial chapel. No one seems to have taught him composition,
but his genius was of the kind that will out, and as other lads with
the fervour of the writer in their blood spoil ink and paper from an
absurdly early age, so young Franz spent all his spare time composing.
When he was eighteen he composed in one year two symphonies, five
operas, and one hundred and thirty-seven songs, besides many other
things of less importance! He was at this time helping to teach in
the same school as his father and all this was done in his unoccupied
moments. Wishing to devote himself still more to the art which absorbed
him, he applied for a position as teacher in a Government music school,
but was told he was “imperfectly qualified!”
The Esterhazy family, who had done so much for music already, accepted
him as teacher for one of the daughters of the house. The post was
poorly paid and, like Mozart, Schubert suffered from poverty all his
life. His industry was amazing; he literally poured out compositions,
one of his best-known songs, “Hark! Hark! the Lark,” being written
on the back of a bill of fare in a beer-garden! His symphonies never
received recognition in his lifetime, and he never enjoyed that
applause which fell to the lot of Beethoven. His lack of early training
in the technique of music told heavily on him, for the prodigality of
his genius had no adequate base to rest on. He died very young, being
barely thirty-two, and he is buried close to Beethoven.
That Austria should have produced three such marvellous geniuses, all
practically at the same time, and been a foster-mother to a fourth,
greater than any, is a surprising record, which will probably never
be eclipsed in the annals of history. Many other musical children she
has had, but all stand below these great masters. Among them, Johann
Strauss, born in 1804, and so a member of the same galaxy, has already
been noted. It is impossible to describe exhaustively all of Austria’s
musicians who have enriched the world of men with their melodies and
their marvellous execution. She stands in the forefront of musical
countries, and none will grudge her the position.