1781-1787.
THE ELOPEMENT FROM THE SERAGLIO--FIGARO--DON GIOVANNI.
Opinions on the Idomeneo--Tired of Salzburg--Goes to Vienna--The
Archbishop Again--Mozart Treated by him with Indignity--Paternal
Reproaches--Assailed by Slander--He Leaves Salzburg--Experiences in
Vienna--Austrian Society--The German Stage--The Emperor Expresses
a wish that Mozart might Write a New Opera--Mozart’s Love for
Constance Weber--Description of Constance--Performance of the
New Opera--Mozart’s Marriage--The Emperor’s Opinion of Mozart’s
Music--Mozart’s Interest in the Figaro--Particulars Relating to its
Composition--Its Success--Mozart’s Poverty--Mozart in Bohemia--His
Popularity in Prague--Meaning of the Don Giovanni--Richard Wagner on
Mozart.
We are told that Mozart, even in his later years, prized the _Idomeneo_
very greatly, and it is certain that connoisseurs have always
entertained a very high opinion of its music. It combines the freshness
of youth, great force and vitality, with a great variety in invention,
and has all the characteristics of art. It is easy to conceive that
the consciousness of being the possessor of so much power, especially
while he was engaged on the work itself, made Mozart’s bosom swell, and
that in such moments the memory of the narrowness and “chicanery” of
Salzburg must have been exceedingly mortifying to him. “Out! out into
the wide world and into the air of freedom!”--he must have heard now
ringing in his ears as he had four years before. And had not Vienna, at
that time the capital of Germany, intellectually advanced, and had not
the Emperor Joseph, established a national opera there?
As early as in December 1780, he had written to inquire how it stood
about his leave of absence. He told his father that he was in Salzburg
only to please him, and that, most assuredly, if it depended on him, he
would have scorned the place; for, he adds, “upon my honor, the prince
and the proud nobility become more intolerable to me every day.” It
would now, he said, be easy for him to get on in Munich without the
protection of the great, and it brought the tears to his eyes when he
thought of the state of things in Salzburg. Yet he could stay longer
than his leave of absence allowed him; for the archbishop remained
some time in Vienna on business, and thus Mozart found leisure, after
the opera was completed, to rest in Munich and to participate in the
pleasures of the carnival, while otherwise his greatest diversion would
have been to be with his beloved Rose and the Cannabichs.
In the midst of this youthful jollity, which seems very natural after
the great strain upon the minds of all during many months, he received
the archbishop’s order to repair to Vienna. This was in the middle
of March, 1781. Jerome was witness of the ostentation of the princes
in that city; and what reason was there why his “illustrious grace”
should not cut a figure also? His eight handsome roan horses were there
already. The members of his household followed him, and who was there
who, in the music at a feast, had a Mozart to show? Thus did our artist
unexpectedly realize his wish to come to Vienna; and circumstances so
had it, that he remained there.
His reception was a good one. He had indeed, as was the custom of the
time, to sit at table with cooks and _valets de chambre_, but these
he kept at a proper distance by “great gravity” and silence. Yet even
now we hear that the archbishop was only giving himself airs with
his attendants; for when an opportunity presented itself for Mozart
to show his powers, in other noble houses, the archbishop refused
him permission to do so; and still, it was only in such houses, that
he could expect to meet the Emperor Joseph--a circumstance on which
everything now depended. Rather did this domineering ecclesiastic do
all in his power to make Mozart feel his dependence more keenly. The
father did all he could to appease him, but Wolfgang felt that the
archbishop used him only to tickle his own ambition; that, in all
other respects, that worthy served only to hide his light. Besides
he had to stand about the room like a servant. Yet Mozart tells us
how, at a performance at prince Galizin’s, he had left the other
musicians entirely, and how he had gone directly up to the host in
the music room, and remained with him. Nothing was paid him for his
compositions for the archbishop’s _soirées_. Mozart, indeed, helped to
lend _éclat_ to a concert for the widows of deceased musicians in the
Haydn Society, because “all the nobility of Vienna had tormented the
archbishop to permit him to do so.” But his grace would not allow him
to give a concert for his own benefit, spite of the fact that he had
been received so well. The hardest blow of all to our artist was the
news that he would have to go back to Salzburg with the rest. He at
first paid no attention to intimations of this nature, for he wanted
to give a concert before he left. He had, besides, a prospect of a
position in the imperial city itself. But his father at home would
agree to nothing.
Mozart now writes “in natural German, because all the world should know
it,” that the archbishop owed it entirely to his father that he did not
lose him yesterday, for all time. He had been annoyed altogether too
much at the concert yesterday. After a little, dissension broke out
in earnest. “I am out of myself. My patience has been tried so long
that it is at an end.” The archbishop had, even before this, called
him “a low fellow,” and told him to go his way. Mozart bore it for his
father’s sake. Then he was ordered suddenly to leave the house, and he
went to old Madame Weber’s, and had to live at his own expense. He,
therefore, did not want to go until this outlay at least was made up
for.
“Well, fellow, when do you go?” snarlingly asked this prince spiritual,
and he then proceeded, in a single breath, to tell him that he was a
dissipated fellow, that no one used him so badly, and that he would
stop his pay. We scarcely believe our ears when we hear a prince-bishop
call our artist a scamp, a young blackguard, an idiot! Wolfgang’s blood
became too hot at last, and he asked whether his illustrious grace was
not satisfied with him.
“What? Threats? You idiot! There’s the door! I will have nothing more
to do with such a miserable villain.”
“Nor I with you.”
“Then go!”
Such was the dialogue between a prince and an artist of the past
century! It tells us something of its culture and civilization.
Mozart’s account of this scene concludes: “I will hear no more of
Salzburg. I hate the archbishop even to madness.”
But this was not the worst. “I did not know,” says Mozart, “that I
was a _valet de chambre_; that overcame me entirely; and my father
should be glad that he has not a man dishonored for his son.” But now
sycophantic flunkies began to busy themselves with the affair. They
knew that the archbishop did not like to lose an artist whom such
efforts had been made, before his eyes, to retain in Vienna. The master
of the household, Count Arco, therefore, did everything that in him
lay to quiet the matter. He refused, “from lack of courage and a love
of adulation,” to accept Mozart’s petition for dismissal. But when the
latter insisted on it, with a brutality not unworthy of his master,
Arco threw the noble artist out the door--with a kick!
After his personal audience with the archbishop, Mozart’s blood boiled;
he trembled from head to foot and reeled on the street like a drunken
man. Now he assures us that, when he meets the count, he will pay him
back the compliment he received from him. In the ante-chamber he did
not, like Arco himself, wish “to lose his respect for the prince’s
apartments,” but then he was determined that “the hungry donkey should
get an answer from him that he would feel,” even if it were twenty
years before a suitable occasion presented itself to give it. And when
his father recoiled at the boldness of such an attempt, our young
artist gave expression to a sentiment which lifted him high above all
that environed him, and stamps him one of the noblest representatives
of human nature. We have chosen that sentiment as the motto of this his
biography: “The heart is man’s title to nobility!”
More painful than all these insults to the manly honor of our young
artist were the heart-aches caused him by the very person who should
have understood him best, by his own father.
The latter had been obliged to write to him: “Do not allow yourself
to be misled by flattery. Be on your guard.” Now reproach was added
to mistrust, and Wolfgang was accused of endangering his father’s
subsistence, in his old age. He compared Wolfgang to Aloysia, who had
scarcely secured a good position in life than she joined her fortunes
to those of a comedian--the celebrated Joseph Lange--and neglected
her own people. He even went so far as to demand that his son should
withdraw his petition, adding that he was in honor bound to do so.
There was not in all of this a single trait by which Mozart could
recognize his father. He could, indeed, he said, recognize “a father,
but not the best, the most loving of fathers, the father solicitous
for his own honor and the honor of his children,--in a word, not my
father.” And he concludes: “Ask me to do anything you want, anything
but that. The very thought of it makes me tremble with rage.” What he
had achieved made Mozart, as an artist, manful and sure of himself; and
these sufferings had a similar effect on him as a man; but, compared
with the latter troubles, all that he had previously undergone was
light indeed. We know how deeply and fully Wolfgang loved his father;
but to understand his state of mind at this trying time, one must read
the father’s own letters. He reproaches his son, even with a want
of love, with being a pleasure-seeker in the great city, and with
keeping company with the frivolous! The slanders of strangers and the
father’s own suspicions conspired to make things worse; and in the
circulation of these slanders, a pupil of the abbe Vogler, J. P.
Winter, subsequently known by his _Unterbrochenes Opferfest_, played a
leading part. The way in which Mozart repelled these slanders, lays his
whole heart open before us. It was what might have been expected of one
whose art was so thoroughly pure and peaceful. He says, with the utmost
modesty and simplicity: “My chief fault is that, apparently, I do not
act as I should act;” and in answer to all other slanders, he replies,
with the most charming consciousness of self: “I need only consult my
reason and my heart to do what is right and just.”
Thus was Mozart’s relations with Salzburg, which had never brought
him much happiness or honor, dissolved for all time. He lost, it is
true, by this dissolution, the loving confidence of his father; but
painful as this loss was to him, it was not without compensation. He
obtained personal freedom and conquered for himself a place in which
his already highly developed individuality as an artist was at liberty
to act, room for the workings of his creative genius. This and his love
and marriage, which put him in possession of something which he could
permanently call his own, are further decisive events in our artist’s
life. We shall see their effects on his art, and, in the creation of
such magnificent works as the “Elopement from the Seraglio,” “Figaro”
and “Don Giovanni.” His recent personal experience had given him
that insight and that inward freedom without which his towering,
life-experienced style and his supreme power of depicting character are
impossible.
The time and place were favorable to the production of such works.
And it was not simply the oppressive feeling of the humiliating and
narrowing circumstances of his position hitherto, but the joyful
consciousness that, as his genius soon perceived, he was at last in the
place in the world best suited to his taste, in Vienna, that this time
caused him to conceive and hold fast to his desire. _Und wenn die Welt
voll Teufel waer!_--“And though the world were full of devils!”--we
may discover something of the desperate resolution which these words
imply, in his struggle at this time with his dearest of fathers; a
resolution generated, doubtless, by the circumstances in which he
now saw himself suddenly and accidentally placed, and which were so
favorable to his art, and to a becoming mode of living. He felt that he
had come here to grow to his full stature; and the instinct of artistic
creation, like the instinct of love, is involuntary and irresistible.
The father did not understand this. He had to be won over by prospects
of material success, and this success Wolfgang was able confidently
to promise himself and his father. Nor was he wanting here. And if we
are obliged to confess that Mozart, even in the rich city of Vienna,
almost starved, and that he died before his time, the cause was, in the
first place, that his genius was too great to be fully appreciated by
his contemporaries and his environment, and then that he was so wrapped
up in his sublime task, that the world gradually receded from him, and
it became an easy matter for the envious and his enemies to rob him of
the visible fruits of his success, and to limit him to the joys and
sunshine of his art. His art, indeed, throve even in Vienna, far beyond
what he had hoped. It was more than his contemporaries could appreciate
or understand. And, indeed, where would we be to-day without Mozart? As
well as Goethe, he touched the purest, the ultimate feeling of beauty
in art, and opened to our view the innermost and deepest depths of the
human soul. It was more than all else, Vienna and Austria that helped
him to do this.
During the period, beginning with 1780, Austria had recovered from the
effects of the wounds it received in the Seven Years’ War. The people
were well-to-do, and the rich nobles of the eastern provinces, the
Esterhazys, Schwarzenbergs, Thuns and Kinskys left immense amounts of
money in the capital. The state of society was not yet disturbed. The
nobility and middle class lived in harmony with one another. Above all
and dearly loved by all, sat throned, the Emperor Joseph II., an ideal
Austrian, whose like had not been seen since the time of Maximilian
I. The emperor Joseph was, so to speak, the counterpart, both in
disposition and education, of old Fritz (Frederick the Great), who
was the ablest representative at that time of practical German energy
and intelligence. This it was that gave the Austrian, and above all
the Viennese, disposition that peculiar character from which sprang a
style of art which had no predecessor and no counterpart that could be
called its equal save in Raphael and the antique--German chamber music.
Haydn’s, Mozart’s and Beethoven’s quartets alone sufficed to make this
Viennese period, from 1775 to 1825, a stretch of fifty years, forever
memorable. But besides, there was the instrumental music of this
brilliant musical triad whom Gluck had preceded.
Life at this time in Vienna was overflowing with a warm sensuousness,
unpolluted by the coarseness of vice. Men gave themselves up
unconstrained to their emotions. This itself is the most natural and
most fertile soil for productions of the mind, intended, primarily, to
operate on the senses, and through the senses to speak to our heart
of hearts and to our mind of minds. It is the most fitting soil for
art. And hence, we find here the first and most indispensable of all
conditions precedent to the full bloom of music. Life in the Austrian
capital, sunk apparently in sensuousness, had, like a reflection of the
ever brightening and warming sun, in its depths, that German, joyous
good-nature, that _deutsche Gemueth_, that leveling peace, and that
beautiful disposition which allow every living creature to do what
pleases him best and go his own way. Added to this was the high degree
of education which distinguished Vienna at the time, and which was
influenced, in part, by direct contact with the period of the highest
Italian culture, the renaissance. It had noble houses, wealthy and
refined families of the middle class and of the learned, and above all,
its emperor--if not in music, in all else the most nobly cultured! We
have only to think of the other capitals at the time, Paris, London,
and even Berlin, to be convinced that a Gluck, a Haydn, a Mozart, or
a Beethoven, could never have thrived in any of them. They thrived in
Vienna; and the last two artists asserted that it was in Vienna only
that they could have thrived, that is developed that art, the germ’s of
which they felt themselves to possess as a talent confided to them.
We may inquire, more particularly now, how it stood with music and the
theatre in those days. Many of the great houses had music of their own;
the wealthiest princes had not unfrequently their private orchestra;
other families string-quartets or the piano; and the latter was, as
Ph. E. Bach says, intended for music that went direct to the heart, and
not simply for children to practice on. No such golden age of music
had been seen since the days of the North German School for organists,
which had produced that eighth wonder of the world, Sebastian Bach; and
Beethoven recalled it, with a feeling of melancholy, when, with the
great wars of the Revolution a desolate period began, in which men’s
souls and with them music, the soul’s own art, were struck dumb. Philip
Emanuel Bach, the younger son of John Sebastian Bach, it was, who had
led music out of the stage which had religion for its center, and
opened to it by his sonatas _fuer Kenner und Liebhaber_, the domain of
purely human thought and feeling. “He is the parent, we the children,”
said Mozart, speaking of himself, and J. Haydn. Haydn also made a
similar admission.
It was these two men indeed, who, so to speak, gave expression to
the whole of human life in this unrestrained language of music, and
who, together with Beethoven, opened the hearts of their age and of
humanity, by their sonatas, symphonies, and quartets. This explains
why Mozart was able to write that the ladies detained him at the piano
a whole hour after the concert, adding: “I think I should be sitting
there still, if I had not stolen away!”
Again, he writes to his sister: “My only entertainment is the theater.
I wish you could see a tragedy played here. I know no theater in
which all kinds of plays are very well produced, unless it be here.”
Shroeder no doubt contributed largely to produce this effect. Then
Shakespeare’s plays had begun to attract attention in Germany, and
German dramatic literature to blossom forth in Lessing and Goethe.
No wonder that “Figaro” and “Don Giovanni,” now began to engage his
attention. We have already spoken of a national German theater. It is
not to be supposed that the Emperor Joseph II. sympathized with the
Germans in music. His early impressions caused him to favor the Italian
school, and, cultivated as was his talent for music, it was not great
enough to enable him to overcome them. But he was compelled to assist
the nation in its endeavors in this sphere, since Frederick the Great
had anticipated him in almost every other. Thus Vienna, together with
Mannheim and Weimar, constituted the glorious triad, the creators
of German music and of a German stage; and the full significance of
German endeavors, in this direction, may be inferred from the path of
light beginning with Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” followed by Beethoven’s
Symphonies, and ending with the “Ring of the Niebelungen” in Bayreuth
in 1876. Verily a cycle of art, of which Germany may well be proud!
Mozart came just in time for the German operatic stage. Gluck had
stopped composing; his victory was a decided one; he had almost reached
his zenith; he was approaching his seventieth year. True, his pupil,
Salieri, was the “idol of the emperor;” but he was an Italian, and
the remaining Viennese composers of the time were of little or no
importance. Haydn, properly speaking, did not busy himself in this
sphere of the drama, and besides, he lived the greatest part of the
time in Eisenstadt with prince Esterhazy. Northern Germany had no
longer anything to show of those things which mark an epoch in history;
and, what is more its preponderantly “learned” or formal music would
not have pleased the taste of the Viennese. What then could be more
natural than that they should open their arms to the young _maestro_
who, in a new field, had just given evidence of his transcendent power?
And, indeed, shortly after Mozart’s arrival in Vienna, the Emperor
himself had given expression to a wish that he might write a German
opera of this kind; and we are informed that after Count Rosenberg,
the manager of the theatre, had heard the _Idomeneo_ at a private
rehearsal, he ordered the writing of a libretto for Mozart. This was
“Belmonte and Constance,” or the “Elopement from the Seraglio.” Mozart
tells how he was so cheered by this, that he hastened to his writing
table with the greatest eagerness and sat at it with the greatest
pleasure. He finished, at this first sitting, one of the arias of
the Belmonte, and that the most beautiful of them all--the _O wie
aengstlich, o wie feurig!_
The whole matter was postponed for a time, but to no disadvantage;
for, in the meanwhile, Mozart experienced things which gave him
that wonderful depth of coloring and that golden, mature sweetness
which, besides himself and Raphael, scarcely another possesses--love
moved him to the innermost depths of his soul. This love had as much
influence on his life as on his music. It led to that most decided
union of human hearts, marriage; and hence we have here to consider
this important bit of the life of our artist, in his case as in all
others, made up of anguish and bliss.
We have seen already that when Mozart was compelled to leave the
archbishop’s palace, he hastened to the house of the Webers. Of his
removal thither he wrote: “There I have my pretty room, am with
obliging people ready to assist me in everything, when necessary.”
After the death of her husband, Madame Weber supported herself by
renting rooms, so that her daughters might remain with her. She lived
in the _Auge Gottes_, which is still standing in the _Petersplatz_.
The father’s suspicions were immediately awakened; and Mozart writes
in answer to his expression of them: “In the case of Aloysia [Lange] I
was a fool, but what may not a man become when he is in love!” For the
present, Mozart was concerned only with finding comfortable lodging
quarters and people who might take a personal interest in his father
and in the devouring anger and sorrow which possessed him, on account
of the course pursued towards him by the archbishop; and this interest
he found here. And, indeed, now that he had to compose incessantly in
order to eke out a livelihood, he needed a “clear head and a quiet
mind.” His father, however, insisted on his leaving the Webers, and in
the fall, he finally consented to quit them. But he greatly deceived
himself when he said that he left them only on account of “the gossip
of the people,” and wanted to know why he should be so recklessly
taken to task, because he had moved into the house of the Webers, as
if that meant that he was going to marry the daughter. The tender care
which the third daughter Constance took of him and the disposition she
manifested to do him every service in her power, generated in him the
desire to care for and serve her, in like manner.
We cannot here enter into the minute details of the origin and tenacity
of this beautiful affair of the heart; and we, therefore, confine
ourselves to that which is most essential.
Constance Weber was born in 1764. She was now in her eighteenth year,
and eight years younger than Mozart. She had been one of his pupils
in Munich. He gave her lessons on the piano then, and now he was
teaching her vocal music as well. Thus Mozart had, on both occasions,
an inducement other than his feelings, to bring him to the house of the
Webers. Music at first threw him and Constance involuntarily together;
but the language of the soul was destined sooner or later to create a
more intimate bond between them. In the evening they had their little
chats; they were joined by friends of Constance’s own sex; and Mozart,
in a letter written long after he was married, tells how they played
“hide and seek” with them. Then again, a great many circumstances
conspired to decide him to make choice of a partner for life. There
were his years, and his temperament which inclined him to a quiet mode
of life. From his earliest youth, he had never been taught economy, and
as a consequence now had many unnecessary expenses. He felt lonely and
desolate, when, tired by the exhausting labors of the day, he was not
with the Webers. When he left their house in September, he was like a
man who has left his own comfortable carriage for a stage-coach. And
when, with that instinct which belongs only to our deepest feelings,
he became gradually conscious that she was “the right one,” he frankly
laid before his father the necessity of his marrying and his settled
purpose to marry.
He writes in December, 1781: “But who is the object of my love? Do not
be horrified, I pray you. Surely, not one of the Weber girls? Yes, one
of the Weber girls, but not Josepha, not Sophia but Constance, the
middle one.” And then he gives us a description which must have been
somewhat exaggerated and colored by his feeling at the time. In no
family, he tells us, had he found such inequality. The eldest daughter
was lazy and coarse, and a little too knowing. Her tall sister was
false and a coquette; and yet he had written in the spring that he
had some liking for her. The youngest, Sophia, of whom we shall have
something to say further on, was still too young to be much. She was
nothing more than a good but giddy creature. He adds concerning her:
“May God preserve her from temptation!” Next comes a description of his
dear Constance. He says of her: “The middle daughter, my dear good
Constance, is a martyr among them, and, on that very account, perhaps,
the best-hearted, cleverest, in a word, the best in every way, among
them. She takes care of everything in the house, and yet can please
nobody.” He could if he desired, write whole pages of the ugly scenes
in that house. It was these very scenes which had made the two so dear
to one another. They tested their mutual affection.
And now he describes Constance herself. She was not ugly, but then she
was far from being beautiful. All her beauty consisted in two small
black eyes, and a fine figure. She had no wit, but common sense enough
to enable her to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother. That she
was not inclined to be lavish in her expenditures, was by no means
true; but she was accustomed to being plain; for the mother used the
little she had on the other two. She could make all her own things,
understood housekeeping, and had the best heart in the world. “I love
her,” he says, “and she loves me with all her heart. Tell me now,
could I desire a better wife?” The best commentary to these words is
furnished by the pieces which were already finished for “Belmonte and
Constance,” but above all by the _O wie aengstlich, o wie feurig_,[6]
which dates from the summer of 1781, and the aria _Ach ich liebte,
war so gluecklich_,[7] the text of which is extant in Constance’s own
handwriting.
But the painful lot of separation was destined at least to threaten
him. First the father, next the daughters’ guardian, then the mother,
and lastly his loved one’s own stubborn willfulness--the willfulness of
youth--menaced him with the destruction of his happiness. His life’s
happiness was indeed at stake here. This is very evident from Mozart’s
letters written during this time of trouble; and no one can know Mozart
thoroughly who does not follow him through this his heart trial.
Turn we now to the artistic results of this new existence in Vienna.
Of course much piano and chamber music had been produced. The craving
for something new continued great in all Viennese circles. And who was
better prepared to satisfy that craving than Mozart whose fame and even
support now depended on the reception he met with in the imperial city?
Everything turned on the opera given him to compose, and fortunately
its composition was resumed in the following spring, that of 1782. And
spite of all the vexation he had to endure from his own father and the
mother of his betrothed, he was ready with it, in time. To accomplish
his task, he had frequently to write until one o’clock at night and to
be up again at six in the morning. And although he could not devote to
it all his time, all his strength, all his mind, all the powers of his
fancy nor such minute labor as he had to the _Idomeneo_, he was able to
tell his father that he felt exceedingly well pleased with his opera.
He generally followed only his own feelings, but on this occasion he
had as much regard as possible for the taste of the Viennese people;
and their taste in such matters inclined to subdued hilarity and to the
comic. These therefore, are the prevailing characteristics of the work.
Of Belmonte’s _O wie aengstlich_ he writes himself: You can see the
trembling, the shaking. You can see how the swelling bosom heaves. It
is expressed by a _crescendo_. You can hear the whispering and sobbing
in the first violins with sordines and a flute in unison. The _O wie
der aengstlich_ was everybody’s favorite aria as well as his own. And
yet the rondo _Wenn der Freude Thraenen fliessen_,[8] was still more
enrapturing. It contains also that celebrated passage:
“Ach Constanze dich zu sehen
Dich voll Wonne und Entzuecken
An dies treue Herz zu druecken.”
in which German music for the first time fully learned the language
of manly love and devotion, just as it first had found the musical
sublimity of religious feeling in the chorale. Through Belmonte, the
character of the “German youth,” was, so to speak, fixed in music for
all time. Think only of Beethoven’s _Florestan_, and Wagner’s _Walther
von Stolzing_.
But the character of the stupid, coarse and wicked master of the
Harem, Osmin, thus comically and powerfully drawn, but with all the
nobility of style as to its form, was new also. He is no other than the
“starched stripling,” the son of a puffed-up Augsburg bourgeois. We
have here a picture of the brutal haughtiness of the Salzburg harem,
with its model steward of the kitchen. But the vengeance of the artist
is noble, and produces an ennobling effect on whole generations. We
must read his letters to see how fully he was conscious of the comic
even in Osmin’s aria: _Drum beim Barte des Propheten_, and that all
folly and excess are their own punishment, and become an object of
derision. We find here in this sketch the entire material from which,
two generations later, the “Dragon” of the _Niebelungenring_ was
built. The heavy rhythm in the very first song, the rudeness of the
entire movement, the almost roaring “trallalara”--are the expression
of the untamed savagery of brute nature, the grandeur of coarseness in
miniature.
We now turn to the performance. This took place on the 12th of July,
1782. It seemed as if the applause of the crowded house would never
cease. The audience was surprised, charmed, and carried away by the
beauty and euphony of the music--music full to overflowing with life,
and which did not sacrifice nobility of form to truth of portraiture,
nor depend for its seductive power on glittering dialogue. Performance
followed performance in quick succession, and this spite of the fact
that intrigue in theatrical circles labored strenuously to prevent
its repetition. The Italians, with Salieri at their head, looked with
displeasure at the rise of the German operatic stage. It disturbed
them, and threatened to do away with their exclusive rule. They went
so far even as to entice the performers away so that the presentation
of the opera became very difficult; whereupon Mozart writes: “I was in
such a rage that I did not know myself.” But they could not prevent the
audience’s crying bravo! and Mozart himself says: “It does one good to
get such applause.” The “Elopement” is the first link in the unbroken
chain of effects and triumphs which ends in the dramatic production
of our days, confined to no one nation--a production destined, in a
generation, to rule Europe more powerfully than did the Italian opera
in those days, and which even now succeeded in impeding the success of
this first German opera and banishing it from the stage.
This actually happened, and the emperor Joseph was weak enough to allow
the Italian school to obtain the upperhand to such an extent that
Mozart himself could not help joining in the chorus of those priests of
Bacchus; but then he gave that chorus a beauty and fullness which it
had not possessed before. This result was attained in the _Figaro_, of
which we shall speak next.
The first thing that occupied his mind after the completion of his
great task was, of course--and it was very natural that it should be
so--his union with Constance. And, indeed, after the success he had met
with, what reason was there why he should not venture to get married
and to found a home of his own? Speaking of the work, Joseph II. had
said: “Too pretty for our ears, and an infinity of notes, my dear
Mozart!” To which the latter with noble frankness replied: “Just as
many notes as are necessary, your majesty!” But Gluck, who was by far
the highest authority in Vienna on theatrical matters, had the opera
performed for himself specially, although it had been given only a few
days before, and he complimented the composer very highly and invited
him to dinner. This augured better for Mozart’s future than all else.
He had, however, other patrons. Prince Kaunitz, known as the “Kutscher
von Europa,” the _Coachman of Europe_, expressed great dissatisfaction
with the emperor because he did not value men of talent more, and
allowed them to leave the country. Among other things he told the
archduke Maximilian, on one occasion when the conversation turned on
Mozart, that men like him appeared in the world only once in a century,
and that for that reason some effort should be made to keep them.
Mozart now brought every influence he could to bear on his father. The
vexation already caused him by the girl’s mother brought it to such a
pass, that he was forced to take her to his friend and patroness Frau
von Waldstaedten. He writes about this time: “My heart is troubled, my
brain is crazed! How can a man think or work under such circumstances?”
But the father looked upon the marriage as a misfortune to him, and
instead of his consent to it, he gave “only well-meant advice.”
Mozart, therefore, made short work of it, and, with the assistance of
his patroness, he acted the _Elopement from the Auge Gottes_, as he
afterwards jocosely called his marriage. The baroness herself wrote
to the father, smoothed over the difficulties in the way as best she
could, even procured the money necessary to have the marriage contract
drawn and dispensation from having the bans called in the church. The
two who loved each other so well, were married on the 4th of August
1782. We must turn to Mozart himself for an account of it.
He tells us that, shortly after, the father’s consent was received.
There was no one present at the marriage ceremony but the mother, the
youngest sister, the guardian and two witnesses. And he adds: “The
moment we were made one, my wife as well as myself began to weep,
which touched every one, even the priest; and they all cried when they
witnessed how our hearts were moved.” The marriage feast consisted of
a supper at Frau von Waldstaedten’s, of which Mozart writes: “It was
more like a prince’s than a baron’s.” A few days later, he writes:
“For a considerable length of time, while we were yet single, we went
together both to mass and communion, and I find that I never confessed
and communicated as devoutly as by her side; and the same was the case
with her. In a word, we are made for one another, and God who ordains
all things, and who therefore has brought about all that has passed
with us will not forsake us.” And He did not forsake them. Their
marriage was blessed, truly blessed; for it had its foundation in love;
and even leaving his music out of consideration, we shall hear this
sweetest echo of life, the joyful notes of pure, tender love, echo as
clearly through the world as the name of Mozart, himself a minstrel of
love.
For an account of the cheering and touching tenacity of the love of our
artist, we must refer the reader to our large work on Mozart, in which
we have endeavored to give a picture or rather a history of a part of
his life of which the world has entertained an entirely false idea.
There is no reason why a single trait in Mozart’s character should be
concealed. Its every feature is human, and even his weaknesses are
amiable and readily excusable. If that highest of all moral precepts:
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, be applicable
anywhere, it is here. We shall have something more to say on this
subject below. We now turn to Mozart’s subsequent achievements.
The emperor, indeed, valued Mozart’s _talent decidé_ very highly,
and one day summoned him to meet Clement, in single combat, that his
majesty might enjoy his immense superiority over the more formal talent
of that renowned Roman. But the emperor did not recognize the full
value of the _Elopement from the Seraglio_, which he once characterized
by saying of it: _non era gran cosa_--“it did not amount to a great
deal.” This grieved Mozart sorely. He even thought of leaving Vienna in
consequence of it, and of going first to France and then to England.
In the meantime, the Italian musicians in Vienna, probably because of
the steady and great success of the _Elopement from the Seraglio_,
had induced the emperor to order a new and excellent _opera buffa_,
which gave great satisfaction. Mozart wrote of it: “The _basso buffo_
is remarkably good; his name is Benucci.” Lorenzo da Ponte, known
to-day as the poet of the two greatest _opere buffe_ of the world--our
_Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ had been in Vienna for some time, and
was there now. He had promised Mozart, who of course had an eye on
this Italian opera, a new subject as soon as he had finished one for
Salieri. Two years passed away, but Da Ponte’s word was kept at length.
In the meantime, Mozart had, on the occasion of his visit to Salzburg,
in the fall of 1783, begun a comic opera, “Die Gans von Cairo”--“The
Goose of Cairo.” It was, however, never completed. The libretto was too
bad and the goose-story too “stupid.”
To this epoch, ending with the _Figaro_, belongs a large abundance
of purely instrumental music. The quartet for the piano with
wind-instruments was ready on the 24th of March, 1784; the fantasy
in C major, which was never surpassed even by Beethoven, and the
_Veilchen_, in the spring of 1785; the piano quartet in G minor, which
Mozart called the best he had written in his whole life, in July of
the same year; and the six quartets, dedicated to Joseph Haydn, the
creator of that species of music, in the fall of that year (1785), a
year which must be considered among the most fertile of his life. And
yet, even at this time, Mozart was engaged on the comic opera above
named, and had begun another, the _Il Sposo deluso_, “The derided
Bridegroom,” which he dropped, to work on the _Figaro_. Scarcely had
this last subject begun to occupy his mind, than it took possession of
it entirely. Not even to the _Idomeneo_ and the _Elopement from the
Seraglio_ did he devote himself so entirely as to the _Figaro_. Into
this last he put all his individuality. It was the first subject which
occupied all his mind and soul, and, at the same time, afforded him an
opportunity to show the real brilliancy of his wit and of his musical
capacity. In this work, we have a perfect whole, a gem which shines
with dazzling brightness. A few weaknesses due to its derivation from
the Italian opera are cancelled by its excellences. It is a picture of
life which seems indeed to belong to one particular period, but which,
after all, shows us human nature itself with all its weaknesses, the
butt of ridicule or the object of pity.
Count Almaviva, who, with the assistance of Figaro, the barber of
Seville, had won his beautiful countess, is enamoured of her more
charming waiting-maid, Susanna; and the latter is in love with Figaro.
An effort must be made to cure the count of his folly. His jealousy is
first excited against the page. To accomplish this, the help of a great
many other persons becomes necessary; and thus we get a whole series
of exquisite scenes ending in the total bewilderment of the count. The
second part--the _opera buffa_ has generally only two parts, having
been originally nothing more than an “intermezzo,” between the three
acts of the grave opera, _opera seria_--finds Susanna at the count’s,
arranging a secret rendezvous with him for the evening, in the garden.
The ladies had so arranged it that the countess herself, disguised
as Susanna, should be in the garden at the time of the rendezvous,
and that Susanna should play the countess and surprise the two by
her sudden appearance on the scene. The page arrived too. The count
gives him a box on the ear for his dainty attentions to the disguised
countess. The page carries his grievance to the jealous Figaro, who,
warned of the infidelity of his Susanna, had approached too near,
notwithstanding the darkness. He makes a passionate declaration of
love to the supposed countess, although she had given him to understand
who she was, in the presence of the count. This of course, brought
matters to a crisis. The count orders lights to be brought. Covered
with shame at the discovery he makes, and lovingly forgiven by the
countess, he is, as we may reasonably assume, cured of his wicked
weakness for all time.
Such was the course of Mozart’s opera. It was attractive and cheerful,
and for the time, not too daring. Mozart invested the female characters
of the piece with the utmost goodness of heart and purity of soul. Even
from the haughty giddiness of the count, he took the sting in such a
way that we leave the presentation of this piece of human weakness
entirely satisfied.
It was otherwise with the original work, the _Le Mariage de Figaro ou
la folle Journée_, of the same Beaumarchais from whom Goethe borrowed
his Clavigo. In it we find the vices and above all the high-handed
violence of the nobility scourged with such a regardlessness of
consequences, that the piece must be looked upon as a species of
prelude to that historic night in August, 1789, on which every
privilege of the nobility was wiped out with a stroke of the pen. It
shows us at the same time the cordial gentleness and dignity of the
man, Mozart, who had himself personally experienced the brutal pride
of the privileged classes, and this in the most revolting manner. He,
however, solved the whole problem in the kindest of humor, with a
sympathy which may be seen shining through tears; explaining it by the
limitations and weaknesses of human nature. This work was Mozart’s own
even from the ordering of the libretto; and he it was that made choice
of it.
The following are the particulars relating to its composition. Lorenzo
da Ponte, of whom we made mention above, and who was at first so
completely on the side of Salieri and the Italians, now turned to
Mozart, in order to save his place, as libretto-poet, which he was
in danger of losing. Paisiello, at this time a man of world-wide
reputation, had come to Vienna, and achieved the greatest success with
an opera--“King Theodore.” In order to supplant the poet of the opera,
Casti, Da Ponte composed a libretto for Salieri, with which, however,
Salieri made so complete a failure, that he swore he would rather
have his fingers cut off, than set another verse written by Da Ponte
to music. Salieri now turned to Casti and met with great success in
his “Grotto of Trophonius.” Da Ponte who saw his position as poet for
the theater in peril, in consequence of this, had recourse to Mozart.
Thus it was the intrigue and jealousy of the Italians which eventually
helped Mozart to the place which he was born to fill; and thus
Salieri’s blow recoiled upon himself, for Mozart proposed Beaumarchais’
piece which had been given in Paris, in the spring of 1784, and had
produced an immense sensation there. But the king had forbidden the
piece in Vienna because of its “immoral style.” Besides, he had some
doubts as to Mozart’s capacity. Mozart, he said, was a good composer of
instrumental music, but had written an opera which did not amount to
much. On this account, Mozart went quietly to work. He first composed a
part of his opera, and Da Ponte then took occasion to have the emperor
hear the part thus composed. His imperial majesty immediately ordered
the completion of the work, and subsequently its performance.
Such is the story as it is to be gathered from the memoirs of the
writer of the libretto and of one of the singers, O’Kelley, an
Englishman. Both prove that the Italians now moved heaven and earth
to shut Mozart out from the stage, and that, as a matter of fact,
the emperor was obliged personally to interfere in his behalf, in
the case of the _Figaro_. Moreover, just at this time he gave Mozart
a token of his favor by commissioning him to write an opera called
the _Shauspieldirector_, or “The Manager of the Theater,” for a
garden-festival at Schœnbrunn. The subject of this opera is the
competitive trial of two prima donnas before the manager--a comic piece
which his enemies subsequently endeavored to interpret as a picture of
scenes in his own life.
The Italians, indeed, had reason enough for fear. Salieri subsequently
gave expression to their feelings when he said, it was well that Mozart
was dead, since, if he had lived, it would soon have come to such a
pass that not one of them would get as much as a mouthful of bread for
his compositions. These compositions are, indeed, valueless to-day,
while Mozart’s work is immortal, and while arias like _Will der Herr
Graf ein Taenzlein wagen_, _Neue Freuden neue Schmerzen_ and _Ihr die
ihr Triebe_, will live as long as music lives.
We shall now hear what an effect the actual performance of the opera
which took place on the first of May, 1786, had on him. The following
account, which has in it something of a Mozart-like amiability, is by
the singer Kelley:
“Of all the performers of the opera at that time, there is only one
still living--myself. [He sang the parts of Basilio and the stuttering
judge.] It must be granted that no opera was ever better performed.
I have seen it at different times and in all countries, and well
performed; and yet the very first performance of it compared with all
others is like light to darkness. All the original players had the
advantage of being instructed by the composer himself, who endeavored
to transfer his own way of looking at it, and his own enthusiasm to
their minds. I shall never forget his little, vivacious face glowing
with the fire of genius. It is just as impossible to describe it as to
paint the sunbeam.
“One evening, when I visited him, he said to me: ‘I have just finished
a little duet for my opera, and you must hear it.’ He seated himself
at the piano and sang it. I was carried away, and the musical world
will understand my transport--when I say that it was the duet of the
countess, Ulmaviva with Susanna: _So lang hab’ ich geschmachtet_.
Nothing more exquisite had ever before been written by human being. It
has often been a source of pleasure to me to think that I was the first
who heard it. I can still see Mozart in his red fur hat trimmed with
gold, standing on the stage with the orchestra, at the first rehearsal,
beating time for the music. Benucci sang Figaro’s _Dort vergiss leises
Fleh’n, suesses Wimmern_, with the greatest enthusiasm and all the
power of his voice. I stood beside Mozart, who repeatedly cried ‘bravo!
bravo! Benucci!’ in subdued tones. When Benucci came to the beautiful
passage: _Bei dem Donner der Karthaner_, he allowed his stentorian
voice to resound with all his might. The players on the stage and in
the orchestra were electrified. Intoxicated with pleasure, they cried
again and again, and each time louder than the preceding one, ‘bravo!
bravo! maestro! Long live the great Mozart!’ Those in the orchestra
beat the music stands incessantly with the bows of their violins, thus
expressing their enthusiasm. It seemed as if this storm of applause
would never cease. The little man returned thanks for the homage paid
him by bowing repeatedly. The finale at the end of the first act was
received with similar delight. Had Mozart written nothing but this
piece of music, it alone would, in my humble opinion, have stamped him
the greatest master of his art. Never was there a greater triumph than
that of Mozart and his _Figaro_.”
This is the only detailed account which we possess. The father had
heard enough of the astonishingly powerful intrigues caused by his
son’s great talent and the respect in which he was held. Now he was
able to write to his daughter, that five and even seven parts of the
opera had been repeated, and that one duet had to be sung three times.
The Italians induced the emperor to forbid these repetitions. But when
he spoke to the singers of “this favor he had done them,” the person
playing the part of Susanna frankly replied: “Do not believe that, your
Majesty. They all wish to hear _dacapo_ cried. I at least can assert
that of myself.” Whereupon the emperor laughed.
But we may ask, was Mozart’s fortune now made? He was, indeed, at
this time, in such pinching circumstances that he had to apply to his
publisher, Hofmeister, for such petty advances as a few ducats.
The house was always full to overflowing, and the public never tired
of applauding Mozart and calling him out. But care was now taken that
the performances should not follow one another too frequently or too
rapidly, the effect of which would soon have been an improvement in the
taste of the public. Moreover, the success of a new opera, _Una Cosa
rara_--it serves in the _Don Giovanni_ as table-music--by Martin, the
Spaniard, was enough to throw the _Figaro_ into the shade both with
the emperor and with the people, and then to displace it entirely.
The success of that opera was incredible, and such as might have been
expected from a public whose noblest representative, the emperor Joseph
himself, told Dittersdorf the composer of _Doctor and Apotheker_,
that he liked Martin’s light, pleasant melodies better than Mozart’s
style, who drowned the voice of the singers with the noise of the
accompaniment. “Happy man,” said Mozart to the young composer Gyrowetz,
who went to Italy in the fall of 1785, “if I could only travel with
you, how glad I would be! I must give a lesson now in order to earn a
pittance.” He thought again of going to England, but no inducement to
go there offered.
And yet the _Figaro_ was attended by very immediate success even to
its composer. It gave occasion to the writing of the _Don Giovanni_;
and this leads us to the conclusion of a chapter in Mozart’s life
descriptive of a portion of that life as important as it was replete
with action.
The love of the Bohemians for music and their skill in the art are
well known. After Mozart had made his first appearance in Vienna, the
people of Prague appropriated him just as they have Richard Wagner in
our own day, and the _Figaro_ which followed the _Elopement from the
Seraglio_ was received with an amount of applause which can be compared
only with that subsequently accorded to the _Magic Flute_. It was given
almost without interruption during the whole of the winter 1786-87.
The enthusiasm of the audiences was unparalleled. They never tired of
hearing it. Arrangements for the piano, for wind-instruments, quartets,
dances, etc., were made from it. _Figaro_ was re-echoed in the streets,
in gardens, and even the harper had to play its _Dort Vergiss_ if he
wished to be heard.
It was the orchestra and a society of “great” connoisseurs and amateurs
that invited him to Prague. Nothing could have been more agreeable
to Mozart than to be able to show his enemies in Vienna that he was
not yet without friends in the world. His wife accompanied him. It
was in January, 1787. Count Thun, one of the first chevaliers and
musical connoisseurs of Prague, was his host. He gave every day a
musical entertainment at his own home. He found great delight in the
intercourse of loving friends of his art, friends who recognized his
genius. The very first evening, a ball was given by a well-known
society in Prague--the “elite of the beauties of Prague.” Writing of
it himself, Mozart says: “I was delighted to see all these people
moving about so truly happy, to the music of the _Figaro_ transformed
into counter dances and waltzes. Nothing is talked of here but the
_Figaro_. The people visit no opera but the _Figaro_. It is nothing but
_Figaro_!”
He was to direct the work in person, to the infinite delight of all. He
himself paid a high compliment to the execution of the orchestra. They
always played with great spirit. Two concerts followed. An eye-witness
writes: “The theatre was never seen so full of human beings. Never
was delight more universal. We did not, indeed, know what most to
admire, the extraordinary composition or the extraordinary playing.
The two together produced an impression that was sweet enchantment.
But when Mozart, towards the close, played a number of fantasias
alone, this condition was resolved into one of overflowing expressions
of approval.” Mozart appeared, his countenance radiant with genuine
satisfaction. He began with an enthusiasm that kept increasing from the
first, and had accomplished greater things than had ever before been
heard, when a loud voice cried out: “From Figaro!” whereupon Mozart
played the favorite aria, _Dort vergiss_, improvised a dozen of the
most interesting and artistic variations and closed this remarkable
production amid thunders of applause.
This was certainly one of the brightest days in Mozart’s life. He had
reached the climax of success. In the applause of the multitude, he
saw a reflection of his own intellectual features which called that
applause forth. Strange thoughts now possessed his soul. Feelings never
felt before stirred within him. When a person has reached a height
like that now obtained by Mozart, he is in a position to embrace in
his horizon all that lies below and around him. It was the first time
that his life-sparkling mind did this, but we shall see that it did so
now. The incessant intrigues of his opponents and enemies--intrigues
so violent and great, that, when he died, it was rumored he had been
poisoned--devoured his life like a vulture, and ended it before
his time. The consciousness of this first came to him with all its
melancholy amid the infinite jubilation we have just described, in the
midst of all this joy and recognition of his genius. He now, for the
first time, had a perception of life’s close, of life’s tragic play, as
reflected in _Don Giovanni_; and this was the result of his journey
to Prague. For when, in the overflowing joy of his heart, Mozart said
that he would like to write an opera expressly for such a public, the
director of the theatre, Bondini, took him at his word, and closed the
contract with him for the following autumn, at one hundred ducats.
Da Ponte relates that, on this occasion, he proposed the subject-matter
himself. He had perceived that Mozart’s genius required a sublime and
many-sided poem. And, indeed, this, like _Faust_, was a subject-matter
on which writers of all nations had long labored. _Don Giovanni_
represents the indestructible instinct of life, as _Faust_ does the
instinct of knowledge, showing how that instinct is ever annihilating
and reproducing itself. The hero is given up to the fullest enjoyment
of life regardless of consequences. Cheerfully and freely he surrenders
himself to it. No shackles bind him. Opposition only adds to his
strength. But this very wantonness is, at last, the cause of his ruin.
This was the conclusion of the whole, extended, original Spanish play
chosen by the poet of the libretto.
Don Giovanni rushes into the apartment of Donna Anna, who is waiting
for the arrival of her beloved Don Octavio. Her cry for help calls out
her father. A duel puts an end to his aged life. On the street, Don
Giovanni and his servant Leporello, are met by the forsaken Elvira. She
complains, gives expression to her grief and loads him with reproaches.
He hastens on his way in the search after pleasure. Zerline, the bride
of the young Marsetto is next snatched away from him by Elvira’s
jealousy. But he has invited the whole company to the castle. He is
again met, (everything even now foreshadows the catastrophe) by Donna
Anna with Octavio. They seek his assistance on account of the murdered
father. But Donna Anna, whose suspicions had been already awakened by
Elvira, recognizes him as the murderer. They next appear masquerading
in black at the banquet, and just as Don Giovanni is on the point
of carrying away the rustic beauty, they come up to him; a struggle
ensues, and master and servant are saved only by the most masculine
boldness. This is the first act of this opera, which is also considered
an _opera buffa_.
The second act finds Don Giovanni engaged in a quarrel with Leporello.
Leporello does not want to serve so dangerous a master any longer.
But money atones for the anxiety he endures. Elvira appears on the
balcony. Don Giovanni changes clothes with Leporello and swears love
to her anew. She comes down and at an artificial noise, made by Don
Giovanni, flees with Leporello into the darkness. This is followed by
a serenade to her waiting-maid, Leporello’s beloved. Marsetto and his
peasants, armed with guns, now appear. But Don Giovanni, dressed as
Leporello, succeeds in getting his friends away, and in coaxing the
weapons from Marsetto himself. He then cudgels him soundly, whereupon
Zerline consoles him with her promises. Elvira now looks in the dark
for the supposed lover. The anxious Leporello endeavors to escape. Don
Octavio and Donna Anna suddenly appear with torches and see that this
time they have the servant instead of his master. The former escapes
and according to agreement meets Don Giovanni in the churchyard. Their
godless conversation is suddenly interrupted by a voice which says:
“Presumptuous man, let those rest who have gone to sleep!” It is the
statue of the Comthur. Don Giovanni haughtily forces Leporello to
invite him to dinner. In the midst of the revels of the table--for
which Martin’s _Cosa rara_ furnished a part of the music, as, in
Prague, did the _Dort vergiss_--in the midst of the most luxurious joys
of life, which not even the warning voice of the loving Elvira could
dispel, the stony guest approaches him, and announces his sentence to
him:
“Down into the dust and pray!”
“Tell women to pray!”
“Be converted!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Now thy end has come!”
Yawning abysses open, and spirits of hell drag the dastard into the
dismal grave, alive.
We know what the cheerful phase of the life of the past century was.
It has found a more fiery expression in _Don Giovanni_ than even in
the _Figaro_. The Renaissance had introduced anew the free enjoyment
of life of the ancient world. Think only what the Borgias were! From
Italy and Spain it had made its way to France, when people there, for
the first time, became conscious that they were “dancing on a volcano.”
The feeling that there hangs a necessary and tragic sentence over the
mere sensuousness of life, which is, after all, but a powerful picture
of the transitoriness of all things earthly--a transitoriness which
will always remain a dark enigma to the living themselves, and which
therefore fills the proudest life with a certain melancholy--this
feeling, which constitutes the poetic nucleus of the whole story of
_Don Giovanni_, no one of all who have treated the subject, in an
artistic manner, has fathomed or shown the power of, even in a remote
degree, as did Mozart. The music, on the appearance of the stony guest,
springs from the same fountain as Faust’s most beautiful and profound
monologues. It is the consciousness, the heart-felt knowledge of the
permanent duration of human life; and we have seen how life itself led
Mozart, the artist and the man, to this heart-felt knowledge and to the
feeling of something really eternal in the changes that surround us.
The following further details as to the origin of _Don Giovanni_ are
not devoid of interest.
Da Ponte’s boasting in his memoirs is indeed exquisite, and shows
that, after all, he had no idea what the value of the material of _Don
Giovanni_ was. He had the three distinguished opera composers of Vienna
at the time to write for, and he quieted the doubts of the emperor
as to the success of such a task, by telling him that he would write
during the night for Mozart and keep thinking of Dante’s Hell, in the
morning for Martin, and read Petrarca, in the evening for Salieri, when
Tasso should be his companion. With a bottle of tokai and some Spanish
tobacco before him, and the sixteen-year-old daughter of his hostess,
as his muse beside him, he says he began his work, and in two months
the whole was finished.
And how about Mozart? When at the beginning of April, the libretto of
this poetical judgment on human life had come into his hands, his soul
was directed with redoubled energy to its serious meaning. He received
at that time, the news of the grave illness of his father, which led
him to give expression to some remarkable sayings about death as the
“true goal of our life--man’s true, best friend.” We shall yet see
what suggested this. Besides, he had shortly before lost his “best and
dearest” friend, Count Hatzfeld, and now, on the 28th of May 1787, he
lost his beloved father also. The quintet in G minor dates from this
time. The depths of his soul open up before us here. This quintet is
a prelude to _Don Giovanni_. At this time, too, it was that the court
organist, Ludwig Beethoven of Bonn, now in his sixteenth year, paid him
a visit. Mozart paid no attention to Beethoven beyond predicting his
world-wide fame, so entirely was he pre-occupied with his new work. The
following September, his friend Dr. Barisoni, who had attended him two
years before, when he was very dangerously sick, died; and Mozart wrote
under some of his verses in his album: “It is well with him!--but it
will never be well with me, with us and with all who knew him so well,
until we are happy enough to see him in a better world, never to part
again!” His thoughts went beyond the grave and endeavored to fathom
the eternal relations of things. This was the mood in which he wrote
_Don Giovanni_. Even into the brightest light of life, creep at last
the dark shadows of annihilation!
In the beginning of September 1787, composer and poet were in Prague.
Constance also had traveled with them. She had to see that no
disturbance from without interfered with the workings of our artist’s
laborious mind. Personal intercourse with the singers increased his
intellectual activity. The first singer who took the part of Don
Giovanni was lauded to the deaf Beethoven, almost forty years later, as
a “fiery Italian.” The female singers were not by any means remarkable.
Yet it was said that our artist had been guilty, during this sojourn in
Prague, of all kinds of gay adventures; and this while he was writing
himself to a friend in Vienna: “Is there not an infinite difference
between the pleasure of a fickle, whimsical love and the bliss of a
really rational one?” In after years, his acquaintances remembered the
happy hours they had spent with him in Prague. He played at nine-pins
with them in a wine-garden, which is now adorned with his bust, while
at the same time he wrote out his score at the table in the place. And
in the evening before the performance he was exceedingly cheerful and
full of jokes. Finally, Constance told him it was eleven o’clock, that
the overture was not yet written. At his home, with his glass of punch,
such as he liked, he proceeded to perform the task which was so irksome
to him. He had the work long since finished in his head. He had even
already played it as well as two other drafts of it for his friends.
On this account, Constance, in order to keep his thoughts flowing, was
obliged to tell stories to him. These were fairy tales, like Aladdin’s
Wonderful Lamp, and Cinderella. Mozart frequently laughed over them
until the tears came. Fatigue, however, overpowered him at last, and
his wife allowed him to sleep a few hours. Yet the copyists received
their work in the early morning. He had, moreover, according to his own
confession to the director of the orchestra, never allowed himself to
be prevented from producing something excellent for Prague, and at the
same time assured him, that he had not acquired his art easily. No
one, he said, had been more industrious to acquire it than he, and it
would be hard to find a celebrated master whom he had not diligently
studied.
It is said that he set the celebrated _Reich mir die Hand_ to music
five times for _Don Giovanni_. He made the singers rehearse to him
separately. He danced the minuet for them himself; for, strange to
say, he once told Kelly that his achievements in dancing were more
remarkable than his achievements in music. Hence, the players were
full of good will and enthusiasm, the consequence of which was, that
the performance this time, also, was a very good one. It took place
on the 29th of October, 1787. The house was full to overflowing, and
Mozart was received with a flourish of trumpets, repeated three times,
and applause which it seemed would never cease. Such was the reception
accorded the opera itself, that the director of the theatre wrote to
the composer of the libretto, who, in the meantime had returned to
Vienna: “Long live Da Ponte! Long live Mozart! Praise them, all ye
directors and all ye singers! So long as they live theatres cannot
fail to do a thriving business.” As usual, Mozart himself speaks
modestly of “the loudest kind of applause,” and remarks to his friend
in Vienna, mentioned above: “I could wish that my friends were here a
single evening to share my pleasure. But probably the opera will not be
performed in Vienna. I wish so. People are doing all in their power to
prevail upon me to remain here a few months and write another opera;
but, flattering as the invitation is, I cannot accept it.”
And now, as to the work itself. Schiller wrote to Goethe on the 29th
of December, 1797, that he had always entertained the confidence
that out of the opera as out of the choruses of the old feasts of
Dionysos, tragedy would develop a nobler form. By the power of music,
it attuned the heart to a finer susceptibility, and, in this way, it
might happen that, at last, even the ideal might stealthily make its
way to the stage. Goethe answered curtly: “You might have seen your
hopes recently realized to a great extent in _Don Giovanni_. But in
this respect, that piece stands entirely alone, and Mozart’s death has
rendered all hope of anything like it, idle.” We owe it to _Figaro_
and _Don Giovanni_, more than to anything else, that we are able
to-day, to assert the contrary, and that we witness the real dramatic
art which was attained to by Italy in the revival of antiquity in a
truly flourishing condition about us. What Gluck required should be the
characteristic points of dramatic composition is here complied with to
the fullest extent; to an extent which, in many particulars, has not
been yet surpassed. This perfection Mozart owed to his more accurate
acquaintance with the exigencies of the drama and his supreme command
of all the capabilities of music. The separate and distinct pieces
of music, indeed, with their pitiful, recurring cadences, remind us
continually that it is with a musician we have to do, and one whose
style was a development from the Italian school. But then such is the
poetical intuition of this musician that the poetical material helps
him always to some new invention in his own art. And while this art
seems to demand that it should be necessarily confined to its own
sphere and possess definite forms, genius is able to so arrange it that
the dramatic action may lose nothing that properly belongs to it, and
yet that the music may not become simply “the obedient daughter of
poetry.”
Richard Wagner, the great master, who, in this sphere, is Mozart’s
only real successor, says: “Mozart in his operas demonstrated the
inexhaustible resources of music most fully to meet every demand of
the poet on its power of expression; and considering his completely
original course, this glorious musician did a great deal more to
discover this power of music, both in respect to truth of expression,
and in the endless varieties of its causes, than Gluck and all his
successors.” And in this dramatic respect, the _Figaro_, and _Don
Giovanni_, unquestionably occupy the first place. Who is there that
does not recognize in _Keine Ruh’ bei Tag und Nacht_, _Wenn du fein
artig bist_, _Treibt der Champagner_, a new language in tones? We
here again witness the noblest acquisitions of the _Idomeneo_ and the
_Elopement from the Seraglio_, in the highest possible perfection
concentrated in all their energy. It is a miracle of strength and
grace, of spirit and euphony, of buoyant force, of nobleness, and at
the same time, of truest, deepest feeling.
Thus the _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_, together with Germany’s classic
poetry, occupy a place at the beginning of a great dramatic epoch
which commenced one hundred years ago. They are a part of the life of
modern humanity in general. In them Mozart first fully developed his
inexhaustible genius. And thus it is that these works, like the antique
and the art of the Renaissance, belong to the whole cultured world.
Mozart’s concluding labors are a condensation of all the impressions of
his life, and of all the perceptions of his mind, in their very depths.
The _Magic Flute_, especially by its purely human and ethico-religious
tendency, became the starting point of the efforts of an art which was
peculiarly German, but of which the universal art-creations of the
present day were born. This leads us to the fifth and last chapter of
our biography.