1787-1791.
THE MAGIC FLUTE--TITUS--THE REQUIEM.
Haydn’s Opinion of Mozart--Made Court Composer by Joseph II.--Don
Giovanni in Vienna--Mozart’s Extreme Poverty--His Cheerfulness
under Adverse Circumstances--“The Song of the Swan”--Other
Compositions--Mozart’s Opinion of Handel--He becomes Acquainted
with Sebastian Bach--Mozart’s Opinion of Church Music--Traveling
Again--Some of Mozart’s Characteristics--Audience with the
Emperor--Petition to his Imperial Majesty--His Religious
Feelings--Joins the Free Masons--History of the Composition of the
Magic Flute--The Mysterious Stranger--The Requiem--Success of the
Magic Flute--Mozart as Reflected in his Music--His Industry--Last
Illness--Strange Fancies--Incidents of his Last Days--His Death.
The composer of _Figaro_, Mozart himself, writes in 1785: “If there
were only a single German patriot in a position of influence, with him
things would wear a different aspect. But, then, perhaps, our national
theatre, now only in bud, would come to full bloom; and, of course,
it would be an everlasting shame for Germany, if we should seriously
begin to think German, act German, speak German, and even to sing
German!” Chance would have it, that, towards the close of his days he
was able to give his pen and not merely his tongue, as he did here,
free rein on this point. And the very fact that his circumstances
became poorer, and that the parties, which prevailed at the time,
succeeded in relegating him to an inferior social position, was here of
decisive influence.
Haydn now writes to Prague, where Mozart had declined the composition
of another opera: “You ask me for another opera. With all my heart,
if you wish to have something for yourself alone.” But he would have
had too much to risk in writing for the theatre there, inasmuch as
scarcely any one could be compared with the great Mozart. The noble
master continues: “For if I could impress on the souls of all lovers
of music, but above all on the great, the inimitable works of Mozart;
could I endow them with a proper comprehension of music, and impart to
them the feeling with which I understand and feel them, the nations
would emulate one another for the possession of that jewel.” Prague,
he said, should keep such a man, but at the same time, it should
remunerate him properly, for when not properly remunerated the history
of genius is sad indeed. And he concludes: “It grieves me sorely that
Mozart, who has no equal, has not yet been engaged at some royal or
imperial court.... Pardon me for not keeping to my subject, but I am so
fond of the man.”
Schwind, the painter, who, during his youth in Vienna, knew very many
of Mozart’s friends, writes: “People spoke of him as one speaks of the
person he loves. Why was it that ‘the great’ did nothing for him?”
The success of the _Don Giovanni_ in Prague had a good effect in
Vienna, and when it was learned that Mozart was going to leave that
city for England, Joseph II. named him--it was on the 7th of December,
1787--his court composer with a salary of 800 guldens in all; of which
Mozart once wrote on his tax-returns: “too much for what I do, too
little for what I might do.” In his position, he had no duties but
to write the dancing music for the imperial masquerades! And yet,
the position which Gluck held from the emperor with a salary of two
thousand guldens had just become vacant by that composer’s death!
Mozart must have had wicked enemies and enviers and only half friends,
at this court. His patron, Maximilian Francis, elector of Cologne,
was now in Bonn, where he had found young Beethoven, and the emperor
himself liked the lighter music better than Mozart’s. Thus Salieri
again gained the advantage; and before the opera _Azur_, which had been
ordered by the emperor, was given, _Don Giovanni_ was not to be thought
of.
Yet, the emperor finally ordered its performance also. It took place
on the 7th of May, 1788; but the opera did not give satisfaction. Da
Ponte writes: “Everybody, Mozart alone excepted, was of opinion that
the piece would have to be re-written. We made additions to it, changed
pieces in it, and yet, a second time, _Don Giovanni_ did not give
satisfaction.” According to Da Ponte, however, this did not keep the
emperor from saying, that the “work was magnificent, more beautiful
than _Figaro_, but no morsel for the Viennese.” Mozart, to whom this
saying of the emperor had been carried, replied: “Only give them time
to taste it;” and, indeed, every performance of the opera added to
its success. Haydn said, in a company at the house of Count Rosenberg,
which was no rendezvous for Mozart’s friends, that he could not settle
their dispute about the faults of the work, but he knew that Mozart was
the greatest composer which the world then had.
And yet, at this very time, Mozart was suffering from want, actual
want! The first of those mournful letters to his friend Puchberg, the
merchant, is dated the 17th of June of this year. These letters afford
us a picture of his condition during the last years of his life. They
even foreshadow the sad, premature end of our artist. He received from
_Don Giovanni_, in Vienna, altogether two hundred and twenty-five
guldens. His compositions were in contents and execution too difficult
for the dilettanti, and his feeling and views on art did not allow
him to write otherwise; so that the publishers were not able to pay
him much. Besides, those parts of his compositions which were really
popular, were everywhere republished. Concerts could not be given all
the time, and his receipts from all sources were too irregular. His
household expenses, spite of his simple way of living, were great. He
had several children, in quick succession, and Constance was taken,
repeatedly, very seriously ill--in one instance, for eight whole
months. He closes one of his letters, asking for, and imploring a
little “momentary assistance,” according to his friend’s pleasure, as
follows: “My wife was sick again yesterday. To-day, thank God, she is
better: yet I am very unhappy, always wavering between worry and hope.”
This affliction of body and mind was a constant trial of his better
nature. His letters next to his music afford us the most beautiful
proof of the purity of his soul and the depth of his feelings. Yet the
last years of Mozart’s life disclose to us a mournful picture of the
existence of a German artist; and it is only Mozart’s own spirit that
can lift us high above the sadness and acrimony which we are disposed
to feel here.
His mind did not grow gloomy. Like the phœnix, he always rose out of
the ashes of the want that consumed him--more brilliantly arrayed and
fitted for a grander flight. And it is truer of scarcely any artist
than of him, that his last note was like the dying strains of the
swan, an echo from another and higher world, a sound at once joyful and
melancholy such as had never been heard before.
The symphony in E major which was finished in these summer days of
1788, has in fact, been called the Song of the Swan. Of it Hoffman, in
his celebrated _Phantasiestuecken_, beautifully says: “The language of
love and melancholy are heard in the sweet voices of spirits. The night
breaks into a bright purple light, and, with an unspeakable longing, we
follow the forms which invite us with friendly glances into their ranks
as they fly through the clouds to the eternal music of the spheres.”
Immediately following this came the exceedingly powerful and life-like
symphony in G minor, and the Jupiter symphony. Did mortal ever before
hear the quiet jubilation of all beings as it is heard in the _andante_
of this last? The man who can write such works has higher joys than
the world can give or take away. His eye full of the truest happiness,
is directed towards an eternal ideal which refreshes, preserves and
blesses him. The grave little _adagio_ in H minor for the piano was
also written in this same year, 1788.
At this time, Handel, with his vigorous and manly nature entered
Mozart’s domain. He was preparing for a friend and patron, the former
ambassador to Berlin, Baron von Swieten, _Acis and Galatea_ and the
_Messias_. Mozart’s opinion of Handel was, that he understood better
than any one else the power of music, and that when he chose, he could
use chorus and orchestra with overwhelming effect; even his airs in
the Italian style always betokened the composer of the Messias. But
he was destined soon to become acquainted with a greater genius, a
man all imposing to him--Sebastian Bach. Handel’s freer form and his
dramatic characterization were not new to him; and we may judge from
the _Idomeneo_ that Mozart possessed a power not unlike that which was
peculiar to Handel. Yet Bach opened to him, both as an artist and a
man, a new world, but one which he had long half suspected and half
known--that ocean of polyphony governed with such sovereign power. And
yet the matter lay deeper.
Some one in Leipzig itself--he probably had reference to Bach--had,
in a conversation, called it a burning shame, that it was with so
many great musicians as it had been with the old painters: they
were compelled to employ their immense powers on the fruitless and
mind-destroying subjects of the church. Mozart was highly displeased
at the remark, and said in a very sad manner, that that was some more
art-twaddle. And he continued in some such strain as this: “With you,
enlightened Protestants, as you call yourselves, when all your religion
is the religion of the head, there may be some truth in this. But with
us, it is otherwise. You do not at all feel the meaning of the words,
_Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem_. [Lamb of God
who takest away the sins of the world; grant us peace.] But when one
has, from his earliest childhood, been introduced into the sanctuary of
our religion, and attended its service with fervor, and called those
happy who knelt at the touching strains of the _Agnus Dei_ and received
the communion, while the music gushing in tender joy from the hearts of
the faithful, said, _Benedictus qui venit_, [Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord,] it is very different; and, when now, these
words, heard a thousand times, are placed before one to be set to
music, it all returns and stirs the soul within him.” On this occasion,
he recalled that first composition for the consecration of a church in
his childhood, in Vienna, and the religious impressions he carried away
from Italy of which we spoke above.
He was now in Leipzig and became acquainted with Sebastian Bach in his
church compositions. Necessity had again started him on an artistic
journey. His friend and pupil, prince Charles Lichnowsky, who was
soon destined to play an important part in Beethoven’s life also, had
asked Mozart to travel with him to Berlin where he might probably be
of some use to him with the music-loving Frederick William II. Our
information concerning this journey and one that followed it, is to be
found in those letters to his wife, of which she herself subsequently
wrote that these unstudied epistles were the best indication of his
way of thinking, of his peculiar nature and of his culture. She
says: “The rare love for me which these letters breathe is supremely
characteristic of him. Those written in his later years are just as
tender as those which he must have written during the first years of
our married life, are they not?” In those letters, indeed, we have the
man, Mozart as he really was, and what he had gone through in life,
before us.
In Prague, the director of the theatre had almost so arranged it that
he was to get two hundred ducats for a new opera, and fifty ducats
for traveling expenses. This gave him new life. One of his old Munich
friends, the hautboyist Ramm, who had come from Berlin, had also told
him, in Prague, that the king had asked him “very often and very
anxiously” if it was sure that Mozart was coming, and when he saw that
he had not come, said: “I am afraid that he is not going to come.”
“Judging from this,” says Mozart, “my affairs will not go ill.” In
Dresden, he formed the acquaintance of Schiller’s friend, Koerner, the
father of the poet, whose sister-in-law, Doris Stock, made a drawing of
his picture. But all the affection he met with only turned his thoughts
more lovingly to his wife and child at home. He writes, on the 13th of
April, 1789: “My dearest wife, if I only had a letter from you....
If I could only tell you all I have to say to your dear picture!...
And when I put it away I let it slide from me gradually, while I say:
Well! well! well! and, at the last, good night, pet, pleasant dreams!”
The same complete ingenuousness of a really child-like soul, of which
his friends in Prague were wont to speak. One of them, Professor
Niemetschek, to whom we are indebted for the first biography of
Mozart, says of him: “Brimming over with the pleasantest humor, he
would surrender himself to the drollest fancies, so that people forgot
entirely that they had the wonderful artist, Mozart, before them.”
Closing the letter to his wife, above referred to, he says: “Now, I
think I have written something which the world at least will think very
stupid; but it is not stupid to us who love one another so tenderly.”
We shall yet see what a treasure for his art was this heart of his,
which always loved, as it did, the day he was married. Only genius can
manifest so much innocence and, at the same time, such depth of feeling.
In Dresden he played at court and was presented with “a very pretty”
snuff-box. Here, too, was one Haessler, a pupil of Sebastian Bach,
whose forte was the piano and the organ. This served to stimulate
Mozart’s ability to a higher pitch. He had already become acquainted,
through Van Swieten, with a number of Bach’s and Handel’s fugues. He
also had frequently improvised such fugues himself, or noted them down
at the request of his wife. The man who understands polyphony as Mozart
shows he did in the ensembles of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_--which
testify to the magnitude of his technic powers chiefly by the fact
that it is only the connoisseur that notices these marvels--must
really insist on perfect art in this point, also. Mozart writes: “Now,
the people here think that because I come from Vienna I know nothing
whatever of this kind of music or this manner of playing. I, therefore,
seated myself at the organ and played. Prince Lichnowsky, who knew
Haessler well, persuaded him, after a great deal of trouble, to play,
too.” It then appeared that Haessler had simply learned harmony and
some modulations by rote from old Sebastian Bach, and was not able to
execute a harmony properly; that, as Mozart expresses himself, he was,
by no means, an Albrechtsberger--a man well known as one of Beethoven’s
thorough-bass teachers. But, when Haessler sat down at the piano, he
fared worse yet.
Mozart now went to Leipzig, itself, and the successor of the great
Sebastian, the cantor Doles, master of the choir in the church of
Saint Thomas, was very friendly to him. He first displayed his powers
at the organ here. Says an eye-witness: “Doles was charmed with the
artist’s playing, and imagined Sebastian Bach returned to life.” “With
the greatest facility,” Mozart had put all the arts of harmony in
operation, and improvised the chorale, “Jesus my trust,” in a masterly
manner. This way of working up a chorale was the peculiar art of the
North German school of artists. As a token of gratitude, Doles caused
Bach’s motetto for eight voices, _Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied_,
to be sung for him. Our artist was overjoyed, and exclaimed: “That is
something full of suggestion!” When Beethoven heard this same motetto
with all its elemental power and magnitude, he exclaimed, referring to
its composer: “His name should not be Bach (_brook_), but Meer (_the
sea_).” A similar expression of opinion is ascribed to Wagner, who
performed the same motetto, in 1848, in Dresden.
When Mozart heard that the church of Saint Thomas had several other
such motettoes, he asked for them all, and laid the several parts on
his knees--there being no score--and on the chairs about him, and gave
his whole soul to their study until he had thoroughly mastered them. At
his request Doles gave him a copy of them.
Can we imagine what now passed in Mozart’s soul? The artist recognized
the artist. Of predecessors, with like creative powers, he could have
named only Palestrina. But what moved him still more, and stirred him
to the very depths of his heart, was the sublimity of the religious
feeling which lives in this spirit, and which laid hold of and lifted
Mozart, the Catholic, up all the more because Bach was a Protestant.
“Then he grew suddenly quiet, turned bitter, drank a great deal of
strong wine, and spoke not another rational word,” writes Rochlitz,
who became acquainted with him at this time, and who subsequently
distinguished himself as a writer on Mozart. The opera here afforded
him no opportunity to display his power, and writing for his own church
had little attraction, since, through the reforms of Joseph II.,
the expenses allowed for music, even for a divine service, the very
exigencies of which had created the art, were curtailed to the very
utmost. But we shall soon see from his own compositions that he was
deeply affected by the sublime peace of this great choir-master. And
here, in Leipzig, we notice that he did not allow melancholy, at least
externally, to lord it over him. He dined the last evening he spent
there at Doles’ house. His host and hostess were very sad, and begged
for a memento from his hand. He wrote, in at the most from five to six
minutes, on two small leaves of paper, a canon or round for each, one
in long notes and very melancholy, the other exceedingly droll. “When
it was noticed,” says Rochlitz, “that they could be sung together, he
wrote under the one: ‘Farewell, we shall meet again,’ and under the
other, ‘Wail away like women old.’ It is impossible to describe what a
ridiculous and yet profound, not to say angry and cutting effect this
made upon us all, and if I do not mistake, upon himself, for, in a
somewhat wild voice, he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Good-bye, children,’ and
vanished.”
A closer acquaintance with “old Bach,” was the only lasting gain
of this long-extended journey. Frederick William I. had, after the
frank opinion Mozart had given of his private band, of which J. F.
Reichardt was the leader, tendered him that position, at a yearly
salary of three thousand thalers. But Mozart asked himself: “Shall I
forsake my emperor?” This was the expression of the home-feeling he
had for Austria--a feeling the fruitful and fostering soil of which
would certainly have been lost in the sands of a margrave. One hundred
Frederick sd’or, in a golden snuff-box, and a commission for three
quartets--the king, who himself played the cello, was very fond of this
kind of music--were, however, a moderate remuneration.
His friends at home urged him at least to lay the case before the
emperor; for the king of Prussia had left his offer open a whole year.
Mozart had an audience with his imperial majesty. The emperor said:
“How, do you want to leave me?” To which Mozart replied: “I beg
your majesty’s pardon; I shall remain.” And this was the only result
of the audience. To a friend, who alluded to a possible increase of
salary, he gave the characteristic reply: “Who on earth would think
of that at such a time?” Mozart was an Austrian and idealized his
emperor, especially at this time, when Joseph’s best intentions were
misunderstood in his own country, and Turkey and Belgium caused him
equal anxiety. Was he, who now felt himself forsaken by his own, to
see himself separated from one of the very best of his subjects? That
was more than Mozart’s feelings could stand. However, the emperor
now ordered that _Figaro_ should be put on the stage again. Mozart
had added to it the great aria of the countess in F major, and the
renewed success of the work determined the emperor to charge him with
the writing of a new opera, the words of which were suggested by the
thoughtless bet of two officers. It was the _Cosi fan tutte_ (So They
All Do, or The Lover’s School.)
Two officers and a bachelor make a wager as to the fidelity of their
intended wives, and actually succeed, with the assistance of the
waiting-maid, and by desperately intimidating them, in rendering them
faithless, each to the other, whereupon they take refuge in the sorry
consolation: _Cosi fan tutte_--so they all do.
It is hard to imagine a subject more frivolous. But, leaving out of
consideration the tone of the time--a time when it was palpably evident
that the _deluge_ was impending, and when people thoughtlessly enjoyed
all that was to be enjoyed--Mozart did not treat it seriously. He
rather illustrated by it the masquerade character of the _opera buffa_,
made of it a species of magic-lantern performance, the excuse for, and
the basis, so to speak, of his dream-like music. And, indeed, that
music is wonderfully balmy, like a half-veiled sunny-cloudy morning,
on which every object is still concealed, or only duskily seen shining
through the air--such music as only a Mozart could write. But the
words were so trifling and frivolous that it was soon all over with
this opera, and all efforts to resuscitate it have proved vain. It was
not until life, which had become a deceptive play to the profoundly
thoughtful mind of our artist, arose before him like a picture of
fairy-land, that he was able to infuse into that picture the full
breath of the higher truth, which is not to be found in such a coarse,
hollow-eyed and worm-eaten reality as the wager of those two officers.
This brings us to the _Magic Flute_, and to the final perfection and
full concentration of Mozart’s purposes and powers.
_Cosi fan tutte_ was given on the 26th of January, 1790, and was very
successful. The work was written entirely in the light style of Italian
music, so popular at the time. But the man who had prompted it never
saw it. The emperor Joseph was sick at the time it was given, and fell
a victim to the grief and worry of the last years of his reign, in
February, 1790, without having done anything further for Mozart. In
no year of his life did Mozart write fewer musical compositions. He
ascribes this fact himself to his extreme pecuniary distress. To his
shame, and still more to ours, who have come after him, he was obliged
to write, just at this time, to his “dearest friend,” Puchberg: “You
are right in not deigning to answer me. My importunity is too great....
I can only beg you to consider my circumstances in all their bearings,
to pity and forgive my warm friendship and my trust in you.” Even
his industry did not avail him. His compositions found no purchasers.
They were above the comprehension of the people of his time, and thus
he was soon left entirely without the means of support. The keeper of
a neighboring inn surprised him one morning early, waltzing about his
room with Constance. They were without fuel, and took this strange way
of protecting themselves against the cold. O the mortal pilgrimage of
genius!
A petition to the new emperor, Leopold I., and a memorial to an
archduke, were drawn up, the draft of each of which is still extant.
The court had its own orchestra in the court chapel of Saint Augustine;
and, mindful of the church of Saint Thomas, in Leipzig, Mozart says,
in his petition to the emperor: “A desire for fame, love of action,
and a conviction of my abilities, embolden me to petition for a second
place as _Capellmeister_, especially, as the very able _Capellmeister_,
Salieri, never devoted himself to the church style of music, while I
have made that style a favorite study from my youth.” He also requested
to be allowed to instruct the royal family “because of the little fame
the world had accorded him for his skill at the piano.” He had great
hopes because the emperor retained his petition. But Gluck’s former
patron was not friendly to Mozart, and, besides, it was scarcely to be
expected that any one who had stood in close relations with Joseph I.
would find favor in his eyes.
On the 17th of May, 1790, the composer of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_
was obliged to write: “I have now two scholars. I would like to
bring the number up to eight. Try to spread it abroad that I am
giving lessons.” In the meantime, he finished at least three quartets
for Frederick William I., and, through Swieten, received Handel’s
_Alexander’s Feast_, and the _Ode for Saint Cecilia’s day_, to
re-arrange. When Mozart saw that, on the occasion of the presence of
the King of Naples, in September, 1790, he was passed over entirely,
and that Salieri, as well as his pupil, Weigl, were preferred to him,
he became convinced that he would have to seek his fortune in foreign
parts. The emperor was to be crowned in Frankfurt, in October. Mozart
decided on going there. He took his eldest sister-in-law’s husband, the
violin player, Hofer, with him; for he had no doubt of his success on
this occasion. It was not vouchsafed to him, however, to attach himself
to the court as its composer of chamber music, and his silver-ware had
to go to the pawn-shop, that he might procure as much as a vehicle to
travel in. This journey for the purposes of his art--it was destined to
be his last--is described in his letters to his “best and dearest wife
of my heart.” They breathe the deepest melancholy. In reading them,
we cannot fail to see that the shadows of death were even now playing
about his head.
As if he had not been the most industrious of workers, he writes to
his wife at this time: “I am now firmly resolved to do my very best
here, and then I shall be heartily glad to be with you again. What a
glorious life we shall live after this! I shall work--O how I shall
work! that I may never again get into such a fatal state in consequence
of unexpected contingencies.” He was, indeed, literally “immersed”
in music. His application had so distracted him, and his mind was so
unhinged in consequence, that he did not dare even to cut his own meat
in eating, lest he might injure himself. His strange contortions of
countenance and his strange gestures showed that his thoughts were far
from being in the world about him. He had fallen into the hands of
usurers, and that “un-christian class of people,” as he called them,
succeeded in involving him completely in their meshes.
But, unfortunately, he was soon forced to the conviction, that, even in
Frankfort, there was not much for him to do. In a letter of the 30th
of September, 1790, to his wife, he says: “I am exceedingly glad to
go back to you again. If people could only look into my heart I would
be almost forced to blush. I am so cold, so icy cold to everything.
If you were with me, perhaps I would find more pleasure in the kind
treatment I receive from people; but, as it is, my heart is empty.”
On his journey home, he visited Mayence where Tischbein, Goethe’s
friend, painted his picture. He was going to Mannheim. “O the golden
days of a heart’s first love!” What thoughts must have possessed him
at this time! For, did not all Vienna know how happily he lived with
his Constance, while the unhappy relations of Aloysia with her husband
were matter of discussion in the public press? But why was it that the
man who, at that time, gave promise of such a career of happiness, was
now obliged to travel about the world in search of his daily bread?
The thought of this filled his soul with bitterness, at the very time
that he was invited to Munich, on account of the King of Naples, to a
concert at court. He writes: “A pretty honor for the court of Vienna
that the King has to hear me in a strange country!” And, indeed, the
court’s neglect of him was the chief cause of the sad plight he was in.
His journey had cheered and strengthened him, but it had not improved
his pecuniary condition. He could, in consequence, redeem only a
portion of the silver-ware he had pledged, and the rest of it was lost
entirely through his too great confidence in a Masonic friend. At this
time, one of the directors of a London concert company, J. P. Salomon,
had come to Vienna to take Haydn--his old patron prince Esterhazy
having died--to London. Mozart was to follow after. His parting with
the “old papa” was touching in the extreme. We saw above how deep his
feeling of affection was for Mozart. The latter, with tears in his
eyes, and at a time when he might well have thought rather of his own
death, said to Haydn who was so much older: “This is probably our last
good-bye, in this life.” He divined only too well. Haydn shed bitter
tears of sorrow when he heard of Mozart’s premature death a year later,
in London. He now wrote: “Posterity will have to wait a hundred years
for another like him;” and again, many years afterwards: “Pardon me,
but I must always weep when I hear my dear Mozart’s name.”
Mozart’s soul was deeply affected. But his mind soared into regions
beyond this life, where compensation for its inequalities would be
found. The debt that weighed upon him now was light in comparison
with the wealth he had labored so industriously and devotedly to give
the world, and which he was still bestowing on it. And hence it has
genuine melancholy, not pain nor plaintive sighs that filled his soul.
The golden light of consolation tinged all his work. A friend had once
written in his album. “Love! love! love! is the soul of genius.” He
now interpreted these words in the sense of eternal love and merciful
goodness. A spirit of wonderful sweetness and reconciliation henceforth
animates all his music. We need only remind the reader of the two
“fantasias” for four hands in F minor. They were written in the winter
of 1790-91 “at the urgent solicitation of a friend, a great lover of
music,” for an orchestration, in which one Count Dehm produced, for
the benefit of his countrymen, a number of distinguished historical
characters in wax; and which was intended for the “mausoleum” of the
celebrated Field-marshal Laudon. In it we reach the sunny heights of
Mozart’s genius, and see how he dived down into, and was absorbed by,
his own hard and chequered life, and how he was again lifted up to that
eternal spring from which his own as well as Bach’s sublime religious
art proceeded; the union of sanctified personal feeling to the sensible
presentation of the Eternal itself, to which the human soul looks up
in silent, earnest faith and resignation. It was time that another
opportunity were offered to Mozart to give complete expression to this
final and highest feeling of the human breast; and it was afforded him.
Mere accident led to what he aimed at. We are thus brought face to
face with his _Magic Flute_ and _Requiem_; works ushered in by those
fantasias, like bright morning stars, just as the quintet in G minor
had preceded his _Don Giovanni_.
In order fully to appreciate the place these two works fill in Mozart’s
own life, we must turn our gaze backwards, for a time.
We know what Mozart’s heart-felt religious feeling was. He disclosed
it in the frankest way whenever a proper occasion offered. He was just
as honestly attached to his Church. When he was starting on his great
Parisian journey, in the interest of his art, his father wrote him:
“May the grace of God attend you everywhere, may it never forsake you,
and it never will forsake you, if you are industrious to fulfill the
duties of a really good Catholic.” But at this time, the necessity
of examining the great questions of life, death and immortality, and
of disclosing to each other, in earnest conversation, the questions
of the soul, was very generally felt, by people even outside the
Church. And this all the more, because neither the Protestant nor
the Catholic service seemed able to satisfy the spiritual cravings
of the educated. The Protestant Church was divided into the opposing
parties of orthodoxy and rationalism. The Catholic Church had grown
torpid, stereotyped in dogma, and its worship had sunk almost to
the level of mere theatrical mummery. Oneness of spirit soon led to
leagues or unions and orders of which the order of Free Masons attained
the greatest importance. Of the men who constantly bore in mind the
intellectual life and elevation of the German people, Lessing, Wieland,
Herder and Goethe belonged to this order. And since it was its aim to
realize the highest virtues of Christianity, the purification of the
mind and heart by the sacrifice of self, and the assistance of all men,
it was impossible that a man like Mozart should not have felt drawn to
it.
He joined the order in Vienna, and so true did the doctrine of the
sanctifying nature of death as the real “object and aim of life,” and
as the symbol of the self-sacrifice we should be ever ready to make
of ourselves, seem to him that he did not rest until he had induced
his father to join it also. They, indeed, destroyed the correspondence
with one another, on this subject. But the _Magic Flute_ bears witness
to the earnestness with which Mozart held to these sublime truths of
Christianity, even outside the Church. Its history is as follows:
Schikaneder who, as far back as 1780, had known how to make use
of young Mozart in Salzburg, had been some years in Vienna, and
had a small wooden theatre in the Stahremberg _Freihaus_.[9] His
inexhaustible good humor made him very good company, and Mozart
had long enjoyed himself in the circle of his theatrical friends.
Schikaneder had frequently, when acting as theatrical director,
alternately reveled in superfluity, and almost starved. Now, in
consequence of the competition of the theatre in the Leopoldstadt, he
was brought to the very brink of ruin. This was in the spring of 1791.
He applied to Mozart for a “piece that would attract.” He said that he
had a proper subject, a _Magic Opera_, and that Mozart was the man to
write the music for it. It was an unparalleled piece of impudence, and
one which discloses Schikaneder’s whole character, to ask the emperor’s
composer, the author of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ to write a _Magic_
_Opera_ for a board booth in the suburbs. But Schikaneder knew the
world and knew Mozart. And then he was linked to him by the ties of
brotherhood in the order of Free Masons. To that brotherhood, Mozart
himself owed the steady assistance he received from Puchberg. And hence
his objections were soon overcome by the description the sly director
gave of his extreme poverty. “If we are unfortunate in the matter, it
will not be my fault,” Mozart replied; “for I never yet composed a
‘magic opera,’” and with these words, he went immediately to work.
To the clown, Schikaneder, the bird-catcher, Papageno--who understood
so well how to describe the good natured, rather timid, fanciful,
easy-going nature of the average Viennese--was of more consequence than
the other nobler characters of the opera. But to the composer, the
chosen play was a reflection of life such as he had seen it in his own
soul for years, and above all, as it was in the heart of the loving
pair who, separated by adverse fate, were destined to meet again in
more intimate union; and in the _Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schoen_,
we hear once more the first heart-felt love notes of his youth, more
beautiful and more full of soul than ever. But we would call attention
also to the ideal charm and transformation of all the other powers
that appear in this magic play. Mozart really felt the existence of
higher powers, and that they preside over our lives. The rehearsals of
the first act began as early as July; for Schikaneder had the tact to
win Mozart over to himself completely. He had even given up the summer
house in the garden to him, and endeavored to provide him with the most
cheerful society. The accounts that have come down to us representing
Mozart as a frivolous pleasure-seeker originated about this time. But
we need only read the letters which he wrote during this same time
to his wife, who was not far away,--she was in Baden on account of
sickness,--to see that his soul was not in these outer pleasures. Yet
after all, what remained to him whom the great world disdained but the
little world about him? He was now literally at the bottom round of
the ladder, socially. The fact that he had, besides, to strain every
nerve to eke out a mere existence for his wife and child, had an effect
upon his entire system, which could be removed only by good-fellowship
and wine. The increased action and concentration of all the powers
of his mind and body, naturally called for in artistic and above all
in musical invention, necessarily leads to the craving for enhanced
enjoyment, if only for a few moments. And that Schikaneder knew how to
procure such moments of enjoyment for Mozart, that he might own him
entirely, and make the composer serve his purposes, we may infer from
the story, that after Mozart’s death, which followed so soon on this,
Schikaneder went about crying out: “His ghost pursues me wherever I go.
He is always before my eyes!”
But more important than the question, how much of a pleasure-seeker
Mozart was, is the fact that his somewhat irregular mode of life, at
this time had a bad influence on him mentally. Two causes cooperated to
produce this effect.
In May, 1791, he had solicited the position of assistant musician in
the church of St. Stephen, for the reason that “he could consider
himself more competent than others for the position, because of his
more thorough knowledge of the church style of music.” He had long
wished to find something to do in this sphere again, especially
since the new emperor had removed the narrow limits put to it by the
emperor, Joseph. Now he was asked to write a requiem, the most solemn
music in the worship of his church; and the request came to him under
the strangest, nay under mysterious circumstances. A long, lean man,
dressed in gray, with a very serious expression of countenance, handed
him the commission for the requiem in a very flattering letter. Mozart
communicated the matter to his wife, saying, at the same time, that
he longed to write some music of that kind once more, and to produce
a work which friends and foes alike might study after his death. He
took the commission and asked, as the entire price of the work, fifty
ducats, without however, fixing the time when the work should be
delivered. The messenger came once more, paid the money and promised an
additional sum, the composer to write precisely as he felt, and only
when he felt like writing, but to make no effort to discover the person
who gave the commission, since any effort of the kind would be in vain.
We now know that it was one count Walsegg who gave the commission for
the work, intending to have it performed as his own at the death of his
wife. But the mysteriousness surrounding the commission took complete
hold of Mozart’s mind. He looked upon it as a commandment from on high.
His soul was already filled with thoughts that lead beyond the limits
of this life. Added to this was the other circumstance referred to
above.
The first act of the _Magic Flute_ was finished as far as the finale
when Schikaneder was informed, to his sorrow, that the same thing
was being played with the greatest success by the competing theatre.
But he did not despair; it was resolved to change the point of the
play, to transform the wicked wizard who had stolen the princess whom
Tamino was to recover, into the sage and philanthropist Sarastro, and,
instead of the disconsolate mother, to put the evil-minded “queen of
the night” with her Moors and the three ladies in black. These changes
occasioned a noticeable disparity and much that was contradictory in
the opera as a whole; but, on the other hand, Mozart could now put
his whole soul into it, and to this incident we are indebted for the
most earnest and beautiful effusions of his mind and heart. The whole
work now centered about the idea of free-masonry. By the earnest trial
of their moral power, mortals must win their higher immortal portion,
and with it their happiness. The bonds that unite the two lovers
are purified and sanctified, transmuted into the more powerful and
lasting life-bonds of marriage, which freed from all passion by the
labors of love and resignation, discloses the real object and meaning
of love. And, indeed, who had ever more purely tasted the sweets of
this ever-virginal, marital love than Mozart, who even now, so many
years after he was married, closed a letter to his wife with these
words: “Good-bye, my dear, my only one. Two thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine and a half kisses are flying from me through the air. Put
out your hands and catch them; they are waiting for you. A thousand
sweet kisses. Thy Mozart forever.”
And now as to the character of Sarastro. Of all the human shapes
that Mozart had met in life, his father’s, after that of his beloved
Constance, had the firmest hold upon him, and this spite of his
misunderstandings of, and even want of confidence in, his son, in his
declining years. And had not his personal experience with men, next to
his artistic experiences, come to him, in real life and even in public
life, in the guise, so to speak, of the rulers of his existence? Was
not the emperor Joseph and the order of Free Masons the highest ideal
of purely humanitarian aims that his imagination could conceive? All
this had nothing whatever to do with his religious feelings. His Church
and his own personal faith were things apart. He thought, indeed, that
their abuses, as for instance the immoderate increase of the religious
orders, might be attacked, but that which constituted their very core,
and their truth, were sublimely beyond the reach of doubt. But while
these last, in that which is imperishable in them, now found their
holiest expression in the _Requiem_, it could not but be, that those
parts of the new opera descriptive of those higher purely human aims,
should participate in the solemn sacred tones that poured from Mozart’s
soul. And hence we need not hesitate to say that the _Requiem_ and the
_Magic Flute_ tell us all that Mozart’s heart knew and felt of heaven
and of earth, that it transfigured the earthly in the light of heaven,
and sought from heaven to bring down peace to earth. We know this both
from the chorus: _O goldene Ruh’ steig hernieder, Kehr in den Menschen
Herzen wieder_, as well as from Tamino’s painful, longing exclamation:
_O ew’ge Nacht, wann wirst du schwinden? Wann wird das Licht mein Auge
finden?_ It is the expression of a homesickness divine, a craving for
God, the highest good for the human soul.
Obstacle after obstacle was placed in the way of the completion of
both works. The Bohemians had ordered a great opera, _Titus the Mild_,
for Leopold’s coronation. There were only a few weeks remaining during
which it could be written. Mozart started immediately on his journey.
It was the middle of August. Constance again accompanied him. As they
were entering the carriage, the mysterious messenger in gray stood
before them. Mozart quieted him with the assurance that the _Requiem_
was the first task that would engage him after his return. Yet this
seemed to him a new warning not to postpone the last work of his
life; for such he considered the _Requiem_ to be. He felt unwell even
now. He overworked himself in Prague--_Titus_ was written and put
in rehearsal within a fortnight--and thus accelerated the breaking
down of his already over-taxed, vital energies. Added to this was the
want of success of the opera. He had this time forgotten the rule
“hasten slowly,” and the quintet in great dramatic style in the first
finale, could not conceal from his Prague audience, who were certainly
indulgent, the absence of the artist’s peculiar skill. Titus remained
an _opera seria_, a bundle of arias, and the applause Mozart was wont
to meet with, failed him, even in Prague. He was very much depressed in
consequence. He again, indeed, recovered his native cheerfulness, but
in leaving Prague the tears flowed abundantly. He had a presentiment
that he would never see those friends again.
In the middle of September, he was in Vienna once more. The _Magic
Flute_ was to be put on the stage, and might serve to make up what he
had lost of reputation in Prague. Besides, it was part of his great
life task. King Leopold had abolished the order of Free Masons, and
it, therefore, now seemed to Mozart, simply a duty he owed to his
order to put its humane aims in their true light, by every means in
his power. And what a refulgence streams from the choruses of the
second act, from the overture which, as well as the introductory march
of the same act, so suggestive of _Idomeneo_, was only just written!
“Through night to light!”--such is the sense in which Mozart wrote
and understood the entire work, the accidental garb of which did
not mislead him in the least. Into one of the pieces descriptive of
this earnestness of moral trial of the heart, Mozart went as far as
to weave a Protestant chorale. It is the song of the _Geharnischten
Maenner_--the “men in mail;” and its “figuration” shows that Mozart
had added Bach’s artistic characteristics to his own. But he had also
appropriated his spirit of deep piety and genuine virtue! Nothing
exhibits more clearly how solemn and high his vocation as an artist was
to him, nor proves more forcibly that, for him, there was no secluded
spot where alone the ideal and the divine were to be taught. The ideal
and the divine should, like the sun, shed their rays everywhere, and
the stage was the place where our artist felt that he could address,
from his inmost heart, his nation and his contemporaries.
And what a work we have before us here! There never was a greater
contrast between an ideal work of art and the place and occasion to
which it owed its origin, than between the _Magic Flute_, one of the
starting-points of the most ideal efforts of the German nation, and the
audiences of a board booth in a suburb of Vienna!
We must, indeed, leave the trivialities and absurdities of the libretto
out of consideration. And even here, Mozart’s music succeeded in
turning deformity into ideal beauty; and this spite of the fact that
the “bird-catcher,” Schikaneder, is said to have suggested many of the
melodies to him which have since come into such universal favor. There
is still a note of his extant in which we read: “Dear Wolfgang! In the
meantime, I return your pa-pa-pa to you. I find it about right. It will
do. We shall meet this evening. Yours--Schikaneder.” A church hymn was
afterwards put to the air: _Bei Maennern welche Liebe fuehlen_. How
ideal must not those lines have been when the higher moral sentiments
could be awakened by so simple an air!
That best known of all solemn songs: _In diesen heil’gen Hallen_, has
this very tone of the dignity of a heart that has mastered itself, and
wisely and lovingly thinks only of humanity. Only the fact that it is
as well known and as familiar to us as light and air, allows us to
forget that it is as lustrous as the one and as ethereal as the other.
The character of Sarastro personifies what Mozart conceived to be the
deeper meaning of life. Pamina is the most beautiful expression of
pure love and tenderness. Tamino is the ideal character of a youth who
restrains his own feelings under life’s stern rule--and thus insures
for himself and those confided to him by fate, the happiness of life.
We need only ask the attention of the reader to the exclamation in the
conversation with the priest, _der Lieb und Tugend Eigenthum!_--“love’s
and virtue’s prize!” With the fullest expression of heart-felt
conviction, these few tones describe the whole moral stability of
Mozart’s nature.
It is not hard to see in what relation these characters stand to the
heroes and female characters of Richard Wagner, and it is not without
reason that Francz List has called the _Ring of the Niebelungen_ the
_Magic Flute_ of our day. Wagner here filled out the clear outline
of the human ideals which Mozart drew in the _Magic Flute_ from his
knowledge of the German nature. All the sublime ideal powers which
move and lead us, from the conscious emotions of our own hearts to the
elemental, primeval forces which determine our will are here found, in
the faintest outlines, it is true, but still as the first features of
the surest characterization; and as Osmin points to Fafner, the “three
boys” who lead Tamino point to the three daughters of the Rhine who
warn Siegfried of his death. It was the first time that that which
lives in every human breast as the consciousness of the most intimate
knowledge of the real constitution of the world, and fills us with the
feeling of the eternal, was portrayed with such Rafaelite, ideal art in
opera. This it is that gives to the whole work its peculiar tone. Like
the golden light of creation’s first morning, it plays about the opera
of the _Magic Flute_.
The reception accorded to the work, the popularity of which is
unequalled in any nation, was in keeping with its merits. The first
representation of it took place on the 30th of September, under
Mozart’s own direction. After the overture, the audience was perfectly
motionless: for who could have expected such solemn, thrilling notes
in a _Magic opera_? Schenk, who afterwards composed the _Dorfbarbier_,
the teacher of Beethoven, who still occupied a place in the orchestra,
crept up to the director’s chair, and kissed Mozart’s hand, who,
continuing to beat time with the other, gave him a friendly look
of recognition and gently stroked his cheek. Our artist felt that,
even here, in this board booth, he was in his own dear Vienna, in
his own beloved Austria. But, even after the close of the first act,
the applause was not great, and it is said that Mozart went pale and
perplexed to Schikaneder, who quieted and consoled him. During the
second act, however, this motley multitude discovered the message that
this music conveyed to the soul. It was, indeed, with difficulty that
Mozart could now be moved to appear on the stage. It wounded him to
the quick to think that the best he could do was so little appreciated.
But he was soon able to write to his “best and dearest wife” at Baden,
that, spite of the fact that it was mail day, the “opera was played
before a very full house and met with the usual applause.” His feeling
for the work is expressed at the close of the letter, in the words of
the incomparable terzetto, when Sarastro dismisses the two lovers to
make proof of their love: “The hour is striking farewell! we shall
meet again.” With the unconcern of his own magnanimity he himself
ushered in his mortal enemy, Salieri, and the latter found the work
“worthy of being produced before the greatest monarch at the greatest
festivities.” And how frequently this very thing has happened since!
But the people continue Mozart’s real sovereign, the people in the most
ingenuous innocence of their every impulse and emotion and of the most
ideal view of life’s ultimate nature. And Mozart belongs to the people.
To them, he is not dead.
But the hour of our parting ourselves with this phenomenal artist and
phenomenal man will soon strike.
He now worked uninterruptedly on his _Requiem_, and the theatre was
left to a younger _Capellmeister_. He frequently wrote until two
o’clock in the morning. He even refused to give lessons in music to a
lady for a very dear Vienna friend. He had, he said, a piece of work in
hand which was very urgent and which he had very much at heart; and,
until it was finished, he could do nothing else. Even while engaged on
the last pieces of the _Magic Flute_, such as the march and the chorus,
“O Isis and Osiris,” he sometimes sank exhausted in his chair, and had
short fits of fainting; for his whole heart and soul were wrapped up in
his work. But he cared less than ever now about physical exhaustion,
since he was directly concerned with the erection of a worthy monument
to his sentiment and feeling of the Eternal in the holy sanctuary
itself. He had an earnest feeling of the terror of guilt, even if the
feeling seemed to him no more than a weakness. But he felt also, and
infinitely more deeply, the power of forgiving love which was the life
of his own soul. That mighty mediæval, Christian poem, the _Dies irae_,
inspired and stimulated his fancy. He wished to show the world its
own painfully tragic meaning and its blessed reconciliation. Certain
it is that no composer ever went to work with a more honest intention
to give a true artistic form to religious expression in the mass for
the dead. True, it is only certain parts that are in complete keeping
with this deep, religious feeling; while his secular compositions are
throughout appropriate to the subject treated. The explanation of this
difference is the fact, that Mozart was too long and too exclusively
engaged in writing operatic music, and that the operatic character had,
as we have already seen, crept into the music which was now in favor
in the service of the Catholic Church. But these parts, especially the
thrilling accords descriptive of man’s consciousness of guilt, the
_Gedenke gnaedig meines Endes_, and the close of the _Confutatis_, the
touching prayer for loving mercy in the _Lacrimosa_--these parts were
in entire harmony with the religious feeling of their author and with
his unsurpassed artistic power. And this it was that made the work so
very dear to himself. It was his favorite, his dying song. Art had
subsequently to take another and very different direction in this
department of music, but the language of the heart overflowing with the
feelings of its God and of the purest confidence in his undying love,
will always be heard in this _Requiem_. That language is its very soul.
We are rapidly approaching the end. The funeral bell is already
tolling. Melancholy is the last picture in the life of an artist who
never had an equal.
Constance observed the growing infirmity and melancholy of her beloved
husband with increasing alarm. She did all in her power to take him
away from his work and to brighten him up by cheerful society. But
Mozart, who was wont to be so social, was turned in upon himself,
depressed, and could give only wandering answers to the questions put
to him. She rode out into the open air with him. Nature had always
had the effect of relieving and cheering him, so that he worked best
traveling, when he insisted on having his “portefeuille,” as he called
his leather case filled with music paper, in the side-fob of the
carriage, at hand. They rode out in this manner, one beautiful November
day, into the _Prater_. The aspect of dying nature and the falling
of the leaves suggested to him thoughts of the end of all things. He
now began to speak of death, and said, with tears in his eyes: “I know
very well I am writing the _Requiem_ for myself. I am too conscious
of myself. Some one must have poisoned me; I cannot rid myself of
that thought.” His utter debility without any noticeable external
cause readily suggested that suspicion. He could not imagine that his
strength had been exhausted by sheer intellectual labor. And then, had
not care and sorrow gnawed at his vitals for years?
Constance was exceedingly alarmed, and succeeded in getting the score
of the _Requiem_ from him. She consulted a physician, who recommended
complete rest. This had so favorable an effect, in a short time, that
Mozart was able to write the cantate _Das Lob der Freundschaft_--“the
praise of friendship”--for a newly established lodge, and, shortly
afterwards, to direct its production himself. The success of the
work,--which itself bears internal evidence to a feeling of greater
calmness and cheerfulness in its author--had a refreshing and
comforting effect upon him. He now declared his suspicions that he had
been poisoned, the effect of his ill-health, and demanded the _Requiem_
back. But a few days later, he again fell a victim to his melancholy
feelings, and his strength left him. “I feel that I shall soon have
done with music,” he said one morning to the faithful person who had
once surprised him waltzing about his room with Constance, gave him
back his wine and made an appointment to meet him next morning on some
matters of business. When the latter reached the threshold of Mozart’s
house, on the following day, he was met by the servant maid with the
news that her master had been taken seriously sick during the night.
Mozart himself looked at him fixedly from his bed, and said: “Nothing
to-day, Joseph. To-day we have to do with doctors and apothecaries.”
He did not leave his bed any more after this. It was not long before
worse symptoms appeared. His consciousness did not leave him for a
moment. Neither did his loving sweetness and kindness. But the thought
of his wife and children filled his heart with melancholy. New and
better prospects were now before him. The Hungarian nobility and
some rich Amsterdam gentlemen, lovers of music, asked him to write
compositions for them, in consideration of a large annual honorarium.
And then there was the success of the _Magic Flute_, in which he was
deeply interested. “Now the first act is over! Now they have come to
the place _Dir, grosse Koenigin der Nacht_”--he was wont to say in the
evening with the watch at hand. The day before his death, he exclaimed:
“Constance, if I could only hear my dear _Magic Flute_ once more!”
And he hummed away the air of the “bird-catcher,” in a voice that was
scarcely audible.
But he had the _Requiem_ still more at heart, and he had so far
sketched its principal features, that his pupil, Suessmayer who
had also written the recitative for Titus was subsequently able to
complete it. During the afternoon that preceded the last night of his
life, he had the score of the _Requiem_ brought to him in bed. The
Tamino of Schikaneder’s troop took the soprano, Sarastro the bass, his
brother-in-law, Hofer the tenor, and Mozart, as usual, the alto. They
sang until they reached the _Lacrimosa_ when Mozart burst into tears
and put the score aside. The thought of his approaching end and of
God’s all-merciful, eternal love, filled his heart with an unspeakable
feeling which made it overflow with a melancholy joy. This is plainly
evident from the infinitely mild, conciliating tones in which Mozart
has described that day of tears on which eternal grace and goodness are
to make compensation for the eternal guilt of men.
His sister-in-law, Sophie, came in the evening. He said to her: “Ah, my
dear, good Sophie, how glad I am you are here! You must stay to-night,
and see me die. I have the death-taste on my tongue. I have the odor
of death in my nostrils. And who will then help my dear Constance?”
Constance hereupon asked her sister to go for a clergyman, but it was
no easy matter to induce one to come. The patient was a Free Mason, and
the order of Free Masons was opposed to many of the institutions of the
Church.
When she returned she found Suessmayer at his bedside. Mozart was
explaining to him how to finish the _Requiem_, remarking as he did
so: “Did I not say that I was writing it for myself?” In the evening,
the crisis came. Cold applications to his burning head so shattered
him that he did not regain consciousness any more. Thirty-five years
after his death, his sister-in-law Sophie wrote: “The last thing he
did was to endeavor to imitate the kettle-drums in the _Requiem_. I
can hear him still.” About midnight he raised himself up. His eyes had
a fixed gaze. He then turned his head towards the wall and seemed to
drop asleep. He died at one o’clock in the morning, on the 5th day of
December, 1791.
The last account we have of him says: “It is impossible for me to
describe with what an expression of infinite wretchedness his devoted
wife cast herself on her knees and called on the Almighty for aid.”
She threw herself on his bed, that she might die of the same sickness,
as if the cause of his death was some accidental disease. The three
medical opinions assigned each a different cause for Mozart’s premature
death--inflammation of the brain, purple fever and dropsy!
The people walked about his house in the _Rauhenstein’gasse_ in crowds
and wept. The poem of the order of Free Masons on the occasion refers,
in touching terms, to the way in which he carried assistance to many
a poor widow’s hut. The owner of the art-cabinet for whom the two
fantasias in F minor were written, came and took an impression of his
“pale, dead face” in plaster of Paris. The two sublime funeral odes
were now made to serve as his own mausoleum.
Van Swieten took charge of his burial. But as he left only sixty
guldens, a common grave had to be selected for his body; and thus it
happens that we do not know to-day where Mozart’s last resting place
is. When Constance, sick and sorrowful, went to the churchyard, some
time after the grave-digger had been replaced by another, who could not
point out where all that was mortal of our artist lay. Not a friend
followed his bier to the cemetery. All turned back at the gate, on
account of the bad weather. Mozart’s skull, however, was saved, and is
preserved in Vienna. The churchyard keeper’s son secretly abstracted it
from the grave.
As the parting words of our great artist, who, spite of all the sorrows
he had to bear, preserved, throughout a cheerful, joyous nature, we
may cite the following lines from a note of his, written near the close
of his life--lines eloquently indicative of his sweet composure during
his last days. They run thus: “Dear sir,” he replies to the admonitions
of a friend--the original autograph, in Italian, is preserved in
London--“willingly would I follow your advice, but how can I do it?
My brain is distracted. It is with difficulty that I can collect my
thoughts, and I cannot dismiss the picture of that unknown man from
my mind. He is ever before me, praying for, urging me for, demanding
that _Requiem_. I continue working because work does not exhaust me as
much as the absence of employment. I know by my feelings that my hour
has come. It is striking even now. I am in the region of death. I have
reached my end, without having reaped the pleasure my talent should
have brought me. And yet life was so beautiful! My career opened under
such happy auspices; but one cannot change his destiny. No one can fix
the number of his days. We must be resigned and do what Providence
decrees.”
“Wir wandeln durch des Tones Macht
Froh durch des Todes duestre Nacht.”
Thus gravely and solemnly sing the soulfull and ideally transfigured
lovers in the _Magic Flute_--Mozart’s own confession. It is the
expression of the new and deep spring of life given to humanity in his
music; and Mozart remained to his latest breath a consecrated priest
of the purifying and sanctifying influence of his own melodies. His
creations will live as long as humanity clings to the life of its own
soul, and seeks higher nutriment for that life.
THE END.
TALES FROM FOREIGN TONGUES,
COMPRISING
=MEMORIES; A STORY OF GERMAN LOVE.=
BY MAX MÜLLER.
=GRAZIELLA; A STORY OF ITALIAN LOVE.=
BY A. DE LAMARTINE.
=MARIE; A STORY OF RUSSIAN LOVE.=
BY ALEX. PUSHKIN.
=MADELEINE; A STORY OF FRENCH LOVE.=
BY JULES SANDEAU.
_In neat box, per set_, _Price, $6.00._
_Sold separately, per volume_, _Price, $1.50._
Of “Memories” the London _Academy_ says: “It is a prose poem. * * * It
is seldom that a powerful intellect produces any work, however small,
that does not bear some marks of its special bent, and the traces of
research and philosophy in this little story are apparent, while its
beauty and pathos show us a fresh phase of a many-sided mind, to which
we already owe large debts of gratitude.”
Of “Graziella” the Chicago _Tribune_ says: “It glows with love of the
beautiful in all nature. * * * It is pure literature, a perfect story,
couched in perfect words. The sentences have the rhythm and flow,
the sweetness and tender fancy of the original. It is uniform with
‘Memories,’ and it should stand side by side with that on the shelves
of every lover of pure, strong thoughts, put in pure, strong words.
‘Graziella’ is a book to be loved.”
Of “Marie” the Cincinnati _Gazette_ says: “This is a Russian love tale,
written by a Russian poet. It is one of the purest, sweetest little
narratives that we have read for a long time. It is a little classic,
and a Russian classic, too. That is one of its charms, that it is so
distinctively Russian. We catch the very breezes of the Steppes, and
meet, face to face, the high-souled, simple minded Russian.”
Of “Madeleine” the New York _Evening Telegram_ says: “More than thirty
years ago it received the honor of a prize from the French Academy and
has since almost become a French classic. It abounds both in pathos
and wit. Above all, it is a pure story, dealing with love of the most
exalted kind. It is, indeed, a wonder that a tale so fresh, so sweet,
so pure as this has not sooner been introduced to the English-speaking
public.”
“_It ought to be in the hands of every scholar and of every
schoolboy._”--_Saturday Review, London._
Tales of Ancient Greece.
BY THE REV. SIR G. W. COX, BART., M.A.,
Trinity College, Oxford.
_12mo., extra cloth, black and gilt_, _Price, $1.60._
“Written apparently for young readers, it yet possesses a charm of
manner which will recommend it to all.”--_The Examiner, London._
“It is only when we take up such a book as this, that we realize how
rich in interest is the mythology of Greece.”--_Inquirer, Philadelphia._
“Admirable in style, and level with a child’s comprehension. These
versions might well find a place in every family.”--_The Nation, New
York._
“The author invests these stories with a charm of narrative entirely
peculiar. The book is a rich one in every way.”--_Standard, Chicago._
“In Mr. Cox will be found yet another name to be enrolled among those
English writers who have vindicated for this country an honorable rank
in the investigation of Greek history.”--_Edinburgh Review._
“It is doubtful if these tales, antedating history in their origin,
and yet fresh with all the charms of youth to all who read them for
the first time, were ever before presented in so chaste and popular
form.”--_Golden Rule, Boston._
“The grace with which these old tales of the mythology are re-told
makes them as enchanting to the young as familiar fairy tales, or
the ‘Arabian Nights.’ * * * We do not know of a Christmas book which
promises more lasting pleasures.”--_Publishers’ Weekly._
“Its exterior fits it to adorn the drawing-room table, while its
contents are adapted to the entertainment of the most cultivated
intelligence. * * * The book is a scholarly production, and a welcome
addition to a department of literature that is thus far quite too
scantily furnished.”--_Tribune, Chicago._
SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE,
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
BY MISS E. S. KIRKLAND.
AUTHOR OF “SIX LITTLE COOKS,” “DORA’S HOUSEKEEPING,” ETC.
_12mo., extra cloth, black and gilt_, _Price, $1.50._
“A very ably written sketch of French history, from the earliest times
to the foundation of the existing Republic.”--_Cincinnati Gazette._
“The narrative is not dry on a single page, and the little
history may be commended as the best of its kind that has yet
appeared.”--_Bulletin, Philadelphia._
“A book both instructive and entertaining. It is not a dry compendium
of dates and facts, but a charmingly written history.”--_Christian
Union, New York._
“After a careful examination of its contents, we are able to
conscientiously give it our heartiest commendation. We know no
elementary history of France that can at all be compared with
it.”--_Living Church._
“A spirited and entertaining sketch of the French people and
nation--one that will seize and hold the attention of all bright
boys and girls who have a chance to read it.”--_Sunday Afternoon,
Springfield_, (_Mass._)
“We find its descriptions universally good, that it is admirably simple
and direct in style, without waste of words or timidity of opinion.
The book represents a great deal of patient labor and conscientious
study.”--_Courant, Hartford, Ct._
“Miss Kirkland has composed her ‘Short History of France’ in the way
in which a history for young people ought to be written; that is, she
has aimed to present a consecutive and agreeable story, from which the
reader can not only learn the names of kings and the succession of
events, but can also receive a vivid and permanent impression as to the
characters, modes of life, and the spirit of different periods.”--_The
Nation, N. Y._
“_An exceedingly interesting narrative of an extraordinary life._”--The
Standard.
LIFE OF BENEDICT ARNOLD:
HIS PATRIOTISM AND HIS TREASON.
BY HON. I. N. ARNOLD,
AUTHOR OF “LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”
_Crown, 8vo., with Portrait_, _Price, $2.50._
This Life of Arnold is full of new facts, now first given to the
public. Manuscripts from the family of Arnold, in England and in
Canada, and the Shippen manuscripts, have enabled the author to make
new contributions to Revolutionary history of great interest. The
unpublished manuscripts of General Schuyler, to which the author has
had access, has thrown new light upon the expedition to Canada and the
campaign against Burgoyne. The author does not, to any extent, excuse
Arnold’s treason, but aims to do full justice to him as a soldier and
patriot. For Arnold, the traitor, he has no plea but “guilty;” for
Arnold, the soldier and patriot, he asks a hearing and justice.
“The biographer discriminates fairly between Arnold’s patriotism and
baseness; and while exhibiting the former and the splendid services by
which it was illustrated, with generous earnestness, does not in any
degree extenuate the turpitude of the other.”--_Harper’s Monthly._
“The public is the gainer (by this book), as additional light is
thrown on the prominent actors and events of history. * * * Bancroft
erroneously asserts that Arnold was not present at the first battle
of Saratoga. Upon this point the author has justice and right on his
side, and to Arnold, rather than to Gates, the success of this decisive
campaign seems greatly attributable.”--_New England Historical and
Genealogical Register._
“After a careful perusal of the work, it seems to us that Mr. Arnold
has accomplished his task wonderfully well. * * * It is rarely that one
meets in the pages of biographical literature a nobler woman than was
the devoted wife of Benedict Arnold; she mourned his fallen greatness,
but even in his ignominity was faithful to the vows by which she had
sworn to love and care for him until death.”--_Traveller, Boston._
_Sold by booksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by_
JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, Ill.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A _capellmeister_ is the director of a choir or band.
[2] Mozart Museum.
[3] My heart and thy sweet voice, dear,
Understand each other too well--too well.
[4] “I gladly leave the maiden who doesn’t care for me.”
[5] “This picture is charmingly beautiful.”
[6] “O how anxiously, O how fiery!”
[7] Ah, I loved and was so happy.
[8] When the tears of joy are flowing.
[9] A _Freihaus_ is a house subject to a jurisdiction other than that
in which it is situated.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.