Ludwig Nohl

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [132] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The journey taken thus early in life was of great advantage to Mozart himself. He learned to understand men—for his father drew his attention to everything; he even made the boy keep a diary—he got rid of the shyness natural to children, and acquired a knowledge of life. He had listened to the music of the different nations, and thus discovered the manner in which each heart understands that language of the human soul called melody. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
[180] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [161] 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. ”

“ As, in its day, Italy had the greatest composers, it had now, to say the least, the greatest and most celebrated singers, and with a single victory here one entered the lists with all educated Europe. “Then up and go there,” the father must have said to himself, when he saw that his son’s talent for composition was not recognized in Germany as much as it deserved to be recognized even then, and the superior excellence of his performances denied there when it was admitted everywhere else. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Salzburgian was looked upon as a fool, and the merry Andrews of Vienna mimicked his dialect. The mode of life and the views of the higher and lower “noblesse” were of a nature still less agreeable and refined. Mozart, who much preferred even the manners of the “boorish Bavarians,” as they were then universally called, to that of the Salzburg nobility, relates, in his letters, how one of the latter expressed so much surprise and crossed himself so frequently at the Munich opera, that they were greatly ashamed of him. ”

“ The symphonies he now wrote were, indeed, greatly excelled by others which he subsequently composed, and the masses eclipsed by his great requiem. But the music to a tragedy, “King Thamos,” has a sound so full and so appeals to the soul, that we feel the presence in it of the greater life-trials he had experienced. And hence it is that Mozart was subsequently able to adapt its choruses to other words, and to introduce them to the world as “hymns.” ”

“ Shortly after Mozart spoke to the elector as “his good friend,” and the latter began: “I have heard that you wrote an opera in Munich.” “Yes, your highness,” Mozart replied, “I commend myself as your grace’s obedient servant. My highest wish is to write an opera I beg your highness not to forget me quite I know German also, and may God be praised and thanked for it.” “That is not at all impossible,” answered his most serene highness, and so Mozart made his arrangements for a longer sojourn in Mannheim. ”

“ We read in one of the father’s letters, “Whenever I thought of your journey to Augsburg, I could not help thinking of Wieland’s Abderites; a man should get an opportunity to see in natura what in reading he considers a pure ideal.” But Mozart had here the best of opportunities to pursue those studies which the artist needs, in order to paint from life. We are reminded of his experiences, like those in Augsburg, by the brutal, self-destructive, ridiculous haughtiness of Osmin in the “Elopement from the Seraglio.” ”

“ It is easy to conceive that the consciousness of [119] 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? ”

“ Mozart saw himself loved and honored, and the excellence of the opera in Munich was a great incentive to induce him to do his very best in the performance of the task now given him. In it we find early traces of those living streams of pleasant feelings which flowed from Mozart’s heart. The words of the opera had been frequently set to music; but the people said that no more beautiful music had ever been heard than that of Mozart’s opera, in which all the arias, without exception, were beautiful. ”

“ Mozart played one of Cambini’s quartets from memory, and executed it in such a manner, that the latter exclaimed: “What a head that man has!” Cambini, after this, took care that no more of Mozart’s compositions should be performed in public, and hence he had to resort once more to the giving of lessons in music, to make ends meet. This was exceedingly difficult in Paris, and especially for an artist who, as he himself wrote at the time, was, so to say, “sunk in music—one whose thoughts it always occupied, and who liked to speculate, study and reflect the live-long day.” ”

“ In those days people were ever craving for something new in their favorite art; and while Mozart’s masses, yielding to the theatrical tendency of the time, like those of Haydn, have more of a pleasant play in them than of church gravity, and are therefore of less importance to posterity, the composition of symphonies carried him into a department which, created by Haydn, was destined, through Mozart, to lead to that mighty phenomenon, Beethoven. ”

“ Mozart decided on going there. He took his eldest sister-in-law’s husband, the violin player, Hofer, with him; [203] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What poetry and prose were for the opera, the joy and the sorrow of life felt by the composer himself were for the piano and the orchestra—the impulse and poetical bait to musical composition. We shall soon find Mozart’s life reflected in his art, and it is this that makes the biography of the man so peculiarly attractive and so full of meaning.
In November, 1772, we find our two travelers in Italy again. The opera of Silla had to be written for Milan. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”