Mozart

“ Music was his talisman, his magic flute with which he could exorcise all the petty terrors that beset him. Has such a man and artist—one who was completely resolved in his works, and therefore still stands bodily before us with all his glorious qualities after the lapse of a century—has Mozart still something to say to us who have just stepped timidly into a new century separated by another from that of the composer? ”

“ She loved music for its own sake, and she sang Mozart's songs with all her love and heart and soul in her voice.
Most charming of composers! Let us listen for pomp and passion and solid grandeur to Beethoven; for religion to Handel; for weirdness and mystery to Weber and Meyerbeer; for orchestral epilepsies or tortured tunes let us search in the spasmodic scores of modern Italy; but for the poetry of tenderness, for the heart's own sentiment, shall we ever find these in greater perfectness than in the music of Mozart? ”

“ Mozart has free course, and he goes from one beauty to another, with the sure instinct of a master before whom all tonal kingdoms are wide open. This can be seen even in the pianoforte arrangements of the greater symphonies. The melodies, apparently so simple and diatonic, are susceptible of being sung with heartfelt fervor under the fingers of the violinist, or by the voice of the great singer, and when so sung they become transfigured with beauty—luminous from within, like lovely angel faces, glowing with radiance from the higher realms of bliss. ”

“ Musicians of all schools have vied with men eminent in the other walks of life in the most extravagant eulogy. In this opera is seen the universality of Mozart's genius. His knowledge of humanity, his sympathy with all classes and conditions of men. It is the most realistic of his works; it is at the same time the most ideal. Not without reason did Goethe pass over Cherubini and von Weber, Auber and Rossini, Beethoven and the rest, and say that Mozart was the one who should have set his Faust to music. ”

“ The love of his Constance was the solace of Mozart's life.
The wonder-child, born in Salzburg in 1756, and taken by his father from court to court, where he and his sister played to admiring audiences, did not, like so many wonder-children, fade from public view, but with manhood fulfilled the promise of his early years and became one of the world's great masters of music. But his genius was not appreciated until too late. The world of to-day sees in Mozart the type of the brilliant, careless Bohemian, whom it loves to associate with art, and long since has taken him to its heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And Christian Daniel Schubart wrote in the Teutsche Chronik: “I heard an opera buffa by the marvelous Mozart. The fires of genius lurk and dart in it. Yet this is still not the sacred fire which rises to the gods in clouds of incense. If Mozart does not become a hot-house plant he should be the greatest composer who ever lived.” ”

“ Viva, Viva, grande Mozart.' Those in the orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding, by beating the bows of their violins against their music desks. And Mozart, I never shall forget his little animated countenance. When lighted up with the glowing rays of genius, it is as impossible to describe it as it would be to paint sunbeams." Yet the success did not improve his position in money affairs. ”

“ In Mozart the ground tone is love, the very ecstacy and celestial blias of the re-union of two souls long separated, at once romantic and Platonic, sensuous, and yet exalting the senses to a most spiritual ministry. In him we have what is nearest to the naked soul of music,—its most ethereal, transparent, thrilling body. One would scarce suppose, that the soul of Mozart ever inhabited any other body than those melodies and harmonies in which it dwells for us. ”

“ No one has ever united more perfectly than Mozart precision and energy of dramatic expression with the richest and purest melody. His dramatic characters are thoroughly individualized by the music. Each one appears on the stage to remain true and consistent to his or her individuality in every phase of passion and conflict of action. This power of contrasting characters is especially vivid in his concerted music, in the inimitable quartets and sextets of his latest operas. For this purpose, Mozart exercised his perfect command of vocal composition and polyphony. ”

“ Poor Mozart! In life pushed from pillar to post; in sickness working to the last moment to bring bread to his family; in death occupying an unknown grave!
After Mozart's death, that night of December 4, 1791, the little house on Roughstone Lane, in Vienna, was almost deserted. Only two or three callers came. The men who made money by the dead master's genius stayed away. The widow was left almost destitute, as Mozart's fortune amounted to five pounds in money and his effects were valued at about twenty-six pounds more. ”

“ The individual truth and fresh life of Mozart's works are founded in this natural spring of ever-welling spontaneity. Their artistic perfection rests on the skill with which the conception is developed; but in what consists the peculiar charm and beauty which is acknowledged and enjoyed by us all as inseparable from Mozart's music is, and will ever remain, an unsolved mystery. ”

“ It is one of the strongest proofs of Mozart's genius that he should have undertaken, moved as he was by the dramatic signification of the piece, to infuse a new soul into it by his musical treatment; so sure was he that whatever came home to his mind might be used as the germ of a living creation. The musical representation, however, could only be a true one by relying entirely on the emotions which alone are capable of being expressed in music. ”

“ This world is the universe as Mozart sees it; and the whole opera is an expression of his peculiar faith. It is therefore a religious work, though free from that meaningless and timid solemnity which we associate with religion. Mozart, in this world, was like an angel who could not but laugh, though without any malice, at all the bitter earnestness of mankind. Even the wicked were only absurd to him; they were naughty children whom, if one had the spell, one could enchant into goodness. And in The Magic Flute the spell works. ”

“ But on all those whose musical palates have not been vitiated by the highly-spiced viands of the ultra-modern school, Mozart's pure, natural, soulful music can never cease to exert its charm. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," and, in spite of the proverbial danger of prophesying, it is hardly rash to predict that Mozart's best symphonies will outlive those of Berlioz or Tschaïkowsky, and that his Don Giovanni and Figaro will continue to be the delight and admiration of true musicians, even though changes in the popular taste should banish them from the stage. ”

“ Mozart's devotion to his art, and the indefatigable industry with which, notwithstanding his extraordinary powers, he gave himself to its cultivation, may read an instructive lesson, even to far inferior minds, in illustration of the true and only method for the attainment of excellence. From his childhood to the last moment of his life, Mozart was wholly a musician. Even in his earliest years, no pastime had any interest for him in which music was not introduced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there is one quality more than another in which Mozart excels other composers, it is his power of characterization. Each one of his people stands out perfect and distinct, a type realized with infinite knowledge of humanity, and drawn with unfairly certainty of touch.
Mozart is never a caricaturist. It is in his sympathy with the faults and follies of human nature that the supreme charm of his personality lies. ”

“ It is hard to find before Mozart, except it be in national melodies, anything of this living, animated, thoroughly personal expression of feeling, such as we possess in this Non so d’onde viene. It is like Aloysia’s picture itself. Here we find a language plainer and more universally intelligible than words. It charms and enchants us; looks us in the face; speaks to us with an expression as if we alone were addressed. This is the highest, the very highest effect of art, and this the time when it becomes a second, an ideal, a transfigured life. ”

“ Here again Mozart has displayed a fund of deep and noble sentiment in its purest form, and the fantastic and romantic elements, mingled with a dreamy resignation, and an earnest endeavour after the expression of individual feeling, are more apparent in these movements than in any other of his compositions. Startling harmonic progressions, scattered touches of piquancy contrasting with vague sentimentality, and rhythmical whimsicalities, give all the greater charm that they in no way interfere with simplicity of conception or purity of form. ”

“ Nor is the subtile and irresistible coherence in successions of clear sunny melody, in which Mozart so abounds, in any great degree understood, even by some who call themselves artists. They think only of the sudden flashes, the happinesses, and, if such a word may be used once only, the smartnesses,—like children who care for nothing in their cake but the frosting and the plums. ”

“ The evident striving of the youthful Mozart to express himself and his innermost feelings in his music affords a significant indication of his development as an artist. Life had not taught him the lessons of passion and disappointment, and his nature was too sound and healthy to attempt to anticipate or represent emotions which had not touched him; he shows himself to us as he is. ”

“ If Mozart had not been engaged to compose the carnival opera for Milan, he might have written that for Bologna, Rome, or Naples, as at these three cities offers were made to him, a proof of what his genius had effected in Italy.
The epoch at which Mozart's genius was ripe may be dated from his twentieth year; constant study and practice had given him ease in composition, and ideas came thicker with his early manhood—the fire, the melodiousness, the boldness of harmony, the inexhaustible invention which characterize his works, were at this time apparent ”

“ The present is the first translation into our language of his shorter Life of Mozart. It will, we trust, prove acceptable to those who desire to learn the chief events in the life of the great composer, to see how his life influenced his compositions, and how his great works are, in many instances at least, the expression of his own joys and sorrows, the picture of his own soul in tones. ”

“ The fresh new life which had awakened in German poetry, and which first caused a consciousness of national existence to show itself in the realm of art, touched Mozart at a time when his musical education was already firmly grounded. He could therefore without self-contradiction continue along the trodden path, and carry on the development of the Italian opera as a settled form of art, which he had made his own in the truest sense. But the impulse of German art laid hold, as we shall see, of his innermost being, and gave him clear consciousness of his capabilities as a German artist. ”

“ On the 27th of January it was 150 years since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. A grandmaster of music, a magician who leads the soul from the depths of life to its sunary heights. Mozart transposed life into music, Wagner and his pupils transposed problems of life. ”

“ The fact of his probation taking place for the most part in silence is of disadvantage to him, both as a tenor and a lover; the dark cave and the wandering through fire and water are not particularly terrifying to the spectators, and his praiseworthy endeavours after virtue are too abstract to be interesting. And yet Mozart has filled in this colourless outline with the warm tints of youthful enthusiasm for all that is noble in life and in love. ”

“ The peculiar qualities of Mozart's nature, his refinement and nobility of thought, his wealth of productivity, and his marvellous technical knowledge, are as distinctly marked in this opera as elsewhere. The planning, the construction, the grouping of parts, are so firm, so transparently clear, that we follow even the most complicated movements with ease. ”

“ He writes with taste, and possesses a thorough knowledge of composition."
Poverty and increasing expense pricked Mozart into intense, restless energy. His life had no lull in its creative industry. His splendid genius, insatiable and tireless, broke down his body, like a sword wearing out its scabbard. He poured out symphonies, operas, and sonatas with such prodigality as to astonish us, even when recollecting how fecund the musical mind has often been. Alike as artist and composer, he never ceased his labors. ”