VI
Great as were Mozart’s achievements in the field of symphonic music, his services to opera were at least as important. Recent critics, such as Kretzschmar,[49] are wont to exalt the dramatic side of his genius above any other. It is certain, at any rate, that his strongest predilection lay in that direction. Already, in 1764, his father writes from London how the eight-year-old composer ‘has his head filled’ with an idea to write a little opera for the young people of Salzburg to perform. After the return home his dramatic imagination makes him personify the parts of his counterpoint exercises as Il signor d’alto, Il marchese tenore, Il duco basso, etc. Time and again he utters ‘his dearest wish’ to write an opera. Once it is ‘rather French than German, and rather Italian than French’; another time ‘not a buffa but a seria.’ Curious enough, neither in seria nor in the purely Italian style did he attain his highest level.
But his suggestions, and much of his inspiration, came from Italy. In serious opera, Hasse, Jommelli, Paesillo, Majo, Traetto, and even minor men served him for models, and, of course, his friend Christian Bach; and Mozart never rose above their level. Lacking the qualities of a reformer he followed the models as closely as he did in other fields, but here was a form that was not adequate to his genius—too worn out and lifeless. Gluck might have helped him, but he came too late. And so it happened that Mitridate (1770), Ascanio in Albo (a ‘serenata,’ 1771), Il sogno di Scipione and Lucio Silla (1772), Il rè pastore (dramatic cantata, 1775), Idomeneo (1781), and even La Clemenza di Tito, written in his very last year, are as dead to-day as the worst of their contemporaries. But with opera buffa it was otherwise. Various influences came into play here: Piccini’s La buona figluola and (though we have no record of Mozart’s hearing it) its glorious ancestor, Pergolesi’s Serva padrona; the successes of the opéra comique, Duni, Monsigny, Grétry, even Rousseau—all these reëchoed in his imagination. And then the flexibility of the form—the thing was unlimited, capable of infinite expansion. What if it had become trite and silly—a Mozart could turn dross to gold, he could deepen a puddle into a well! This was his great achievement; what Gluck did for the opera seria he did for the buffa. He took it into realms beyond the ken of man, where its absurdities became golden dreams, its figures flesh and blood, its buffoonery divine abandon. The serious side of the story, too, became less and less parody and more and more reality, till in Don Giovanni we do not know where the point of gravity lies. He calls it a dramma giocosa, but the joke is all too real. Death, even of a profligate, has its sting.
But what a music, what a halo of sound Mozart has cast about it all. What are words of the text, after all, especially when we do not understand them? These melodies carry their own message, they cannot be sung without expression, they are expression themselves. Is there in all music a more soul-stirring beauty than that of Deh vieni non tardar (Figaro, Act II), or In diesen teuren Hallen (Magic Flute, Act II)? Or more delicious tenderness than Cherubino’s Non so più and Voi che sapete, or Don Giovanni’s serenade Deh vieni alla fenestra; or more dashing gallantry than Fin ch’an dal vino? Were duets ever written with half the grace of La ci darem la mano, in Don Giovanni, or the letter scene in Figaro? They are jewels that will continue to glow when opera itself is reduced to cinders.
The purely musical elements of opera are Mozart’s chief concern. If he gives himself wholly to that without detriment to the drama, it is only by virtue of his own extraordinary power. Mozart could not, like Gluck, make himself ‘forget that he was a musician,’ and would not if he could; yet his scenes live, his characters are more real than Gluck’s; all this despite ‘set arias,’ despite coloratura, despite everything that Gluck abolished. But in musical details he followed him; in the portrayal of mood, in painting backgrounds, and in the handling of the chorus. Gluck painted landscape, but Mozart drew portraits. In musical characterization his mastery is undisputed. Again we have no use for words; the musical accents, the contour of the phrase and its rhythm delineate the man more precisely than a sketcher’s pencil. Here once more beauty is the first law, it sheds its evening glow over all. No mere frivolity here, no dissolute roisterers, no faithless wives—Don Giovanni, the gay cavalier, becomes a ‘demon of divine daring,’ the urchin Cherubino is made the incarnation of Youth, Spring, and Love; the Countess personifies the ideal of pure womanhood; Beaumarchais, in short, becomes Mozart.
La finta semplice (1768), La finta giardiniera (1775), and some fragmentary works are, like Mozart’s serious operas, now forgotten, but Così fan tutte (1790), Le nozze di Figaro (1786), and Don Giovanni (1787) continue with unimpaired vitality as part of every respectable operatic repertoire. The same is true of his greatest German opera, Die Zauberflöte, and in a measure of Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Germany owes a debt of undying gratitude to the composer of these, for they accomplished the long-fought-for victory over the Italians. Hiller and his singspiel colleagues had tried it and failed; and so had Dittersdorf, the mediocre Schweitzer (allied to Wieland the poet), and numerous others. Now for the first time tables were turned and Italy submitted to the influence of Germany. Mozart had beaten them on their own ground and had the audacity to appropriate the spoil for his own country. Without Mozart we could have no Meistersinger, cries Kretzschmar, which means no Freischütz, no Oberon, and no Rosenkavalier! But only we of to-day can know these things. Joseph II, who had ‘ordered’ the Entführung and whose express command was necessary to bring it upon the boards, opined on the night of the première that it was ‘too beautiful for our ears, and a powerful lot of notes, my dear Mozart.’ ‘Exactly as many as are necessary, your majesty,’ retorted the composer. It was an evening of triumph, but a triumph soon forgotten; for, after a few more attempts, the lights went down on German opera—the ‘national vaudeville’—and Salieri and his crew returned with all the wailing heroines, the strutting heroes, the gruesome ghosts, and all the paraphernalia of ‘serious opera!’
However, the people, the ‘common people,’ liked Punch and Judy better, or, at least, its equivalent. ‘Magic’ opera was the vogue, the absurder the better; and Schikaneder was their man. Some eighteenth century ‘Chantecler’ had left a surplus of bird feathers on his hands—and these suggested Papageno, the ‘hero’ of another ‘magic’ opera—‘The Magic Flute.’ The foolishness of its plot is unbelievable, but Mozart was won over. Magic opera! Why—any opera would do. Now we know how he loved it! And now he used his own magic, his wonderful strains, and lo, nonsense became logic, the ‘silly mixture of fairy romance and free-masonic mysticism’ was buried under a flood of sound; Schikaneder is forgotten and Mozart stands forth in all the radiance of his glory. Let the unscrupulous manager make his fortune and catch the people’s plaudits—but think of the unspeakable joy of Mozart on his deathbed as every night he follows the performances in his imagination, act by act, piece by piece, hearing with a finer sense than human ear and dreaming of generations to come that will call him master!
The Requiem, which Mozart composed for the most part while Zauberflöte was ‘running,’ is the only ecclesiastical work which does not follow in the rut of his contemporaries. All his masses, offertories, oratorios, etc., are ‘unscrupulous adaptations of the operatic style to church music.’ The Requiem, completed by his pupil, Süssmayr, according to the master’s direction, shows all the attributes of his genius—‘deeply felt melody, masterful development, and a breadth of conception which betrays the influence of Handel.’ ‘But,’ concludes Riemann, ‘a soft, radiant glow spreading over it all reminds us of Pergolesi.’ Yes, and that influence is felt in many a measure of this work—we should be tempted to use a trite metaphor if Pergolesi’s mantle were adequate for the stature of a Mozart. As perhaps the finest example, in smaller form, of his church music we may refer the reader to the celebrated Ave verum, composed in 1791, which is reprinted in our musical supplement.
Through Haydn and Mozart orchestral music emerged strong and well defined from a long period of dim growth. Their symphonies are, so to speak, the point of confluence of many streams of musical development, most of which, it may be remarked, had their source in Italy. The cultivation of solo melody, the development of harmony, largely by practice with the figured bass, until it became part of the structure of music, the perfection of the string instruments of the viol type and of the technique in playing and writing for them, the attempts to vivify operatic music by the use of various timbres, all these contributed to the establishment of orchestral music as an independent branch of the art. The question of form had been first solved in music for keyboard instruments or for small groups of instruments and was merely adapted to the orchestra. These lines of development we have traced in previous chapters. The building up of the frame, so to speak, of orchestral music was synthetical. It had to await the perfection of the various materials which were combined to make it. This was, as we have said, a long, slow process. The symphony was evolved, not created. So, in this respect, neither Haydn nor Mozart are creators.
But once the various constituents had fallen into place, the perfected combination made clear, new and peculiar possibilities, to the cultivation of which Haydn and Mozart contributed enormously. These peculiar possibilities were in the direction of sonority and tone color. In search of these Haydn and Mozart originated the orchestral style and pointed the way for all subsequent composers. In the Haydn symphonies orchestral music first rang even and clear; in those of Mozart it was first tinged with tone colors, so exquisite, indeed, that to-day, beside the brilliant works of Wagner and Strauss, the colors still glow unfaded.
If Haydn and Mozart did not create the symphony, the excellence of their music standardized it. The blemish of conventionality and empty formalism cannot touch the excellence of their best work. Such excellence would have no power to move us were it only skill. There is genuine emotional inspiration in most of the Salomon symphonies and in the three great symphonies of Mozart. In Haydn’s music it is the simple emotion of folk songs; in Mozart’s it is more veiled and mysterious, subtle and elusive. In neither is it stormy and assertive, as in Beethoven, but it is none the less clearly felt. That is why their works endure. That is the personal touch, the special gift of each to the art. Attempts to exalt Beethoven’s greatness by contrasting his music with theirs are, in the main, unjust and lead to false conclusions. Their clarity and graceful tenderness are not less intrinsically beautiful because Beethoven had the power of the storm. Moreover, the honest critic must admit that the first two symphonies of Beethoven fall short of the artistic beauty and the real greatness of the Mozart G minor or C major. Indeed, it is to be doubted if any orchestral music can be more beautiful than Mozart’s little symphony in G minor, for that is perfect.
We find in them the fresh-morning Spring of symphonic music, when the sun is bright, the air still cool and clear, the sparkling dew still on the grass. After them a freshness has gone out of music, never to return. Never again shall we hear the husbandman whistle across the fields, nor the song of the happy youth of dreams stealing barefoot across the dewy grass.
C. S.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Superstition was still so widespread that Paganini was actually forced to produce evidence that he did not derive his ‘magic’ from the evil one.
[37] Burney in describing his travels says: ‘So violent are the jolts, and so hard are the seats, of German post wagons, that a man is rather kicked than carried from one place to another.’ Mozart in a letter recounting to his father his trip from Salzburg to Munich avows that he was compelled to raise himself up by his arms and so remain suspended for a good part of the way!
[38] After Augustus’ death, in 1763, musical life at this court deteriorated, though Naumann was retained as kapellmeister by Charles, Augustus’s son.
[39] Cf. Charles Burney: ‘The Present State of Music in Germany,’ London, 1773.
[40] Among other musicians he met is old Wagenseil, who was confined to his couch, but had the harpsichord wheeled to him and ‘played me several capriccios and pieces of his own composition in a very spirited and masterly manner.’ Merely mentioned are Ditters, Huber, Mancini, the great lutenist Kohaut, the violinist La Motte, and the oboist Venturini.
[41] Johann Schobert especially caught the boy’s fancy, though both his father and Baron Grimm, their most influential friend in Paris, depreciated his merits and tried to picture him as a small, jealous person. T. de Wyzewa and G. de St. Foix, in their study Un maître inconnu de Mozart (Zeitschrift Int. Musik-Ges., Nov., 1908), and in their partially completed biography of Mozart, have clearly shown the powerful influence of the Paris master on the youthful composer.
[42] T. de Wyzewa and G. de St. Foix in their scholarly work ‘W.-A. Mozart’ have catalogued and fixed the relative positions of all the Mozart compositions. This in a sense supersedes the famous catalogue made by Ludwig von Koechel (1862, Supplement 1864).
[43] Mozart’s mother, ill during the greater part of the Paris sojourn, died about the time of the symphony première. Grief-stricken as he was, he wrote his father all the details of the performance and merely warned him that his mother was dangerously ill. At the same time he advised a close Salzburg friend of the event and begged him to acquaint his father with it as carefully as possible.
[44] Another incident of this veritable carnival of music was the famous pianoforte competition between Mozart and Clementi.
[45] W. H. Hadow, in ‘The Oxford History of Music.’
[46] It is a well-known fact that the moment of his first acquaintance with the instrument Mozart became enamored of its tone. No ear ever was more alive to the purely sensuous qualities of tone color.
[47] Riemann: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, II.
[48] Riemann: Op. cit.
[49] Hermann Kretzschmar: Mozart in der Geschichte der Oper (Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters, 1905).
CHAPTER IV
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Form and formalism—Beethoven’s life—His relations with his family, teachers, friends, and other contemporaries—His character—The man and the artist—Determining factors in his development—The three periods in his work and their characteristics—His place in the history of music.
The most important contributions of the eighteenth century to the history of music—the establishment of harmony and the new tonalities, the technical growth of the various forms, especially of the sonata and the development of opera—have been treated in preceding chapters; and we now only glance at them momentarily in order to point out that they typify and illustrate two of the predominating forces of the century, the desire for form and the reaction against mere formality. The first is well illustrated in the history of the sonata, which, at the middle of the century, was comparatively unimportant as a form of composition and often without special significance in its musical ideas. By 1796 Mozart had lived and died, and the symphonic work of Haydn was done; with the result that the principles of design, so strongly characteristic of eighteenth century art, were in full operation in the realm of music; the sonata form, as illustrated in the quartet and symphony, was lifted to noble position among the types of pure music; and the orchestra was vastly improved.
The second of these forces, the reaction against formality and conservatism, is connected with one of the most interesting phases of the history of art. For a large part of the century France held a dominating place in drama, literature, and the opera. The art of the theatre and of letters had become merely a suave obedience to rule, and even the genius of a Voltaire, with his dramatic instinct and boldness, could not lift it entirely out of the frigid zone in which it had become fixed. Germany and England, however, were preparing to overthrow the traditions of French classicism. Popular interest in legends, folk-lore, and ballads revived. ‘Ossian’ (published 1760-63) and Percy’s ‘Reliques’ (1765) aroused great enthusiasm both in England and on the continent. Before the end of the century Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller had placed new landmarks in the progress of literature in Germany; and in England, by 1810, much of Wordsworth’s best poetry had been written. The study of early national history and an appreciation of Nature took the place of logic and the cold niceties of wit and epigram. The comfortable acquiescence in the existing state of things, the objectiveness, the decorous veiling of personal and subjective elements, which characterize so many eighteenth century writers, gave place to a passionate, lyrical outburst of rapture over nature, expression of personal desire, melancholy visions, or romantic love. In politics and social life there was a strong revival of republican ideas, a loosening of many of the more orthodox tenets of religion, and again a strong note of individualism.
That this counter-current against conventionality and mere formalism should find expression in music was but natural. The new development, however, in so far as pure instrumental music is concerned, was a change, not in form, but in content and style, an increase in richness and depth, which took place within the boundaries already laid out by earlier masters, especially Haydn and Mozart. The musician in whom we are to trace these developments is, of course, Ludwig van Beethoven, who stands, like a colossus, bridging the gulf between eighteenth century classicism and nineteenth century romanticism. He was in a profound sense the child of his age and nation. He summed up the wisdom of the older contrapuntists, as well as that of Mozart and Haydn; and he also gave the impulse to what is most modern in musical achievement.
‘The most powerful currents in nineteenth century music (the romanticism of Liszt, Berlioz; the Wagnerian music drama) to a large extent take their point of departure from Beethoven,’ writes Dickinson; and the same author goes on to say: ‘No one disputes his preëminence as sonata and symphony writer. In these two departments he completes the movements of the eighteenth century in the development of the cyclical homophonic form, and is the first and greatest exponent of that principle of individualism which has given the later instrumental music its special character. He must always be studied in the light of this double significance.’[50]