III
Mozart and Haydn are in no regard more different than in their approaches to mastery of their art. Haydn received almost no training. He developed his powers unaided and without direction. The circumstances of his life at Esterhazy cut him off from general musical intercourse and he was, as he himself said, practically forced to be original. The string quartet offered him one of the happiest means of self-expression; and to that end in general he used it, putting his kindly humor and fun freely into music.
Mozart, on the other hand, was carefully guided, even from infancy, in the way which custom has approved of as the proper way for a musician to travel. Surely before he was ten years old he was no mean master of the science of harmony and counterpoint, thanks to the strict attentions of his father; and he was hardly out of his mother’s arms before he was carried about Europe, to display his marvellous genius before crowned heads of all nations, and, what is even more significant, before the greatest musicians of his age.
One by one the influences of the men with whom he came in contact make their appearance in his youthful music. In London there was Christian Bach, in Paris, Jean Schobert, in Vienna, old Wagenseil; and at the time he wrote his first string quartet—in March, 1770—he was almost completely under the influence of Giovanni Battista Sammartini, organist at Milan, once teacher of Gluck, and always one of the most gifted of Italian musicians.
Haydn had no appreciation of Sammartini. He seems likewise to have looked upon Boccherini with a cold regard. But in Italy, where Mozart stayed from December, 1769, to March, 1771, these were both names to conjure with; and the music of both was likely to be heard every day. Sammartini had composed a series of concertinos a quattro istromenti soli in 1766 and 1767; and, though Mozart was surely acquainted with the quartets of Michael Haydn, Stamitz, and Gossec, it is after those of Sammartini that he modelled his own first quartet. Two external features point to this: the fact that the first quartet has but three movements,[68] which was the number customary among the Italians, especially with Sammartini; and the treatment of the second violin, which plays quite as great a part in the quartet as the first violin. In addition to this there is a certain melodic elegance which was not characteristic of German music at that time, and which seems very closely akin to the charming nature of the works of Sammartini. The three movements are in the same key, a fact which we may attribute to the influence of a set of quartets by Florian Gassmann.[69]
Mozart’s next ventures with this form are the three divertimenti written at Salzburg early in 1772 (K. 136, 137, 138). In these there are traces of the influence of Michael Haydn at work on the Italian style of which Mozart had become master. The first is distinctly in the style of Haydn. The second is again predominantly Italian, notably in the equal importance given to the two violins, as in the quartets of Sammartini. The third, the most effective of the three, seems to represent a good combination of the two other styles. The final rondo is especially charming and brilliant. These three quartets were probably of a set of six. The remaining three have disappeared. In Köchel’s Index they are numbers 211, 212, and 213, in the appendix.
In the fall of the same year Mozart was again in Italy, and to this period in his life belong six quartets (K. 155-160, inclusive). The first seems to have been written, according to a letter from Leopold Mozart, to pass away a weary time at an inn in Botzen. The very first quartet of all had been written at Lodi, with much the same purpose, two years before. This quartet in D major is, on the whole, inferior to the five others which follow in the same series and which were probably written within the next few months at Milan. The quartet in G major, K. 156, was probably written in November or December, 1772. It is strongly Italian in character. Notice in the first movement a multiplicity of themes or subjects, instead of the development of one or two, which was the German manner. Notice, also, that among the thematic subjects the second has the greatest importance; not, as in German quartets of this time, the first. The second movement, an adagio in E minor, has a serious and sad beauty.
The two quartets which follow in the series (K. 157, 158) are masterpieces in pure Italian style. The slow movements of both, like the slow movement in the preceding quartet, are worthy of the fully mature Mozart. An enthusiasm for, or even an appreciation of, this style which lends itself so admirably to the string quartet is now unhappily rare. These early quartets of Mozart are passed by too often with little mention, and that in apologetic vein. We may quote a passage from the ‘Life of Mozart,’ previously referred to. ‘This (K. 157), we say, is the purest, the most perfect, of the series; also the most Italian, that which is brilliant with a certain intoxication of light and poetry. Of the influence of Haydn there is but a trace here and there in the scoring. The coda, with new material, at the end of the andante may likewise be regarded as an echo of the recent Salzburg style. But for the rest, for the invention of the ideas and the treatment of them, there is not a measure in this quartet which does not come straight from the spirit of Italy (génie italien), such as we see transformed in the quartets of a Tartini, and yet again in the lighter and easier works of a Sacchini or a Sammartini. Numerous little, short, melodious subjects, the second of which is always the most developed, an extreme care in the melodic design of the ritornelles, a free counterpoint rarely studied (peu poussé), consisting especially of rapid imitations of one voice in another; and all this marvellously young, and at the same time so full of emotion that we seem to hear the echo of a whole century of noble traditions. * * * Incomparable blending of gaiety and tears, a poem in music, much less vast and deep, indeed, than the great quartets of the last period in Vienna, but perhaps more perfectly revealing the very essence of the genius of Mozart.’ And of the quartet in F major (K. 158): ‘This quartet is distinguished from the preceding one by something in the rhythm, more curt and more marked, which makes us see even more clearly to what an extent Mozart underwent the influence, not only of Italian music of his own time, but of older music belonging to the venerable school issued from Coulli. * * * From the point of view of workmanship, the later quartets of Mozart will surpass immeasurably those of this period; but, let it be said once more, we shall never again find the youthful, ardent, lovely flame, the inspiration purely Latin but none the less impassioned, of works like the quartet in C and in F of this period. Let no one be astonished at the warmth of our praise of these works, the beauty of which no one hitherto seems to have taken the pains to appreciate. Soon enough, alas! we shall have to temper our enthusiasm in the study of Mozart’s work, and regret bitterly that the obligation to follow the “galant” style of the time led the young master to forget his great sources of inspiration in years passed.’
The remaining two quartets in the series (K. 159, 160) were written, one in Milan in February, 1773, the other probably begun in Milan about this time but finished a few months later in Salzburg.
On the first of July, 1773, Mozart arrived in Vienna. He remained there three months, and during this time wrote six quartets (K. 168-173, inclusive), the first four probably in August, the last two in September. The fact of his writing six quartets in such haste might suggest that he had received a commission from some nobleman or rich amateur. There is no document, however, mentioning such a circumstance; and it may well be that Mozart composed them, as he had composed quartets in Italy, at once to occupy spare moments and to satisfy that craving for expression which seems ever to have seized him when he came in contact with any active and special musical surroundings. Vienna was full of quartets and of amateurs and artists who played them often together. Haydn was brilliantly famous, his quartets were constantly performed. Dr. Burney heard some of them exquisitely played at the house of the English emissary, Lord Stormont, in this very September. Michael Kelly, in his ‘Memoirs,’ mentions an evening when, to fill up an hour or two, a band of musicians played quartets; and among these musicians Mozart himself was one. Therefore, being so surrounded by quartets, Mozart probably could not, so to speak, keep his hands off the form.
Naturally enough, he wrote as nearly as he could in the Viennese style which now, just on the eve of the style galant, still breathed of Emanuel Bach and the seriousness of musical learning. Haydn’s Sonnen Quartette, those in which he replied to the charges of hostile critics by an exhibition of excellent contrapuntal skill, were probably already composed, though they were not printed until the following year. Very likely Mozart had become familiar with some if not all of them. Gassmann, too, had composed a series of quartets in 1772, each of which had four movements, two of them fugues. But probably the fugues which Mozart wrote as finales to the first and sixth of these quartets owe their place to the influence of Haydn.
Indeed, the entire series shows Mozart in a process of assimilating a serious style of music to which he had hitherto, through force of circumstances, remained indifferent. Without question the recent quartets of Haydn stirred in him a fever of emulation. That the six quartets were written in the space of a month, or very little more, is evidence of his impatience to make Haydn’s style his own. Other influences than Haydn’s are present, but less obvious; such as the influence of Gluck, at least in spirit, in one or two of the slow movements. Consequently the series as a whole is not satisfying. It does not reveal Mozart at ease. He has abandoned for the moment the pure grace of the Italian style, of which he was consummate master, in an effort, too sudden and hasty for success, to make his music all German. He is consistently neither one thing nor the other, neither graceful nor expressive. The last, in D minor, is naturally the best. The first movement and the final fugue are proof that he had already accomplished what he set out to do.
These first Viennese quartets stand alone between Mozart’s Italian quartets and the great quartets written ten years and more later, which were dedicated to Joseph Haydn, as the tribute of a son to a father. Here Mozart has fully expressed his genius. There are six in all, written at various times; the first three between December, 1782, and the summer of 1783, the last three in the winter of 1784-85. Haydn heard them before they were published, and praised them highly. It was perhaps this warm appreciation which led Mozart to dedicate the series to his old friend and teacher when he published it in the autumn of 1785. The dedication is hearty, long, and naïve. In Köchel’s Index the quartets are listed as Nos. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, and 465.