In estimating Mozart's Church music, it is needful to bear in mind that much of it, more especially the Masses composed at Salzburg, was written under special and in some respects arbitrary restrictions.
In a letter written in 1776 to Padre Martini, Mozart tells him that a Mass, including the regular five sections, besides an offertory or motett and a sonata at the epistle, was not allowed to last longer than three-quarters of an hour; for this reason most of his Masses are very concise in their form as compared with the later masses of Haydn or with Beethoven's Mass in C. Besides this, the Archbishop of Salzburg loved a showy and brilliant style of music, and Mozart was bound, to some extent, to make concessions to his taste. Yet it is going too far to say, as some German critics have done, that these masses are their composer's weakest works. Some of them, especially those in F and D major, both of which were written at Salzburg in 1774, are in every way worthy of Mozart, while there are but few of the others which do not contain movements of the greatest beauty. The same may be said of his litanies, vespers, and smaller sacred works. But his power as a composer of Church music is best shown in portions of the great Mass in C minor, which he began at Vienna in 1783, but never completed, and most of all in the Requiem, in which his genius rises to a greater height than in any of his other sacred compositions. There is little reason to doubt that, had he been allowed free scope, his works in this field of art would have been little, if at all, inferior to those on which his fame most securely rests.
As a contrapuntist Mozart undoubtedly ranks second only to J. Sebastian Bach, of whom, indeed, his astounding facility in solving the most complex musical problems at times reminds us. Nowhere is the ars celare artem more perfectly exemplified than in the best specimens of Mozart's fugal and canonic writing. The example most frequently referred to as an illustration is the finale of the "Jupiter" symphony, but such pieces as the "Rex tremendæ" of the Requiem, with its quadruple canon, the final fugue in the Davidde penitente, or the "Laudate pueri" of the second Vespers, are scarcely less remarkable. The large number of canons for unaccompanied voices which he wrote show his preference, no less than his aptitude, for the stricter forms; yet, however elaborate, in his hands they never become dry, but are always full of melodic beauty. With Mozart technique is always the means, never the end.
The influence of Mozart on the music of the first half of the last century can hardly be fully estimated. It is clearly to be seen in the earlier works of Beethoven. By this it is not meant that the younger master borrowed, or even imitated, the actual themes of his predecessor; his individuality was from the first too strongly marked. But many of the works of what is known as Beethoven's "first manner" are clearly modelled upon corresponding works by Mozart. Thus, his trio for strings in E flat, Op. 3, was evidently suggested by Mozart's trio in the same key, while the septett and the quintett for piano and wind instruments clearly show traces of Mozart's manner. The same may be said of the adagio of the first piano sonata, and of the whole of the sonata in D for piano and violin—to name but a few examples of many. Not the least disparagement of Beethoven is intended in saying this: every great composer has begun his career by imitating more or less closely the works of his predecessors, and it was inevitable that Mozart should have influenced one who had so many points of affinity with him. In Beethoven's later works the similarity of style is no longer to be noticed.
MOZART.
(From a portrait by Jäger.)
Passing over with a mere word of mention such composers of the second rank as Andreas Romberg and Hummel, we find two composers of marked individuality—Schubert and Mendelssohn—in whose earlier works the influence of Mozart is more or less traceable. As a song-writer, Schubert was original from the first; even in his instrumental works it is only occasionally that one is reminded of other composers. The suggestions of Mozart are chiefly to be found in Schubert's earlier symphonies. The variations which form the slow movement of the symphony in B flat might be inserted in one of Mozart's serenades without seeming out of place. In the works of Mendelssohn's youth the Mozart influence is more distinct,* though, like Schubert, he soon emancipated himself.
* The first subject of the finale of Mendelssohn's first piano quartett is a very close, though probably unconscious, imitation of the opening bars of the finale of Mozart's sonata in C minor.
Among composers of the present day one would seek in vain for any traces of Mozart's influence. Times have changed, and the classical style has been supplanted by the romantic. Whether this is altogether to the advantage of modern music is a question which cannot be discussed here; but an energetic protest may at least be entered against the superficial criticism sometimes to be heard that Mozart's works are weak and old-fashioned. That music has made much progress since Mozart's days nobody will deny; the operatic reforms of Wagner are far-reaching, while Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms—not to mention more recent composers—have enlarged the harmonic resources of the art. 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 place among the immortals is as secure as that of Bach or Beethoven.