“‘It is a concerto,’ replied his little son, ‘and must be studied until it can be played properly. This is the way it should be played.’”
This was the beginning of Mozart’s composition. He wrote no less than six hundred and thirty-six works!
And to his name we will add this tribute:
“I have always been one of the greatest admirers of Mozart and I shall remain so until my last breath,—Beethoven.”
When Mozart heard the boy Beethoven play during his first visit to Vienna in 1787 he said to his friends: “Pay attention to him he will make a noise in the world some day, or other.”
It seems strange to find an English musician writing the following just appreciation of Beethoven in 1818, while the great genius was still living:
“Beethoven’s genius seems to anticipate a future age. In one comprehensive view, he surveys all that science has hitherto produced, but regards it only as the basis of that superstructure which harmony is capable of raising. He measures the talents and resources of every preceding artist, and, as it were, collects into a focus their scattered rays. He discovers that Haydn and Mozart alone have followed nature, yet he explores the hidden treasures of harmony with a vigor superior to either. In sacred music he is pre-eminently great. The dark tone of his mind is in unison with that solemn style which the service of the church requires; and the gigantic harmony which he wields enables him to excite by sounds, a terror hitherto unknown.”
Yes; Beethoven had a dark nature; or, at least, dark clouds frequently floated across his mind. He had everything to make him morose. His life was exceptionally unhappy: he had an unfortunate love-affair; the nephew in whom he placed all his hopes disappointed him; and, finally, he became totally deaf.
“His whole life is like a stormy day. At the beginning—a fresh, clear morning, perhaps a languid breeze, scarcely a breath of air. But there is always in the still air a secret menace, a dark foreboding. Large shadows loom and pass; tragic rumblings; murmuring awesome silences—the furious gusts of the winds of the Eroica and the C-minor.”[61]