Mozart’s wife, Constanze, about 1783
Lithograph from a drawing by Joseph Lange, Constanze’s brother-in-law
We cannot here examine the sources from which he assembled his libretto. There ran through it a powerful strain of Masonic influence, love interest, low comedy in abundance (Schikaneder took care to tailor to his own measure the role of the wandering bird-catcher Papageno), and other surefire theatrical ingredients. He asked Mozart to supply the music, and the latter, after warning him that since he had never yet written a “magic opera” he hesitated to court failure in this sphere, at length complied. Between March and the end of September 1791, The Magic Flute was written. Schikaneder, aware of the glorious bargain he had struck, strove to be the soul of complaisance. He supplied the composer with every comfort at his disposal—a charming summerhouse on the grounds of the theater where he could work at the score, with food, wine, and pretty actresses to divert him—in short, whatever promised to humor the musician and promote the flow of inspiration. He even hummed or sang the sort of tunes he considered appropriate to the role he designed for himself.
Let us at this stage dispose of a few legends that, in the course of 160 years, have accumulated about the work. One is that the play is a farrago of childish nonsense, made tolerable only by the variety and grandeur of Mozart’s music; another, that the plot was altered at a late hour because another manager was about to produce a work similar in its story; a third, that the piece was a failure. As a matter of fact, the book of The Magic Flute happens to be one of the best librettos in existence from the point of view of good theater. The imagined “revision” never took place, for considerations of “parallels,” let alone plagiarisms, never bothered theater directors at this epoch. On the contrary, if a play or opera had one feature that pleased its public, a rival manager was quick to copy this very point on an even broader scale. Although at the first performance The Magic Flute did not achieve such an overwhelming triumph as its composer had hoped, before many months had passed it was attracting throngs; and not many years later Schikaneder was able to build out of the wealth it brought him that famous Theater an der Wien which still stands and was to become the cradle of various storied masterworks. As for the much-maligned book, it appealed so powerfully to none other than Goethe that he set out to write a sequel!
While the sick and harried Mozart worked with still inexhaustible fertility at the score of his magic opera he was interrupted by a sufficiently distasteful order from Prague for an opera to be produced there at the coronation of Leopold II as “King of Bohemia.” With no more than eighteen days to compose the music and assist in the production of this “occasional piece,” he was ordered to set an old text of Metastasio’s (retouched, it is true, by one Caterino Mazzolà)—La Clemenza di Tito, an antiquated specimen of opera seria, such as the composer had not bothered with since the period of Idomeneo. The available time being so short, Mozart took along with him his pupil Süssmayr, who was asked to perform the almost secretarial job of writing the secco recitatives, leaving the more important parts of the music to the master. His good friend, the impresario Guardasoni, mounted the opera in sumptuous fashion. But good will did not supplant genuine inspiration and, for all its craftsmanship, La Clemenza di Tito did not strike fire. The Empress dismissed it as porcheria tedesca (German rubbish). A correspondent of Studien für Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde reported that the “beloved Kapellmeister Mozard” did not obtain this time the applause he had a right to expect! For once, clearly, “his Praguers did not understand him.” Doubtless, Tito is not a Figaro or a Don Giovanni, but those unfamiliar with the work may well ask themselves if it is as bad as history paints it. Anyway its reception did not raise the master’s spirit. And he took leave of his friends with tears.
He was now seriously ill. He had fainting fits and accesses of exhaustion. On September 28, 1791, he finished The Magic Flute—the March of the Priests and the overture being the last numbers set down. The Masonic symbols and meanings with which the opera is filled (comprehensible, however, only to initiates) are heard in the thrice-reiterated three chords at the opening of the superb tone piece. This overture is a fully developed sonata movement built on a fugal plan, the mercurial subject having been borrowed from a clavier sonata of his old friend and rival, Clementi. At the first performance the composer Johann Schenk (later, one of Beethoven’s teachers) crept through the orchestra to Mozart, who was conducting, and reverently kissed his hand, while the composer, continuing to conduct with his right hand, affectionately patted Schenk’s head with his left. He took pleasure in playing the glockenspiel during Papageno’s air “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” and once, in fun, introduced an unexpected arpeggio which threw Schikaneder completely out for a few minutes.
The Requiem
As he was boarding his coach on the trip to Prague, Mozart was startled on being accosted by a gaunt, gray-clad stranger of mysterious mien who asked him if he were willing to undertake, for a certain sum, the composition of a requiem mass to be delivered at a specified time. He agreed but from this moment the weird visitor, whose identity he was admonished not to try to discover, gave him no rest. He became convinced that a messenger from the Beyond had sought him out, that the incident had a supernatural aspect, that he was, indeed, ordered by a higher power to compose a death mass for himself! And the certainty that his time was at hand grew steadily upon him.
The incident, in reality, had nothing macabre or mysterious about it. The “gray messenger” was a certain Leutgeb, steward of the Count Walsegg zu Stuppach who had lately lost his wife and who, aspiring to be known as a composer, planned to perform the requiem as his own work. But Mozart knew nothing of this. He had a letter from his old friend, Da Ponte, entreating him to join him in England. But it was too late and Mozart’s tragedy had to be played out to the bitter close that was now swiftly approaching. To Da Ponte he dispatched this pathetic missive:
“I wish I could follow your advice, but how can I do so? I feel stunned, I reason with difficulty, and cannot rid myself of the vision of this unknown man. I see him perpetually; he entreats me, he presses me, he impatiently demands the work. I go on writing.... Otherwise I have nothing more to fear. I know from what I suffer that the hour is come; I am at the point of death; I have come to the end before having had the enjoyment of my talent. Life was so beautiful, my career stood at first under so auspicious a star! But one cannot change one’s destiny!”