Life of Mozart

by Ludwig Nohl

We need not here enter into the details of this journey. The youthful artist continued to work wonders similar to those which we have already related. And on one occasion, in Naples, the boy was even obliged to remove a ring from his finger, because his wizard-like art was ascribed by the people to his wearing it. We must here confine ourselves to tracing the course of development of this extraordinary genius, and to showing what were the influences that made him such.

At the end of the year 1769, that is, when Mozart was nearly fourteen years of age, we find him and his father journeying through the Tyrol to the land of milder breezes and sweet melodies. Everywhere the same unbounded admiration of his talent. In Vienna, the two—who now traveled unaccompanied by the mother and sister—were obliged to elbow themselves through the crowd to the choir, so great was the concourse of people. In Milan, such was the impression made by our hero, that Wolfgang was asked to compose an opera. In Italy new operas were introduced twice a year; and he was given the first opportunity to display his talent during the season preceding Christmas. The honorarium paid him was, as usual, one hundred ducats and lodging free. He received no more at a later period for his Don Giovanni. But such an amount was a large remuneration, at that time, for the young beginner.

In the execution of his task, however, he showed himself by no means a mere beginner. For when, continuing their journey—to which they could give themselves up with all the more composure as the libretto was to be sent after them—they came to Bologna and there called upon the most learned musician of his age, Padre Martini, even he could do nothing but lose himself in wonder at the power of achievement of our young master, who, as Martini said, solved problems and overcame difficulties which gave evidence both of innate genius and of the most comprehensive knowledge. Wolfgang here became acquainted with the greatest singer of his time, the sopranist, Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli, and received from him as a last legacy the Italian art of bel canto; for, said he, only he who understands the art of song in its highest sense, can, in turn, properly write for song. And yet this vocalist was already in the sixties.

Florence was still governed by the Hapsburgs, and hence the best of receptions was given to our travelers there. Of the magnificent works of art in the place, the letters to his mother and sister do not say anything. But we can scarcely suppose that the Venus Anathusia and the Madonna della Sedia remained unknown to him who was alone destined to give life to Raphael and the antique, even in tones. Mozart’s own letters from Rome do not leave us in the dark on this point. He writes to his sister: “Yesterday we were in the Capitol and saw many beautiful things, and there are, indeed, many beautiful things there and elsewhere in Rome”—Laocoon and Ariadne, the Apollo Belvedere and the head of Olympian Jove. And then the many churches, and among them a St. Peter’s! But naturally enough, the music remained the most remarkable thing of all to the two musicians; and then there was the Sistine Chapel, in which alone something of the art of the great Romans still lived and ruled. Of Palestrina we hear nothing in this connection, but Wolfgang went so far as to make a copy of Allegri. “You know,” the father writes, “that the Miserere sung here is esteemed so highly that the musicians of the chapel are forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to copy any part of it, or to give a part of it to anybody. But we have it. Wolfgang has written it down from ear. However, we do not wish this secret to come into anyone’s else possession, lest we should incur the censure of the Church directly or indirectly.” The Mozarts, indeed, attached some importance to their faith in the Catholic Church. To them it was intrinsic truth. And thus Wolfgang’s youthful soul was forever consecrated, for the reception of the highest feelings of the human breast, by the peculiarly sacred songs sung during this holy week in Rome—feelings which, even in compositions not religious, he, in the course of his life, clothed in sounds so beautiful and enrapturing. In after years, he was wont to tell of the deep impression made on him by these incidents in his religious experience. “How I felt there! how I felt there!” he exclaimed, over and over again, in speaking of them.

We have heard already of Naples. The father had written from Rome that the further they got into Italy the greater was the wonder of the people. The intoxicating beauty of nature mirrored in the Bay of Naples, could not but make a deep impression on the artist, who was himself destined one day to give expression in so magical a manner and in sounds so entrancing, to the charm and intoxication of the serenest joys of life. “Naples is beautiful,” he writes curtly but characteristically to his sister. Yet it may be that the immense solemnity of Rome was more in harmony with Mozart’s German nature. They were there soon again, and this time they had an opportunity to see what can be seen only in Rome—the Pope. Delighted with young Wolfgang’s playing, the Holy Father—it was the great Ganganelli, Clement XIV—granted him a private audience, and conferred on him the order of the Golden Spurs, that same order which afterwards gave us a chevalier Gluck. Mozart did not, at first, make much of this honor, and his father wrote: “You may imagine how I laugh to hear him called all the time Signor Cavaliere.” Later, however, they knew when a proper occasion presented itself, how to turn such a distinction to advantage.

The end now aimed at by young Mozart and his father was fame and success. A step towards the attainment of these was Wolfgang’s nomination as a member of the celebrated Philharmonic Society of Bologna, which invested him, in Italy, with the title of Cavaliere Filarmonico. And when father and son came to Milan again in 1770, he had, so far as his rank as an artist and his position in life were concerned, attained success. At fourteen, he was Signor Cavaliere—Chevalier Mozart. The journey itself had done much to bring his artistic views to maturity. His technical ability was very plainly now supplemented by the pure sense of the beautiful, the result of the highest intellectual labor. He had surmounted all difficulties, and especially those purely natural ones by which the rough, lack-lustre north, with its inhospitable climate, only too frequently keeps Germans back in art. From this time forward the divine rays of ideal beauty beam brightly from Mozart’s melody, and they never became extinct. In Mozart’s art there was now no room for perfection of form. His art could be added to only by adding to the life that was in it; and we shall soon again meet with traces of that personal contact with life which matures man’s capabilities and develops them. Let us first look at the earliest decided successes of the composer, successes which, for a long time, bound him to the “land where the citron blooms.”

The Italian opera which then ruled supreme everywhere, was far from being such a dramatic performance on the stage as rivets the attention. The taste of the Italians which revelled in beautiful songs, soon made these the chief feature in the entire opera. Interesting or thrilling incidents from history, and still more the great myths of antiquity and of the middle ages, were so adapted for the occasion that a love affair always played the principal part in them, and the whole culminated in the effusions of happy or heart-broken lovers. There was here, certainly, a rich opportunity for an art like music. As it was, almost the entire opera was made up of arias, and the person who wrote the prettiest arias, of course, carried off the palm. These arias had like a garment to be made to order, so to speak, for the several singers, and to fit them exactly, if they were to produce their full effect: the finest note of the prima donna, or a tenor, had to be at the same time the finest part of the air, and vice versa. Thus prepared, the opera was sung, and went the round of one-half of Europe. We have seen this, in this century, in the case of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, and we see it in our own day, in the case of Verdi.

It was at this point that Mozart modestly entered on the musical inheritance from the past. A youth of fourteen will certainly not change or attack what more than a century and the whole educated world has approved and admired. But how he took up into his work the several features of the “fabulous history” of the old, unfortunate king of Pontus, Mithridates, and united them into glowing music, we learn from the critic of the day, after the performance of the piece on the 26th of December, 1770, in the following words: “The young Capellmeister studies the beautiful in nature, and then gives us back that beauty adorned with the rarest musical grace.” Envy and intrigue were, indeed, not wanting here, either. But Wolfgang was equal to the task of taking care of himself, and even of adapting himself to the whims of the singers. “If this duet does not give satisfaction, he can re-arrange it,” the first sopranist exclaimed; and people were very much surprised to see the tone of the home opera, its chiaroscuro, as they called the beautiful discordance of the different pieces with one another, so accurately hit by a young beginner. Cries of Evviva il maestro! Evviva il maestrino! were heard on every side; the work had to be repeated twenty times, and it was immediately ordered for five other stages, among them that of Mozart’s own beloved capital—all of which, however, according to the custom of the time, turned only to the advantage of the copyist.

The object of the first trip to Rome, in 1770, was thus attained. Wolfgang had not spared himself, and his father had to keep a watchful eye on him. Uninterrupted labor and earnest occupation had given so serious a turn to his mind—and he was always naturally reflective—that his father thought well to invite some friends to his home while Wolfgang was composing. He asked others to write him jocose letters, in order to divert him. The musical genius and the inner man were ripening side by side. At the age of fifteen he had the maturity of a full-grown youth.

Even now the chords of his nature, which lent to his melodies that most fervid of tones which we think we hear even when only Mozart’s name is mentioned, those tender feelings of the heart which made him above all the minstrel of love, are heard in the soft vibrations of his music. In his hearty attachment to his mother and sister, we see the development of what the family-friend already mentioned has told us of his innate craving for affection when only four years old. His little postscripts to his father’s letters about this journey are delightful reading. He never forgets the dear ones at home. He inquires about each one in turn; and even the “weighty and lofty thoughts of Italy,” where he was frequently “distracted by mere business,” do not keep him from doing so. He tells his mamma he kisses her hands a billion times, and Nannerl that he kisses her “cheek, nose, mouth and neck.” On post-days, he goes on, “everything tastes better,” and only the abundance of his bantering in these notes preserved in the Mozarteum can give any idea of his overflowing tenderness for his sweet sister.