Life of Mozart

by Ludwig Nohl

But it was not long before he discovered beauty in others than his sister. His young eye caught sight of the prime donne and pretty ballet-dancers of Italy; but, with the fair ones, he had formed a more intimate personal acquaintance in Salzburg, where his sister had friends of her own sex. “I had a great deal to say to my sister, but what I had to say is known only to God and myself,” he wrote from Italy; and shortly after, still more suggestively: “What you have promised me, my dear (—— you know you are my dear one), don’t fail to do, I pray you. I shall surely be obliged to you.” This was during his second journey to Rome, when his short and restful stay in his beautiful home allowed his heart, so to speak, repose, and afforded him leisure to busy himself with other matters than music. “I implore thee, let me know about the other one, where there is no other one; you understand me, and I need say no more,” he adds, evidently desiring to cover something up, and what could there be for him to cover up but a tender feeling of the heart? Later he adds: “I hope that you have been to see the young lady; you know which one I mean. I beg of you when you see her to pay her a compliment for me.” There certainly is nothing more easy of explanation than that the young artist was attracted by the fair sex, whose admiration for him was so unbounded. Nothing so charms woman as fame and greatness, especially when fame and greatness have an intellectual foundation; and was not the young cavaliere filarmonico famed beyond all men living? His mere appearance, indeed, made no very powerful impression at the first sight. He was small of stature. According to the account given of himself, in one of his letters, he was “brought up on water.” His head seemed to be too large for his body, the result of an abundance of beautiful flaxen hair; and only his natural ease and grace of movement made him—especially in the costume of the past century—irresistibly charming, an effect which was heightened by the thoughtful expression of his beautiful greyish-blue eyes. But when this excitable young man, in his velvet coat, knee-breeches, silk stockings, buckled shoes, galoon-hat and sword, was thought of as the celebrated maestro, whose fame was only beginning; or when he was heard play and seen producing his own compositions, the impression was changed, and the place of mere physical attraction was taken by the unspeakable charm of the mind and heart, by the spell-binding, mysterious force of creative genius. But woman loves the power of genius, and surrenders her entire self to it. A kiss from pretty lips when he had written a new minuet, he considered a beautiful “present,” and kisses do not come singly.

But now little time remained to him for the half-innocent, half-sensuous idyls of the eighteenth century. He was again engaged for the first season of the year, 1773, in Milan, this time for a consideration of one hundred and thirty ducats, and in the meantime, he received another commission, probably in consequence of the reputation of “Mithridates,” to help celebrate the marriage of a son of the Empress Maria Theresa, in Milan, by means of a serenata, i. e., a kind of little opera. This was in the summer of 1771, and in August both father and son were in Milan again. The subject-matter was Ascanius in Alba. But flattery for the noble couple chiefly filled this theatrical sketch, a fact which by no means kept Wolfgang from doing his best. He writes: “Over us is a violinist, under us another, next us a singing master, and in the only remaining room a hautboyist, all of which makes composing very pleasant, and suggests many ideas to one.” These ideas must have been of great consequence to him at this time, because his rival, the composer of the principal opera, was Hasse, the then most celebrated composer in Italy, the “dear Saxon,” as the Italians called him, a man who had presented them with so many hundred operas that he could not count them himself. The libretto did not reach him until the end of August, and the festivities were to take place in October. “And then my fingers pain me so from writing,” he says, in an exculpatory way, after four weeks, to Nannerl. There were now wanting only two arias. Thanks to the elasticity of his nature, he preserved his health; but the fact that he “was always sleepy” shows how very hard he had worked, nay, that he had worked too hard.

He did not fail of success. The noble couple set an example to the public by their approbation, and the father writes: “I am sorry; Wolfgang’s serenata has so badly beaten Hasse’s opera that I cannot describe it.” And it is said that the latter, with a delightful absence of envy, exclaimed: “That boy will send us all to oblivion.” How true was the prophecy, and how many, in all ages will not this same Mozart eclipse by his refulgence!

The play was, contrary to custom, repeated several times, and on this occasion a diamond snuff-box from the archduke was added to the honorarium usually paid.

In December, 1771, we find the Mozarts at home once more, but enjoying the pleasant prospect of new laurels in Italy. It was well that there was such a prospect before them; for the death of Archbishop Sigismund placed a new master over them. His successor, Jerome, whose election was received with feelings anything but joyful, was destined to leave a sad page in Mozart’s life.

The citizens of Salzburg entrusted their celebrated young fellow-townsman with the composition of the music for the occasion of their demonstration of respect to the new archbishop. It was the “Dream of Scipio.” Besides this, there was little in Salzburg to be done. In the capacity of concertmeister to the archbishop, to which position he was appointed after his success in Italy, he had to write the music for the court and for the cathedral. In those days people were ever craving for something new in their favorite art; and while Mozart’s masses, yielding to the theatrical tendency of the time, like those of Haydn, have more of a pleasant play in them than of church gravity, and are therefore of less importance to posterity, the composition of symphonies carried him into a department which, created by Haydn, was destined, through Mozart, to lead to that mighty phenomenon, Beethoven.

The form of the sonata, which is the basis of the symphony, also had originated in consequence of a more and more poetico-musical development from the suite which introduced a series of dances, the allemande being the first. And as the dance itself is a direct imitation of natural human movement and passion, the sonata and symphony, together with the quartette, became more and more, the expression of the personal experience and feelings of the composer, who, the more deeply and grandly he conceived the world, was able to give of it, in his music, a more beautiful and ravishing picture—an art which afterwards reached in Beethoven’s symphonies a height unsurpassed as yet.

What poetry and prose were for the opera, the joy and the sorrow of life felt by the composer himself were for the piano and the orchestra—the impulse and poetical bait to musical composition. We shall soon find Mozart’s life reflected in his art, and it is this that makes the biography of the man so peculiarly attractive and so full of meaning.

In November, 1772, we find our two travelers in Italy again. The opera of Silla had to be written for Milan. And now, what the father desired above all, was to see his son anchored there in a permanent position. He first made some arrangements in Florence. He could not feel at home in Salzburg after the appointment of the new archbishop. The latter was, indeed, friendly to intellectual progress, and opposed to the gloomy rule of the priesthood, but, at the same time, he was himself too much of a tyrant to be able to bless his people by diffusing prosperity among them, or to win their love. His mode of government could not be acceptable to the independent spirit of the father any more than to the liberty-loving genius of the son; and this all the more, as he had no real feeling for, or understanding of art, or of the sovereign rule of genius. And so it happened, that the father, even during his journey, found it hard to banish what he called his “Salzburg thoughts” from his mind. He was disappointed because he accomplished nothing in Florence, and this added to his trouble.

But he now met with compensation in Milan. In his letters, Wolfgang says: “It is impossible for me to write much, because, in the first place, I know nothing to write about, and in the second place, I do not know what I am writing; for all my thoughts are with my opera, and I am in danger of writing a whole aria to you instead of a letter.” The performers were very well satisfied this time too, and what an effect the work must have produced is attested by a mishap which occurred to the principal male voice. He had unwittingly provoked the prima donna to a fit of laughter, which confused him so much that he began to gesticulate himself in a most unmannerly way. The audience, whose patience had been taxed to the utmost by being obliged to wait for the archduke, who lived in the city, caught the contagion, and began to laugh likewise. Spite of this, the opera proved victoriously successful the first time it was performed, and was repeated more than twenty times.