CIRCUMSTANCES AFFECTING CHURCH MUSIC.
The artists of a later age, who imitated and exaggerated the cramped and obsolete forms, which had been the result of many circumstances, as if they were in themselves an all-sufficient musical method, judged Mozart's works by their own standard, and found them in many respects unsatisfactory.[ 31 ]
Before condemning Mozart's readiness to adapt his compositions to external conditions, we must consider the mode of thought of the time. All art, more especially music, stood in the closest connection with the ordinary affairs of life; operas, masses, instrumental works were composed when, where, and how they were required, for particular occasions, and particular performers. Occasions of the kind were eagerly sought for, and furnished an impulse and incitement to the composer, even when they somewhat hampered his productive powers. Exaggerated as the reference to external circumstances and mechanical resources became, it formed the groundwork, rightly understood, of thorough artistic production.
The demand for church music was one that came with peculiar authority at Salzburg, since the priest who commanded it was considered as the mouthpiece of the Church; he also stood in the place of the sovereign, arranging the performances and paying for them: respect for his position was both natural and proper. Mozart was by nature easily led, so long as his deeper feelings of antagonism were not stirred; then he was firm and decided. Trained under the discipline of his father to fulfil every duty conscientiously, and to turn to the best account whatever was inevitable, he endeavoured, as long as circumstances made it advisable, to satisfy the demands of the archbishop, and to make them conducive to his own improvement.
In this he was guided by a nature so completely that of an artist as not to feel cramped or bound even by real restrictions. Composition was a joy and necessity to him, and a trifling impulse only was needed to set his poetical activity in motion; this once accomplished, external conditions served him for tools, and their just and appropriate use soon became second nature to him.
The statement often made, and for the most part with a very imperfect knowledge of the subject, that Mozart's masses are his weakest works,[ 32 ] cannot be accepted without large reservations; and we have it in our power to give a decided contradiction to Thibaut's assertion[ 33 ] that "Mozart thought little of his masses, and often when a mass was ordered, he objected that he was only made for opera. But he was offered one hundred louis d'or for every mass, and that he could not refuse; only he used to say, laughing, that he would take whatever was good in his masses and use it in his next opera."
The apparent particularity of this story is pure invention, employed, as so often happens, to give a colour to mere conjecture; and the invention is clumsy. Mozart only wrote for the church in Salzburg; in Vienna he did not compose a single mass to order, and only one, the unfinished one in C minor, on his own account. Such fees as that above mentioned never put his constancy to the test; we know that he received one hundred ducats for an opera. Again, thoughtlessness in the composition of church music is imputed to Mozart. He had strongly biassed opinions, but they were honest convictions; and his church work was always thoroughly earnest. Rochlitz tells us that at Leipzig, MOZART'S VIEWS ON CHURCH MUSIC. in conversation on church music, Mozart declared that a Protestant could not possibly conceive the associations which the services of the Church awoke in the mind of a devout Catholic, nor the powerful effect which they had on the genius of an artist.[ 34 ]
Mozart's education was calculated to make him a good Catholic; a conscientious observance of all that the Church prescribes and reverence for her usages were combined in him with a clear and penetrating intellect.[ 35 ] After his betrothal he wrote to his father (August 17, 1782), that he had heard mass and been to confession with his Constanze: "It seems to me that I have never prayed so earnestly, or confessed and communicated so devoutly as by her side—and it is the same with her."[ 36 ]
I find no trace whatever of Mozart's having looked with disdain upon church music. His way of expressing himself to Padre Martini directly disproves the assertion; he took his church music with him on his journeys, expecting to gain credit by it; and sent for some of it from Vienna that it might be heard by Van Swieten, a severe critic.