CHAPTER XV. EARLY MANHOOD.
OUR examination of the development of Mozart's youthful genius, as it is to be traced in the multiplicity and variety of his studies, may fitly be concluded by a rapid survey of what he had accomplished and the position which he held at his entry into manhood.
At twenty-one years of age he could hold his own with the first masters of his time as a performer on the clavier, the organ, and the violin, and his powers as an executant were far surpassed by his accomplishments in every branch of composition. Remembering his numerous and successful contributions to theatrical music in serious and comic operas, to church music of every kind and description, to instrumental music, both concerted and solo, we are amazed at the ease and fertility of his producing powers not less than at the steady perseverance and earnestness of his studies. He never begins at random and breaks off short, never yields to chance impulses, to be abandoned before their object is attained; his will is always consciously fixed on a definite end, and to that end he bends all the force and energy of his mind.
No small share of the merit of this happy development EARLY MANHOOD. must be accorded to his father, whose careful and well-digested educational plan, as earnest and conscientious as it was far-seeing and full of love, counteracted the son's easy and excitable nature, and concentrated his whole strength on his artistic cultivation. But the greatest share, after all, falls to the admirable organisation of Mozart himself. His nature was so genuinely artistic that musical perfection was the very germ of that inner being of which his works were the natural and inevitable expression.
The precocity of his talent, which had produced these works at an age when most minds are only beginning to put their thoughts into articulate form, had in it nothing forced, strained, or disturbed; he seized instinctively on what was in harmony with his genius, absorbed it completely, and made it the stepping-stone to his upward progress.
We have seen how he laboured to become absolute master of every kind of form in his art, and how, step by step, his labours were rewarded. But no amount of external readiness and skill would satisfy him unless he could also give due expression to what moved his innermost soul, and impelled him to production. And so it is that even in his earliest works we find no opposition between their form and their substance; so it is that they are always a whole—at first insignificant enough both in substance and treatment, but still a whole—contained in a definite expression of artistic form. Looking back at the history of an art which has been begotten and fostered by any nation, we see how it is now favoured, now hindered, by external circumstances, how it strives and struggles through the long ages, possessing itself here by fits and starts, there by easy transitions, of all the means and forms necessary for its perfect practice. When at last the spiritual and intellectual life of the nation has become free and impelled to artistic activity, the great master arises, who, disposing at will of the inheritance of knowledge and genius bequeathed to him by his fathers, accomplishes the highest task of art in his representations of ideal beauty. The glorious contemplation of the organic development of a gifted nature, turning all to good account, FAMILY LIFE IN SALZBURG. and rejecting what impedes its growth so soon as it has served its turn, is open for us in Mozart. To him it was given to master the external conditions of his art on every side without injury to his individuality and creative force. Artist and man grew together; the deeper the passion and the more intense the emotion, the more grand and impressive became the forms in which they were embodied. And it is in this that consists the successful cultivation of any art in youth: in this mastery of the means whereby the man in his maturity makes his genius felt without apparent effort. Whatever study and discipline could attain, Mozart had attained before he left Salzburg; it was time that he should emerge from his narrow surroundings, that he should win freedom and independence, both as a man and an artist, by contact with the world.
The position held by Mozart at Salzburg, disproportionate alike to his performances and their promise, could not but fail to satisfy him as soon as he became aware of his own powers.
His life would have been simply unendurable had it not been for the healthy family life which had been from earliest childhood the foundation of his moral and social existence.
He grew up in an atmosphere of conjugal and parental affection, of sincere religion and conscientious morality, and of well-ordered economy, which could not fail in its effect on his character. "After God, papa comes," was his motto as a boy and as a man; it was the keynote of the whole household, and we have seen, and shall see further, how fully Leopold Mozart deserved the trust reposed in him.
It was absolute confidence, not timid fear, which bound wife and children to him, and candour and truth ruled all the family intercourse. Not only the parents and children, but the brother and sister, were devoted to each other; the similarity of their talents, far from exciting emulation or jealousy, only bound them closer together; the sister witnessed the brilliant successes of her younger brother with pure delight, and bore his teasing with unfailing good-humour, sure, in her turn, of his ready and hearty sympathy in her joys and sorrows, whether great or small. Such a true EARLY MANHOOD. family life as this, in which the servants[ 1 ] and even the pet animals[ 2 ] had their share, became all the firmer and heartier in proportion as circumstances narrowed the circle composing it.
