He always endeavoured to pass the summer in the country or where there was a garden; it is well known that it was chiefly in a garden that he wrote "Don Juan" in Prague and the "Zauberflöte" in Vienna; and in 1758, having taken a country residence for the summer, he wrote to Puchberg (June 27): "I have done more in the ten days that I have been here than I should have done in two months anywhere else." This love of nature is not surprising in a man of Mozart's healthy tone of mind, who had been brought up amid the beautiful surroundings of Salzburg. But he was by no means wedded to these, or to any other influences from without. Wherever he was he was incessantly occupied with musical thoughts and labours. "You know," he writes to his father (Vol. II., p. 43), "that I am, so to speak, steeped in music—that it is in my mind the whole day, and that I love to dream, to study, to reflect upon it." Those who knew him well could not fail to be aware of this. His sister-in-law Sophie describes him well:[ 13 ]—
He was always good-humoured, but thoughtful even in his best moods, looking one straight in the face, and always speaking with reflection, whether the talk was grave or gay; and yet he seemed always to be carrying on a deeper train of thought. Even when he was washing his MOZART AS AN ARTIST. hands in the morning, he never stood still, but walked up and down the room humming, and buried in thought. At table he would often twist up a corner of the table-cloth, and rub his upper lip with it, without appearing in the least to know what he was doing, and he sometimes made extraordinary grimaces with his mouth. His hands and feet were in continual motion, and he was always strumming on something—his hat, his watch-fob, the table, the chairs, as if they were the clavier.
Karajan tells me that his barber used to relate in after-years how difficult it was to dress his hair, since he never would sit still; every moment an idea would occur to him, and he would run to the clavier, the barber after him, hair-ribbon in hand. We have already observed that musical ideas occupied him during all bodily exercises, such as riding, bowls, and billiard-playing; his timidity in riding may have arisen from the frequent distraction of his attention from the management of his horse. General conversation, as Frau Haibl says, did not disturb his mental labours, and his brother-in-law Lange was particularly struck by the fact that when he was engaged on his most important works he took more than his usual share in any light or jesting talk that was going on; this resulted from an involuntary impulse to find a counterpoise for his intellectual activity. Even when music was going on, provided it did not particularly interest him, he had the power of carrying on his own musical thoughts, and of ignoring the music he heard, as completely as any other disturbance. His elder sister-in-law, Frau Hofer, told Neukomm that sometimes at the opera Mozart's friends could tell by the restless movements of his hands, by his look, and the way in which he moved his lips, as if singing or whistling, that he was entirely engrossed by his internal musical activity.
The abstraction and absorption of men of genius appears natural and comprehensible, and is respected even by those whose intellectual activity is not concentrated in the same way. But few are able to enter into the workings of a mind which is ever conceiving and shaping ideas in its hidden recesses, without severing its connection with what is going on around; such a mind has a sort of double existence, and appears able to follow two paths leading in different MENTAL LABOUR AND PREOCCUPATION. directions at the same time. If, as sometimes happens, the outer activity fails to keep pace with the inner, a superficial observer possesses himself of this fact, and makes it the basis of his judgments, leaving out of account the inner and true activity of which the outer is but a manifestation. Even Mozart's father failed to comprehend his peculiar organisation, and refused to recognise any results of his labour but those which were written down, and which had thus, after a long and uninterrupted chain of intellectual exertions, received the seal of their artistic completion. To Mozart himself, on the contrary, this part of his labour seemed unimportant and even burdensome, his productive powers having little share in it. He postponed it as long as possible, not only because he wished to retain his power over the work which occupied him, until it was fully matured in his own mind, but also because he took far more pleasure in creating than in transcribing. It cannot be denied that he sometimes postponed this least congenial part of his task too long. To the methodical man of business this appears all the more blamable, since Mozart was always able at need to execute commissions accurately and punctually; to speak of idleness, or of forced industry, shows complete ignorance of the man. It is true that Mozart laid himself open to the imputation by the speed at which he wrote when he actually set to work; those who observed this could not conceive why a man with such "gifts of Providence" did not "compose," as people say, from morning to night. His wife said truly:[ 14 ] "The greater industry of his later years was merely apparent, because he wrote down more. He was always working in his head, his mind was in constant motion, and one may say that he never ceased composing." Although his wife was constantly called on by his admirers to urge him to work, she considered it her duty far oftener to restrain and moderate his activity.
The wonderful harmony of different artistic qualities in Mozart, which Rossini expressed so finely by saying that Mozart was the only musician who had as much genius as MOZART AS AN ARTIST. knowledge and as much knowledge as genius, may be traced in many particulars. The more subordinate power of grasping the idea of a strange composition at a glance, and of executing it on the spot, he possessed as a matter of course. His playing at sight has already been noted many times (Vol. I., pp. 37, log, 363, 365), and his criticism of Sterkel and Vogler show his own view of the matter (Vol. I., p. 387). "It must be," Umlauf said, as Mozart writes to his father (October 6, 1782), "that Mozart has the devil in his head and his fingers—he played my opera, which is so badly written that even I cannot read it, as if he had composed it himself." To this power of seeing at a glance the details and whole conception of a musical work was added a marvellous memory, capable of retaining all that was so seen. As a boy he gave proof of this by his transcription of the Miserere (Vol. I., p. 119); in later years he used to play his concertos by heart when he was travelling; not merely one or another that he had practised, but any or all; he was known to play a concerto from memory that he had not seen for long, because he had forgotten to bring the principal part.[ 15 ] At Prague he wrote the trumpet and drum parts of the second finale in "Don Juan" without a score, brought them himself into the orchestra, and showed the performers a place where there would certainly be a mistake, only he could not say whether there would be four bars too much or too little; the mistake was found just as he had said.[ 16 ] But this proves only the power of remembering what was finished and impressed on the mind. A more remarkable instance of musical memory was his writing only the violin part of a sonata for piano and violin to perform with Strinasacchi (Vol. II., p. 337), and playing the piano part from his head without ever having heard the piece; or writing a composition at once in parts, without having scored it (Vol. II., p. 366). This displays the astonishing clearness and precision with which he grasped and retained compositions he MENTAL POWERS AND METHOD. had once thought out, even in their minutest details, and we can now account for the rapidity of his transcription from the fact of its being mere transcription. External distractions, so far from annoying him, served to divert his mind during the mechanical labour with his pen.[ 17 ] He made Constanze tell him stories, or played bowls; his wife tells us herself how she was confined of her first child while he was composing the second of his quartets, dedicated to Haydn (421 K.). This was in the summer of 1783, and he sat at work in the same room where she lay; indeed, he generally worked in her room during her frequent illnesses. When she complained of pain, he would come to her to cheer and console, resuming his writing as soon as she was calm. This is a striking proof how unshackled Mozart's musical activity was by external circumstances; it is not given to many to remain so completely master of their ideas and powers during an event which would naturally appeal to the ten-derest feelings of the heart. Still more striking is his expression to his sister when he sends her the prelude and fugue before mentioned (Vol. II., p. 321). He apologises for the prelude being placed improperly after the fugue: "The reason was," he says, "that I had already composed the fugue, and wrote it down while I was thinking out the prelude."
Such mental powers as these reduced the mere writing to an almost mechanical operation; nevertheless, he did not rely so completely as he might have done on his memory, but made occasional notes for his better convenience and certainty. Rochlitz tells us, no doubt on Constanze's authority:[ 18 ]—
Mozart, when in company with his wife or those who put no restraint on him, and especially during his frequent carriage journeys, used not only to exercise his fancy by the invention of new melodies, but occupied his intellect and feeling in arranging and elaborating such melodies, often humming or singing aloud, growing red in the face and suffering no interruption. The briefest indications in black and white sufficed to preserve these studies in his memory; his easily kindled imagination, his complete mastery of the resources of his art, and his extraordinary MOZART AS AN ARTIST. musical memory needed little aid; he used to keep scraps of music paper at hand (when travelling, in the side-pocket of the carriage) for such fragmentary notes and reminders;[ 19 ] these scraps,carefully preserved in a case, were a sort of journal of his travels to him, and the whole proceeding had a sort of sacredness to his mind which made him very averse to any interference with it.
These notes, having served their purpose, seem to have been thought unworthy of preservation; the few that remain are interesting and suggestive. The sketch which is given in facsimile of Denis's ode (Vol. II., p. 370) gives an outline of the whole work in writing so hasty as scarcely to be recognised for Mozart's. The voice part is written entire as well as the bass of the accompaniment, and the other parts have all their characteristics so clearly noted that there could be no doubt as to their further elaboration. It is evident that the composition was finished in Mozart's brain when the sketch was written, so that it does not appear as one attempt among several to give shape to his conception, but as an aid to the memory when it should be necessary to write down the whole in detail. Similar, but still slighter, is the sketch for one of the songs in "L' Oca del Cairo," which is given in facsimile in Jul. André's edition in pianoforte score. Here again the voice part is given from beginning to end, but the bass is not shown, and the accompaniment only here and there (once with the direction that the clarinets are to be used). The piece was simple enough to require very slight reminders for its elaboration. It would not be easy to decide whether such a sketch should be considered as the result of much previous reflection and study, or whether it was the immediate fruit of a moment of inspiration.
These two sketches never having been elaborated, so far as we are aware, we can make no comparison which will show how far such sketches were modified before the completion of the work. There is considerable difference between the first hasty sketch of the terzet (5) from the "Sposo Deluso" (430 K.), which Jul. André has given in the SKETCHES. preface to his pianoforte edition, and the later elaboration of it. Nothing remains but the first motif—[See Page Image]
but so differently applied that this sketch cannot have been taken as the point of departure for the working-out, but must be considered as an earlier and rejected conception. On the other hand, the sketches for a song from "Idomeneo" (Vol. II., p. 148) and for a tenor song (420 K.) are almost identical in the voice part with the score as it stands.