These are none of them roughly sketched drafts, but fair copies of unfinished scores, the completion of which was prevented by outward circumstances. Again we meet with UNFINISHED COMPOSITIONS. confirmation of the fact that Mozart never began to write until his composition was in all essential points completed in his own mind. When only a few bars are written they offer a perfected melody, a motif only requiring its further development. When the sketches are longer they form a well-rounded, continuous whole, that is evidently interrupted, not because the continuation is not ready to hand, but because some chance has prevented its further transcription. It may be plainly discerned also that not only are detached ideas put into shape, but the different characteristic traits of execution are indicated in the usual way, so that the chief effects and capabilities of the motifs may be clearly inferred.
It appears as if Mozart, when once interrupted in the transcription of a composition, was very loth to return to it again. That he might have done so cannot for a moment be doubted. His memory was infallible; but his interest was concentrated on the work with which he was concerned at the moment. He was easily impelled to write what he had already completed in his head, and this led him naturally to the next piece of work; to return to what he considered as over and done with was contrary to his nature and habit. There is no reason whatever to suppose that any of these sketches, preliminary notes, or unfinished compositions were ever subsequently made use of. This not only testifies of the wealth and ease of his productivity, which scorned to borrow even from himself, but it proves that his creations proceeded immediately from spontaneous impulses, each having independent birth, and owing its development to the singular fecundity of his artistic nature. The individual truth and fresh life of Mozart's works are founded in this natural spring of ever-welling spontaneity. Their artistic perfection rests on the skill with which the conception is developed; but in what consists the peculiar charm and beauty which is acknowledged and enjoyed by us all as inseparable from Mozart's music is, and will ever remain, an unsolved mystery.
However carefully Mozart, as a rule, prepared his compositions before writing them, we, who are acquainted with his nature and education, can scarcely doubt that he was MOZART AS AN ARTIST. able on occasion to compose as he wrote. Such a song as that which he wrote in the tavern for Frau von Keess cannot well have been ready in his head. When he was in Prague at the beginning of 1787 he promised Count Joh. Pachta to write a country dance for a public ball, but failed to produce it. At last the Count invited him to dinner an hour earlier than his usual time, and when Mozart appeared placed all the requisite materials before him, and entreated him to compose the dance on the spot, seeing that it was required for the following day. Mozart set to work, and before dinner had composed nine country dances, scored for full orchestra (510 K), which he certainly had not prepared beforehand.[ 24 ] These and similar instances refer to easy pieces in free form; but we have already seen (Vol. II., p. 366), that he could improvise canons and double canons of an unusual kind; and what further proof can be required than reference to his marvellous gift of executive improvisation?
In composing Mozart never had recourse to improvisation. "He never came to the clavier when he was writing." says Niemetschek (p. 82); "his imagination pictured the whole work when he had once conceived it." His wife also says naïvely, but graphically: "He never composed at the clavier, but wrote music like letters, and never tried a movement until it was finished."[ 25 ] When his compositions were completed he used to rehearse them, singing or playing, with his wife or any one else who happened to come in. Kelly narrates that Mozart greeted him one evening with, "I have just written a little duet for 'Figaro.' You shall hear it." He sat down at the pianoforte, and they sang it together; it was the duet (16) "Crudel perché finora"; and Kelly often remembered with keen delight how he had first heard and sung this charming composition.[ 26 ]
In one sense, it is true, Mozart felt the necessity for an external vent to his musical ideas; and for this he had frequent recourse to his own special instrument, the clavier or pianoforte. "Even in his later years," says Niemetschek (p. 83), "he often spent half the night at the piano'[ 27 ] these were the hours that witnessed the birth of his divinest melodies. In the silent calm of night, when there was nothing to distract the mind, his imagination was kindled into supernatural activity, and revealed the wealth of melodious sound which lay dormant in his nature. At such times Mozart was all emotion and music, and unearthly harmonies flowed from his fingers! Only those who heard him then could know the depth and extent of his musical genius; his spirit, freed from every impediment, spread its bold pinions, and soared into the regions of art." It could scarcely fail to be the case that in such hours as these the subject of his improvisation should often be the work of which his mind was full at the time; but it would be a mistake to consider the improvisation as an express preparation for a subsequent work, or as the actual source from which it sprang. The improvisation was the embodiment of the mood of the moment, its form and extent were limited by the conditions of the instrument on which it was played, and it could by no means serve as an immediate foundation to a work to be performed under entirely different conditions and with a definite object.
Mozart carefully separated his time for writing and his time for improvising. To the end of his life he kept to his early habit of writing in the morning (Vol. II., p. 208), and even when he had been out the evening before, or had played far into the night, he was accustomed to begin work at six or seven o'clock; in later days, however, he indulged himself by writing in bed. After ten he usually gave lessons, and never returned to the writing-table unless there were urgent occasion. Such occasion arose often enough, it is MOZART AS AN ARTIST. true. When he was composing "Figaro," his father tells Marianne (November 11, 1785) how he postponed all his pupils until the afternoon, so as to have the whole morning free for writing, and we have already seen that he sometimes wrote in the evening, and even at night. Mozart's marvellous improvisations were not confined to hours of solitude and calm, nor to the satisfaction of his inner cravings; he showed himself equally master of the art when the impulse came from without, as was frequently the case, for people loved to hear him improvise. There is a peculiar charm in this accomplishment which, while it at once identifies the artist with his creation, requires the highest concentration of artistic energy to satisfy the varied conditions on which the production of a work of art depends. The improvising musician and his audience act and react upon each other; the latter receive the direct impression of the artist's individuality and power, and feel themselves, as it were, let into the secret of his method of producing the works which delight them, while the former is inspired to fresh efforts of genius by his consciousness of possessing the sympathy of his hearers. Mozart was always ready to play when he thought he should give pleasure, but he improvised in his best vein only "when he spied out among the crowd surrounding him one or more of the privileged few who were capable of following the flights of his genius; oblivious of all others, he addressed the elect in the hieroglyphics of his art, and poured forth for them alone his richest streams of melody."[ 28 ] We have much contemporary testimony as to the impression made by Mozart's improvising. Ambros Rieder, who died in 1851 at eighty years of age in Perch-tolsdorf—an enthusiastic musician and a worthy man—writes in his "Recollections";[ 29 ]— IMPROVISATION. In my youth I had opportunities of hearing and admiring many distinguished virtuosi, both on the violin and the harpsichord; but I cannot describe my amazement and delight in hearing the great and immortal W. A. Mozart play variations and improvise on the pianoforte before a numerous and aristocratic audience. It was to me like the gift of new senses of sight and hearing. The bold flights of his imagination into the highest regions, and again down to the very depths of the abyss, caused the greatest masters of music to be lost in amazement and delight. I still, in my old age, seem to hear the echo of these heavenly harmonies, and I go to my grave with the full conviction that there can never be another Mozart.[ 30 ]
And Niemetschek, when an old man, said to Al. Fuchs: "If I dared to pray the Almighty to grant me one more earthly joy it would be that I might once again hear Mozart improvise; those who have not heard him can form no idea of his extraordinary performances."[ 31 ] Repeated mention has already been made of Mozart's readiness and skill in playing "out of his head," as he used to call it (Vol. I., pp. 385-386). He avoided the common error of improvising virtuosi in the introduction of long cadenzas, "making a hash in the cadenza of what had sounded well enough in the concerto," as Dittersdorf says (Selbstbiogr., p. 47). A new fashion came into vogue about this time; instead of a long cadenza, a simple theme was delivered, and then varied according to every rule of the art; but Mozart used also frequently to improvise a free fantasia in his concertos (Vol. II., p. 285). Rochlitz narrates[ 32 ] how at Leipzig the audience wished to hear him alone at the close of one of his concerts, and though he had already played two concertos and an obbligato scena, and accompanied for nearly two hours—
He sat down at once, and played to the delight of all. He began simply and seriously in C minor—but it is absurd to attempt to describe it. As he was playing with special reference to the connoisseurs who were present, he brought the flights of his fancy lower and lower, and closed with the published variations on "Je suis Lindor." (Vol. II., p. 174).
