MOZART
By C. E. Bourne
(1756-1791)
Leopold Mozart was a violinist in the band of Archbishop Sigismund, the reigning Prince of Salzburg, and it was probably in compliment to his master that he bestowed on the youngest of his seven children the name of Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Sigismundus. Born on January 27, 1756, this child was destined to make the name of Mozart famous wherever music is known; and surely no more beautiful life—beautiful in itself and in the works of immortal beauty which in its short course were produced—has ever been lived by anyone of those to whom the crown of inspired singers and an enduring monument in the temple of art has been given. "Look around," was the epitaph on a great architect. "Listen," is the most fitting tribute to the wonderful genius of a Mozart.
Infant prodigies very often turn out to be nobodies in after-life. But Mozart was an exception; and though he might well have been called "the marvellous boy," his latest works—and he died at the early age of thirty-five—were undoubtedly his grandest and most perfect. He began very early to compose. One of these first attempts was a concerto so difficult that no one could play it; but the child undauntedly said, "Why, that's the very reason why it is called a concerto; people must practise it before they can play it perfectly."
Wolfgang and his sister, Nannerl, as he used to call her, had been taken by their father, in 1762, to Vienna, where the children played the piano before the Empress Maria Theresa and her husband. Little Wolfgang was here, as everywhere, perfectly at his ease, with a simplicity and childish grace that won every heart. When he had been playing for some time, he jumped without ceremony on the lap of the empress, and kissed her heartily for being so good to him. Little Marie Antoinette, her daughter, afterward the ill-fated wife of Louis XVI., and then about the same age as Wolfgang, he treated in almost the same way. He had slipped on the polished floor, to which he was unaccustomed, and the little princess had hurried forward to raise him up, on which he promptly said, "You are good; I will marry you." The empress asked why he wished this, to which he answered, "Out of gratitude; she was kind, while her sister took no notice of me" (she had not come forward to help him). After returning to Salzburg, Leopold Mozart, in the spring of 1763, took his children on a more lengthy tour to Munich, Paris, London, and The Hague, and everywhere their playing, especially Wolfgang's performances on the organ, which he had now learned, were listened to with delight and astonishment. At Heidelberg the priest of the Church of the Holy Ghost engraved on the organ the boy's name and the date of his visit, in remembrance of "this wonder of God," as he called the child. At London, old Mozart says, they were received, on April 27th, by King George III. and Queen Caroline, at the palace, and remained from six to nine o'clock. The king placed before the boy compositions of Bach and Handel, all of which he played at sight perfectly; he had also the honor of accompanying the queen in a song. "On leaving the palace," the careful father says, "we received a present of 24 guineas."
A great delight was now before him, for his father had resolved on a journey to Italy, then far more than now the land of music. How much this visit did for the young maestro it is impossible to say; he has not, like Mendelssohn, left us an "Italian Symphony," recording the impressions which that sunny spot of classic beauty had made upon him, but there can be little doubt of the great influence it had on the whole of his after-life. There are some significant words which he wrote eight years later to his father from Paris: "You must faithfully promise to let me see Italy again in order to refresh my life. I do entreat of you to confer this happiness upon me." In Mantua, Milan, Bologna (where he had the good fortune to meet the learned Padre Martini, one of the soundest musicians of his age, and for whom he ever afterward maintained a warm attachment), Florence, Rome, and Naples, the young genius was received everywhere with enthusiasm by the crowds who came to hear him. In Naples the superstitious people believed that there was magic in his playing, and pointed to a ring on his left hand as the cause of his wonderful dexterity; and it was only when he had taken this off, and gone on playing just the same, that they had to acknowledge it was simply the perfection of art.
There is something sad in contrasting these brilliant early days with the anxious times that came later on, when the great Mozart was compelled to wait in the ante-chambers of the great, dine with their lacqueys, give lessons to stupid young countesses, and write begging letters to his friends; yet, in reality, those later days, when "Don Giovanni," "Die Zauberflöte," and the "Requiem," were composed, were the truly brilliant ones. And it may be that the very greatness came, in some measure, from the sorrow and pain; that Mozart, like so many others of the world's great singers, "learnt in suffering what he taught in song."
On his return to Munich, after composing a comic opera in the Italian style, "La Finta Giardiniera," which had a great success, young Mozart, who had been very shabbily treated by Archbishop Hieronymus—of whose spiteful conduct we shall hear more hereafter—the successor of Sigismund, determined to resign his situation in the court band, and to set out on his travels again, giving concerts from place to place, and everywhere looking out for some suitable appointment that might afford him a permanent income. This time his father was refused permission to travel, and, as on his exertions depended the support of the whole family, he remained behind, while Frau Mozart, the mother, accompanied young Wolfgang. In 1777, now a young man of twenty-one, he set out upon his second great artistic tour, buoyant with hope, and with all the beautiful audacity of young genius determined to conquer the world. This time it was not the infant prodigy whom men listened to, but the matured musician and the composer of melodies sweeter than men had ever listened to before. But the tale is changed now. True, there are triumphs to be spoken of, flattery from the great, and presents sent in recompense for his marvellous playing (he tells one day of his chagrin in receiving from a certain prince a gold watch, instead of money that he sorely wanted—and, besides, he had five watches already!); but rebuffs, intrigues, and all sorts of petty machinations against him, make the tale a sadder one; and so it continued to be to the end.
From Munich—where it had been hoped that the elector would have given him an appointment at court, but he was only told to go to Italy and become famous, "it was too early yet to think about becoming a Capellmeister"—he went to Augsburg, spending some pleasant days there in the society of a cousin, Marianne, nicknamed by him Bäsle, a merry, open-hearted girl of nineteen.