During his Berlin journey Mozart had visited Leipzig and played upon the organ of St. Thomas’ Church. His masterly performance there so astonished the organist, Doles, that, as he said, he thought the spirit of his predecessor, Johann Sebastian Bach, had been reincarnated. It is significant how thus late in life Bach’s influence opened new vistas to Mozart—for he had probably known so far only the Leipzig master’s clavier compositions. It is related how, after a performance of a cantata in his honor, he was profoundly moved and, spreading the parts out on the organ bench, became immersed in deep study. The result is evident in his compositions of the last two years. During the last, 1791, he wrote La clemenza di Tito, another opera seria, for Prague, and his last and greatest German opera, Die Zauberflöte, for Vienna. The Requiem, by some considered the crowning work of his genius, was his last effort; he did not live to finish it. He died on December 5th, 1791, in abject misery, while the ‘Magic Flute’ was being played to crowded houses night after night on the outskirts of Vienna. The profits from the work meantime accrued to the benefit of the manager, Schikaneder, the ‘friend’ whom Mozart had helped out of difficulties by writing it. Mozart was buried in a common grave and the spot has remained unknown to this day.
Thus, briefly, ran the life course of one of the greatest and, without question, the most gifted of musicians the world has seen. Within the short space of thirty-six years he was able to produce an almost countless series of works, the best of which still beguile us after a century and a half into unqualified admiration. They have lost none of their freshness and vitality, and it is even safe to say that they are better appreciated now than in Mozart’s own day. The tender fragrant loveliness of his melodies, the caressing grace of his cadences will always remain irresistible; in sheer beauty, in pure musical essence, we shall not go beyond them. Much might be said of the eternal influence of Mozart on the latter-day disciples—we need only call to mind Weber, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and Richard Strauss, whose own work is a frank and worthy tribute to his memory.
It has been said that Mozart’s is the only music sufficient unto itself, requiring no elucidation, no ‘program’ whatever. Hence its appeal is the most immediate as well as the most general. It has that impersonal charm which contrives to ingratiate itself with personalities ever so remote, and to accommodate itself to every mood. Yet a profoundly human character lies at the bottom of it all. Mozart the simple, childlike, ingenuous, and generous; or Mozart the witty, full of abandon, of frank drollery and good humor. With what fortitude he bore poignant grief and incessant disappointment, how he submitted to indignities for the sake of others, is well known. But every attack upon his artistic integrity he met with stern reproof, and through trial and misery he held steadfast to his ideal as an artist. To Hoffmeister, the publisher, demanding more ‘salable’ music, he writes that he prefers to starve; Schikaneder, successful in making the master’s talent subserve his own ends, gets no concession to the low taste of his motley audience. Inspired with the divinity of his mission, he subordinates his own welfare to that one end, and he breathes his last in the feverish labor over his final great task, the Requiem, ‘his own requiem,’ as he predicted.
V
We have endeavored to point out in our brief sketch of Mozart’s life the chief influences to which he was exposed. The extent to which he assimilated and developed the various elements thus absorbed must determine his place in musical history. ‘The history of every art,’ says Mr. W. H. Hadow, ‘shows a continuous interaction between form and content. The artist finds himself confronted with a double problem: what is the fittest to say, and what is the fittest manner of saying it.... As a rule, one generation is mainly occupied with questions of design, another takes up the scheme and brings new emotional force to bear upon it, and thus the old outlines stretch and waver, the old rules become inadequate, and the form itself, grown more flexible through a fuller vitality, once more asserts its claim and attains a fuller organization.’ The generation preceding Mozart and Haydn had settled for the time being the question of form. Haydn said, as it were, the last word in determining the design, applying it in the most diverse ways and pointing the road to further development. Mozart found it ‘sufficient to his needs and set himself to fill it with a most varied content of melodic invention.’ The analogy drawn by Mr. Hadow between the Greek drama and the classic forms of music is particularly apt: in both the ‘plot’ is constructed in advance and remains ever the same; the artist is left free to apply his genius to the poetic interpretation of situations, the delineation of character, the beauty of rhythm and verse. It was in these things that Mozart excelled. He brought nothing essentially new, but, by virtue of his consummate genius, he endowed the symphonic forms as he found them with a hitherto unequalled depth and force of expression, an individuality so indefinable that we can describe it only as ‘Mozartian.’ In no sense was Mozart a reformer. In opera, unlike Gluck, he did not find his limitations irksome, but knew how to achieve within these limitations an ideal of dramatic truth without detracting from the quality of his musical essence. His style is as independent of psychology as it is of formal interpretation, it is ‘sufficient unto itself,’ ineffable in its beauty, irresistible in its charm. This utter independence and self-sufficiency of style enabled him to use with equal success the vocal and instrumental idioms. And in his work we actually see an assimilation of the two styles and an interchange of their individual elements.
Mozart’s inspiration was primarily a melodic one and for that reason we see him purposely subordinating the harmonic substructure and often reducing it to its simplest terms. If he employs at times figures of accompaniment which are obvious and even trite, it is done with an evident purpose to throw into relief the individuality of his melodies, those rich broideries and graceful arabesques which Mozart knew how to weave about a simple ‘tonic and dominant.’ No composer ever achieved such variety within so limited a harmonic range. On the other hand, it has been truthfully said that Mozart was the greatest polyphonist between Bach and Brahms. He was able to make the most learned use of contrapuntal devices when occasion demanded, but never in the use of these devices did he descend to dry formalism. His incidental use of counterpoint often produces the most telling effects; the accentuation of a motive by imitation, a caressing counter-melody to add poignancy to an expressive phrase, the reciprocal germination of musical ideas, all these he applies with consummate science and without ever sacrificing ingenuous spontaneity. Again in his harmonic texture there are moments of daring which perplexed his contemporaries and even to-day are open to dispute. The sudden injection of a dissonant note into an apparently tranquil harmonic relation, such as in the famous C-major Quartet, which aroused such violent discussion when first heard, or in the first Allegro theme of the Don Giovanni overture, is his particularly favorite way of introducing ‘color.’
This chromaticism of Mozart’s is one of the striking differences between his music and Haydn’s. ‘Haydn makes his richest point of color by sheer abrupt modulation; Mozart by iridescent chromatic motion within the limits of a clearly defined harmonic sequence.’[45] In drawing a further comparison between the two Viennese masters we find in Haydn a greater simplicity and directness of expression, a more unadorned, unhesitating utterance, as against Mozart, to whom perfectly chiselled phrases, a polished, graceful manner of speech are second nature, whether his mood is gay or sad, his emotions careless or deep. The distinction is aptly illustrated by the juxtaposition of the following two themes quoted in Vol. IV of the ‘Oxford History of Music.’
Haydn: Finale of Quartet in G (Op. 33, N.º 5)