What infinite variety there is within the limits of these three symphonies! The allegros, now majestic, noble; now rhythmically alert, scintillant, joyous; now full of suggestions of destiny; the andantes sometimes grave or sad, sometimes a caressing supplication followed by radiant bliss; the finales triumphant or careless, a furious presto or a mighty fugue—it is a riot of beauty and a maze of delicate dreams. But nowhere is Mozart more himself than in his minuets. The minuet was his cradle song. The first one he wrote—at four—would have set the feet of gay salons to dancing, but later they took real meaning, became alive with more than rhythm. Whether they go carelessly romping through flowery fields, full of the effervescence of youth, as in the Jupiter symphony, whether they sway languidly in sensuous rhythms or race ahead in fretful flight, with themes flitting in and out in breathless pursuit, they are always irresistible. And what balmy consolation, what sweet reassurance there lies in his ‘trios.’ Haydn gave life to the minuet; Mozart gave it beauty.
The outstanding feature, however, not only of Mozart’s symphonies, but of all his instrumental music, is its peculiarly melodic quality, the constant sensuous grace of melody regardless of rhythm or speed. Other composers had achieved a cantabile quality in slow movements, but rarely in the allegros and prestos. Pergolesi, perhaps, came nearest to Mozart in this respect and there is no doubt that that side of Mozart’s inspiration was rooted in the vocal style of the Italians. Here, then, is the point of contact between symphony and opera. Mozart is the ‘conclusion, the final result of the strong influence which operatic song had exerted upon instrumental music since the beginning of the eighteenth century.’[48] On the other hand, Mozart brought symphonic elements into the opera, in which, so far, it had been lacking; and it is safe to say that only an ‘instrumental’ composer could have accomplished what Mozart accomplished in dramatic music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
After an unfinished portrait by Josef Lange
VI
Great as were Mozart’s achievements in the field of symphonic music, his services to opera were at least as important. Recent critics, such as Kretzschmar,[49] are wont to exalt the dramatic side of his genius above any other. It is certain, at any rate, that his strongest predilection lay in that direction. Already, in 1764, his father writes from London how the eight-year-old composer ‘has his head filled’ with an idea to write a little opera for the young people of Salzburg to perform. After the return home his dramatic imagination makes him personify the parts of his counterpoint exercises as Il signor d’alto, Il marchese tenore, Il duco basso, etc. Time and again he utters ‘his dearest wish’ to write an opera. Once it is ‘rather French than German, and rather Italian than French’; another time ‘not a buffa but a seria.’ Curious enough, neither in seria nor in the purely Italian style did he attain his highest level.
But his suggestions, and much of his inspiration, came from Italy. In serious opera, Hasse, Jommelli, Paesillo, Majo, Traetto, and even minor men served him for models, and, of course, his friend Christian Bach; and Mozart never rose above their level. Lacking the qualities of a reformer he followed the models as closely as he did in other fields, but here was a form that was not adequate to his genius—too worn out and lifeless. Gluck might have helped him, but he came too late. And so it happened that Mitridate (1770), Ascanio in Albo (a ‘serenata,’ 1771), Il sogno di Scipione and Lucio Silla (1772), Il rè pastore (dramatic cantata, 1775), Idomeneo (1781), and even La Clemenza di Tito, written in his very last year, are as dead to-day as the worst of their contemporaries. But with opera buffa it was otherwise. Various influences came into play here: Piccini’s La buona figluola and (though we have no record of Mozart’s hearing it) its glorious ancestor, Pergolesi’s Serva padrona; the successes of the opéra comique, Duni, Monsigny, Grétry, even Rousseau—all these reëchoed in his imagination. And then the flexibility of the form—the thing was unlimited, capable of infinite expansion. What if it had become trite and silly—a Mozart could turn dross to gold, he could deepen a puddle into a well! This was his great achievement; what Gluck did for the opera seria he did for the buffa. He took it into realms beyond the ken of man, where its absurdities became golden dreams, its figures flesh and blood, its buffoonery divine abandon. The serious side of the story, too, became less and less parody and more and more reality, till in Don Giovanni we do not know where the point of gravity lies. He calls it a dramma giocosa, but the joke is all too real. Death, even of a profligate, has its sting.
But what a music, what a halo of sound Mozart has cast about it all. What are words of the text, after all, especially when we do not understand them? These melodies carry their own message, they cannot be sung without expression, they are expression themselves. Is there in all music a more soul-stirring beauty than that of Deh vieni non tardar (Figaro, Act II), or In diesen teuren Hallen (Magic Flute, Act II)? Or more delicious tenderness than Cherubino’s Non so più and Voi che sapete, or Don Giovanni’s serenade Deh vieni alla fenestra; or more dashing gallantry than Fin ch’an dal vino? Were duets ever written with half the grace of La ci darem la mano, in Don Giovanni, or the letter scene in Figaro? They are jewels that will continue to glow when opera itself is reduced to cinders.