The purely musical elements of opera are Mozart’s chief concern. If he gives himself wholly to that without detriment to the drama, it is only by virtue of his own extraordinary power. Mozart could not, like Gluck, make himself ‘forget that he was a musician,’ and would not if he could; yet his scenes live, his characters are more real than Gluck’s; all this despite ‘set arias,’ despite coloratura, despite everything that Gluck abolished. But in musical details he followed him; in the portrayal of mood, in painting backgrounds, and in the handling of the chorus. Gluck painted landscape, but Mozart drew portraits. In musical characterization his mastery is undisputed. Again we have no use for words; the musical accents, the contour of the phrase and its rhythm delineate the man more precisely than a sketcher’s pencil. Here once more beauty is the first law, it sheds its evening glow over all. No mere frivolity here, no dissolute roisterers, no faithless wives—Don Giovanni, the gay cavalier, becomes a ‘demon of divine daring,’ the urchin Cherubino is made the incarnation of Youth, Spring, and Love; the Countess personifies the ideal of pure womanhood; Beaumarchais, in short, becomes Mozart.
La finta semplice (1768), La finta giardiniera (1775), and some fragmentary works are, like Mozart’s serious operas, now forgotten, but Così fan tutte (1790), Le nozze di Figaro (1786), and Don Giovanni (1787) continue with unimpaired vitality as part of every respectable operatic repertoire. The same is true of his greatest German opera, Die Zauberflöte, and in a measure of Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Germany owes a debt of undying gratitude to the composer of these, for they accomplished the long-fought-for victory over the Italians. Hiller and his singspiel colleagues had tried it and failed; and so had Dittersdorf, the mediocre Schweitzer (allied to Wieland the poet), and numerous others. Now for the first time tables were turned and Italy submitted to the influence of Germany. Mozart had beaten them on their own ground and had the audacity to appropriate the spoil for his own country. Without Mozart we could have no Meistersinger, cries Kretzschmar, which means no Freischütz, no Oberon, and no Rosenkavalier! But only we of to-day can know these things. Joseph II, who had ‘ordered’ the Entführung and whose express command was necessary to bring it upon the boards, opined on the night of the première that it was ‘too beautiful for our ears, and a powerful lot of notes, my dear Mozart.’ ‘Exactly as many as are necessary, your majesty,’ retorted the composer. It was an evening of triumph, but a triumph soon forgotten; for, after a few more attempts, the lights went down on German opera—the ‘national vaudeville’—and Salieri and his crew returned with all the wailing heroines, the strutting heroes, the gruesome ghosts, and all the paraphernalia of ‘serious opera!’
However, the people, the ‘common people,’ liked Punch and Judy better, or, at least, its equivalent. ‘Magic’ opera was the vogue, the absurder the better; and Schikaneder was their man. Some eighteenth century ‘Chantecler’ had left a surplus of bird feathers on his hands—and these suggested Papageno, the ‘hero’ of another ‘magic’ opera—‘The Magic Flute.’ The foolishness of its plot is unbelievable, but Mozart was won over. Magic opera! Why—any opera would do. Now we know how he loved it! And now he used his own magic, his wonderful strains, and lo, nonsense became logic, the ‘silly mixture of fairy romance and free-masonic mysticism’ was buried under a flood of sound; Schikaneder is forgotten and Mozart stands forth in all the radiance of his glory. Let the unscrupulous manager make his fortune and catch the people’s plaudits—but think of the unspeakable joy of Mozart on his deathbed as every night he follows the performances in his imagination, act by act, piece by piece, hearing with a finer sense than human ear and dreaming of generations to come that will call him master!
The Requiem, which Mozart composed for the most part while Zauberflöte was ‘running,’ is the only ecclesiastical work which does not follow in the rut of his contemporaries. All his masses, offertories, oratorios, etc., are ‘unscrupulous adaptations of the operatic style to church music.’ The Requiem, completed by his pupil, Süssmayr, according to the master’s direction, shows all the attributes of his genius—‘deeply felt melody, masterful development, and a breadth of conception which betrays the influence of Handel.’ ‘But,’ concludes Riemann, ‘a soft, radiant glow spreading over it all reminds us of Pergolesi.’ Yes, and that influence is felt in many a measure of this work—we should be tempted to use a trite metaphor if Pergolesi’s mantle were adequate for the stature of a Mozart. As perhaps the finest example, in smaller form, of his church music we may refer the reader to the celebrated Ave verum, composed in 1791, which is reprinted in our musical supplement.
Through Haydn and Mozart orchestral music emerged strong and well defined from a long period of dim growth. Their symphonies are, so to speak, the point of confluence of many streams of musical development, most of which, it may be remarked, had their source in Italy. The cultivation of solo melody, the development of harmony, largely by practice with the figured bass, until it became part of the structure of music, the perfection of the string instruments of the viol type and of the technique in playing and writing for them, the attempts to vivify operatic music by the use of various timbres, all these contributed to the establishment of orchestral music as an independent branch of the art. The question of form had been first solved in music for keyboard instruments or for small groups of instruments and was merely adapted to the orchestra. These lines of development we have traced in previous chapters. The building up of the frame, so to speak, of orchestral music was synthetical. It had to await the perfection of the various materials which were combined to make it. This was, as we have said, a long, slow process. The symphony was evolved, not created. So, in this respect, neither Haydn nor Mozart are creators.
But once the various constituents had fallen into place, the perfected combination made clear, new and peculiar possibilities, to the cultivation of which Haydn and Mozart contributed enormously. These peculiar possibilities were in the direction of sonority and tone color. In search of these Haydn and Mozart originated the orchestral style and pointed the way for all subsequent composers. In the Haydn symphonies orchestral music first rang even and clear; in those of Mozart it was first tinged with tone colors, so exquisite, indeed, that to-day, beside the brilliant works of Wagner and Strauss, the colors still glow unfaded.
If Haydn and Mozart did not create the symphony, the excellence of their music standardized it. The blemish of conventionality and empty formalism cannot touch the excellence of their best work. Such excellence would have no power to move us were it only skill. There is genuine emotional inspiration in most of the Salomon symphonies and in the three great symphonies of Mozart. In Haydn’s music it is the simple emotion of folk songs; in Mozart’s it is more veiled and mysterious, subtle and elusive. In neither is it stormy and assertive, as in Beethoven, but it is none the less clearly felt. That is why their works endure. That is the personal touch, the special gift of each to the art. Attempts to exalt Beethoven’s greatness by contrasting his music with theirs are, in the main, unjust and lead to false conclusions. Their clarity and graceful tenderness are not less intrinsically beautiful because Beethoven had the power of the storm. Moreover, the honest critic must admit that the first two symphonies of Beethoven fall short of the artistic beauty and the real greatness of the Mozart G minor or C major. Indeed, it is to be doubted if any orchestral music can be more beautiful than Mozart’s little symphony in G minor, for that is perfect.
We find in them the fresh-morning Spring of symphonic music, when the sun is bright, the air still cool and clear, the sparkling dew still on the grass. After them a freshness has gone out of music, never to return. Never again shall we hear the husbandman whistle across the fields, nor the song of the happy youth of dreams stealing barefoot across the dewy grass.
C. S.