56. "Do not wonder at me; it was not a caprice. I noticed that most of the musicians were old men. There would have been no end of dragging if I had not first driven them into the fire and made them angry. Out of pure rage they did their best."
(Reported by Rochlitz. Mozart was rehearsing the Allegro of one of his symphonies in Leipsic. He worked up such a fit of anger that he stamped his foot and broke one of his shoe-laces. His anger fled and he broke into a merry laugh.)
57. "Right! That's the way to shriek."
(At a rehearsal of "Don Giovanni" the representative of Zerlina did not act realistically enough to suit Mozart. Thereupon he went unnoticed on the stage and at the repetition of the scene grabbed the singer so rudely and unexpectedly that she involuntarily uttered the shriek which the scene called for. [The singer was Teresa Bondini, the place Prague, and the time before the first performance of the opera which took place on October 29, 1787. H.E.K.])
TOUCHING MUSICAL PERFORMANCES
58. "Herr Stein sees and hears that I am more of a player than Beecke,—that without making grimaces of any kind I play so expressively that, according to his own confession, no one shows off his pianoforte as well as I. That I always remain strictly in time surprises every one; they can not understand that the left hand should not in the least be concerned in a tempo rubato. When they play the left hand always follows."
(Augsburg, October 23, 1777, to his father. [We have here a suggestion of the tempo rubato as played by Chopin according to the testimony of Mikuli, who said that no matter how free Chopin was either in melody or arabesque with his right hand, the left always adhered strictly to the time. Mozart learned the principle from his father who in his method for the violin condemned the accompanists who spoiled the tempo rubato of an artist by waiting to follow him. H.E.K.])
59. "Whoever can see and hear her (the daughter of Stein) play without laughing must be a stone (Stein) like her father. She sits opposite the treble instead of in the middle of the instrument, so that there may be greater opportunities for swaying about and making grimaces. Then she rolls up her eyes and smirks. If a passage occurs twice it is played slower the second time; if three times, still slower. When a passage comes up goes the arm, and if there is to be an emphasis it must come from the arm, heavily and clumsily, not from the fingers. But the best of all is that when there comes a passage (which ought to flow like oil) in which there necessarily occurs a change of fingers, there is no need of taking care; when the time comes you stop, lift the hand and nonchalantly begin again. This helps one the better to catch a false note, and the effect is frequently curious."
(Augsburg, October 23, 1777. The letter is to his father and the young woman whose playing is criticized is the little miss of eight years, Nanette Stein.)
60. "When I told Herr Stein that I would like to play on his organ and that I was passionately fond of the instrument, he marveled greatly and said: 'What, a man like you, so great a clavier player, want to play on an instrument which has no douceur, no expression, neither piano nor forte, but goes on always the same?' 'But all that signifies nothing; to me the organ is nevertheless the king of instruments.' "