It is as difficult to call up in the fancy a picture of a suffering Mozart as a merry Beethoven. The effect of melancholy hours is scarcely to be found in Mozart's music. When he composed,—i.e. according to his own expression "speculated" while walking up and down revolving musical ideas in his mind and forming them into orderly compositions, so that the subsequent transcription was a mechanical occupation which required but little effort,—he was transported to the realm of tones, far from the miseries of this world. Nor would his happy disposition permit him long to remain under the influence of grief and care. None of the letters which sound notes of despair lacks a jest in which the writer forcibly tears himself away from his gloomy thoughts. His sufferings came to him from without; the fate of a Beethoven was spared him. Others brought him pain,—his rivals through envy, the Archbishop through malevolence, the Emperor through ignorance. Sufferings of this character challenged opposition and called out his powers, presenting to us a Mozart full of temperament and capable of measuring himself with any opponent.
He never lost hope even when hope seemed most deceptive. It is therefore impossible to speak of a suffering Mozart in the sense that we speak of a suffering Beethoven; fate was kind even at his death, which was preceded by but a brief illness.
215. "I am still full of gall!…Three times this—I do not know what to call him—has assailed me to my face with impertinence and abuse of a kind that I did not want to write down, my best of fathers, and I did not immediately avenge the insult because I thought of you. He called me a wretch (Buben), a licentious fellow, told me to get out and I—suffered it all, feeling that not only my honor but yours as well was attacked; but,—it was your wish,—I held my tongue."
(Vienna, May 9, 1781, to his father, who had heard with deep concern of the treatment which his son was enduring at the hands of the Archbishop of Salzburg, and who feared for his own position. At the close of the letter Mozart writes: "I want to hear nothing more about Salzburg; I hate the archbishop to the verge of madness.")
216. "The edifying things which the Archbishop said to me in the three audiences, particularly in the last, and what I have again been told by this glorious man of God, had so admirable a physical effect on me that I had to leave the opera in the evening in the middle of the first act, go home, and to bed. I was in a fever, my whole body trembled, and I reeled like a drunken man in the street. The next day, yesterday, I remained at home and all forenoon in bed because I had taken the tamarind water."
(Vienna, May 12, 1781, to his father. The catastrophe between Mozart and the archbishop is approaching.)
217. "Twice the Archbishop gave me the grossest impertinences and I answered not a word; more, I played for him with the same zeal as if nothing had happened. Instead of recognizing the honesty of my service and my desire to please him at the moment when I was expecting something very different, he begins a third tirade in the most despicable manner in the world."
(Vienna, June 13, 1781, to his father. See the chapter
"Self-Respect and Honor.")
218. "All the world asserts that by my braggadocio and criticisms I have made enemies of the professional musicians! Which world? Presumably that of Salzburg, for anybody living in Vienna sees and hears differently; there is my answer."
(Vienna, July 31, to his father, who had sent Mozart what the latter called "so indifferent and cold a letter," when informed by his son of the great success of his opera, "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail." As on previous occasions Salzburg talebearers had been busying themselves.)