19. "The cause of this fugue seeing the light of this world is my dear Constanze. Baron von Swieten, to whom I go every Sunday, let me carry home all the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach after I had played them through for him. Constanze fell in love with the fugues as soon as she had heard them; she doesn't want to hear anything but fugues, especially those of Handel and Bach. Having often heard me improvise fugues she asked me if I had never written any down, and when I said no, she gave me a good scolding, for not being willing to write the most beautiful things in music, and did not cease her begging until I had composed one for her, and so it came about. I purposely wrote the indication 'Andante maestoso,' so that it should not be played too rapidly;—for unless a fugue is played slowly the entrance of the subject will not be distinctly and clearly heard and the piece will be ineffective. As soon as I find time and opportunity I shall write five more."
(Vienna, April 20, 1782, to his sister Marianne. Cf. No. 93. [Mozart's remark that he carried home "all the works" of Handel and Bach, must, of course, be read as meaning all that were in print at the time. H.E.K.])
20. "I have no small amount of work ahead of me. By Sunday week I must have my opera arranged for military band or somebody will be ahead of me and carry away the profits; and I must also write a new symphony. How will that be possible? You have no idea how difficult it is to make such an arrangement so that it shall be adapted to wind instruments and yet lose nothing of its effect. Well, well;—I shall have to do the work at night."
(Vienna, July 20, 1782, to his father who had asked for a symphony for the Hafner family in Salzburg. The opera referred to is "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.")
21. "I was firmly resolved to write the Adagio for the clock-maker at once so that I might drop a few ducats into the hands of my dear little wife; and I began it, but was unlucky enough—because I hate such work—not to be able to finish it. I write at it every day, but have to drop it because it bores me. If the reason for its existence were not such a momentous one, rest assured I should let the thing drop. I hope, however, to force it through in time. Ah, yes! if it were a large clock-work with a sound like an organ I'd be glad to do it; but as it is the thing is made up of tiny pipes only, which sound too shrill and childish for me."
(Frankfort-on-the-Main, October 3, 1790, to his wife. "A Piece for an Organ in a Clock." [Kochel's catalogue, No. 594.] It was probably ordered by Count Deym for his Wax-works Museum on the occasion of the death of the famous Field Marshal Laudon. The dominant mood of sorrow prevails in the first movement; the Allegro is in Handel's style.)
CONCERNING THE OPERA
When he was twenty-two years old Mozart wrote to his father, "I am strongly filled with the desire to write an opera." Often does he speak of this ambition. It was, in fact, his true and individual field as the symphony was that of Beethoven. He took counsel with his father by letter touching many details in his earlier operas, wherefore we are advised about their origin, and, what is more to the purpose, about Mozart's fine aesthetic judgment. His four operatic masterpieces are imperishable, and a few words about them are in place, particularly since Mozart has left numerous and interesting comments on "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail." This first German opera he composed with the confessed purpose of substituting a work designed for the "national lyric stage" for the conventional and customary Italian opera. Despite its Hispano-Turkish color, the work is so ingenuous, so German in feeling, and above all so full of German humor that the success was unexampled, and Mozart could write to his father: "The people are daft over my opera." Here, at the very outset, Mozart's humor, the golden one of all the gifts with which Mother Nature had endowed him, was called into play. With this work German comic opera took its beginning. As has been remarked "although it has been imitated, it has never been surpassed in its musically comic effects." The delightfully Falstaffian figure of Osmin, most ingeniously characterized in the music, will create merriment for all time, and the opera acquires a new, personal and peculiarly amiable charm from the fact that we are privileged to see in the love-joy of "Belmont" and "Constanze" an image of that of the young composer and his "Stanzerl."
After "Die Entfuhrung" (1782) came "Le Nozze di Figaro" (1786), "Don Giovanni" (1787), and "Die Zauberflote" (1791). It would be a vain task to attempt to establish any internal relationship between these works. Mozart was not like Wagner, a strong personality capable of devoting a full sum of vital force to the carrying out of a chosen and approved principle. As is generally the case with geniuses, he was a child; a child led by momentary conditions; moreover, a child of the rococo period. There is, therefore, no cause of wonderment in the fact that Italian texts are again used in "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," and that another, but this time a complete German opera, does not appear until we reach "Die Zauberflote."
Nevertheless it is possible to note a development towards a climax in the four operas respecting Mozart's conception of the world. It has been denied that there is a single red thread in Mozart's life-work. Nevertheless our method of study will disclose to us an ever-growing view of human lift, and a deeper and deeper glimpse into the emotional and intellectual life of man, his aims and destiny. From the almost commonplace conditions of "Die Entfuhrung," where a rascal sings in the best of humor of first beheading and then hanging a man, we reach a plane in "The Marriage of Figaro," in which despite the refinement and mitigation of Beaumarchais's indictment we feel the revolutionary breeze freshly blowing. In "Don Giovanni" we see the individual set up in opposition to God and the world, in order that he fulfill his destiny, or live out his life, as the popular phrase goes today. Here the tremendous tragedy which lies in the story has received a musical expression quite without parallel, notwithstanding the moderation exercised in the employment of means. In "Die Zauberflote," finally, we observe the clarification which follows the fermentation. Here we breathe the pure, clear atmosphere of heaven, the atmosphere within which he can live who has freed himself from selfish desire, thus gaining internal peace, and who recognizes his ego only in the happiness and welfare of others.