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 asIl 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 abuffabut aseria.’ Curious enough, neither inserianor 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 thatMitridate(1770),Ascanio in Albo(a ‘serenata,’ 1771),Il sogno di ScipioneandLucio Silla(1772),Il rè pastore(dramatic cantata, 1775),Idomeneo(1781), and evenLa Clemenza di Tito, written in his very last year, are as dead to-day as the worst of their contemporaries. But withopera buffait was otherwise. Various influences came into play here: Piccini’sLa buona figluolaand (though we have no record of Mozart’s hearing it) its glorious ancestor, Pergolesi’sServa padrona; the successes of theopéra 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 theopera seriahe did for thebuffa. 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 inDon Giovanniwe do not know where the point of gravity lies. He calls it adramma 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, theycannotbe sung without expression, they are expression themselves. Is there in all music a more soul-stirring beauty than that ofDeh vieni non tardar(Figaro, Act II), orIn diesen teuren Hallen(Magic Flute, Act II)? Or more delicious tenderness than Cherubino’sNon so piùandVoi che sapete, or Don Giovanni’s serenadeDeh vieni alla fenestra; or more dashing gallantry thanFin ch’an dal vino? Were duets ever written with half the grace ofLa ci darem la mano, inDon Giovanni, or the letterscene inFigaro? They are jewels that will continue to glow when opera itself is reduced to cinders.
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 sceneslive, 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’sseriousoperas, now forgotten, butCosì fan tutte(1790),Le nozze di Figaro(1786), andDon 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 ofDie 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 mediocreSchweitzer (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 noMeistersinger, cries Kretzschmar, which means noFreischütz, noOberon, and noRosenkavalier! But only we of to-day can know these things. Joseph II, who had ‘ordered’ theEntführungand 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.Magicopera! Why—any opera would do. Now we know how he loved it! And now he used hisownmagic, 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 hisdeathbed 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!
TheRequiem, which Mozart composed for the most part whileZauberflötewas ‘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.’ TheRequiem, 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 celebratedAve 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 varioustimbres, all these contributed to the establishment of orchestral music as an independentbranch 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 theorchestralstyle 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 contrastinghis 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.