|
 The
most wonderful of all musical geniuses was born of a family of
musicians at Salzburg, in 1756; and died before completing his
36th year, worn out with excitement and intense activity, having
produced an enormous mass of works, amongst which are masterpieces
in every department of music, vocal and instrumental, and having
effected a revolution in the history of his art. The most intense
of musical geniuses was naturally the most precocious.
Johann Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the son of Leopold Mozart,
a violinist of repute, in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg.
He was reared to music almost from the cradle. At the age of
three he began to play and even to compose; at five he took part
in a public operatic performance; and at the age of six he was
exhibited as an infant prodigy in the courts of Germany. The
child grew up intensely susceptible, delicate, and precociously
acute. From the age of seven to that of seventeen the young genius
was engaged in a long series of journeys over Europe, in the
course of which, with his father and sister, he played in public
and at court in the cities of Germany, in Brussels, Paris, London
(in which they stayed fifteen months), Holland, Switzerland,
Austria, and Italy. In all of them the marvellous boy created
the utmost enthusiasm, playing on three instruments, composing
elaborate pieces, and improvising, besides exhibiting various
feats of a somewhat dubious value. At the age of fifteen he travelled
in Italy, where he produced many pieces, and was overwhelmed
with applause and distinctions. These ten years of wandering
in boyhood could not be but a terrible strain on a lad of intense
susceptibility and ardent genius; but his musical education was
by no means neglected. His father, an ambitious and able man,
of great capacity and energy, omitted no opportunity to train
the child, whom he recognised as the greatest artistic genius
of his age. And perhaps to a spirit endowed with the rapid and
unerring intuition of Mozart, such a life of movement and publicity
served to fill the mind with everything that Europe could then
produce in music.
At the age of 20 (1776), the young Wolfgang had assimilated
and exhausted everything that music had then to teach; and he
certainly had produced characteristic and lasting works in every
department of the art. In his 20th year he returned to his native
Salzburg, and worked with energy and success at a great variety
of subjects. For five years more he occupied himself partly in
foreign and German cities, both playing and composing, or in
steady work in his own native town. In 1781, at the age of 25,
he proceeded to Vienna, and there, with some journeys to other
cities and countries, the rest of his short life was passed.
In spite of enthusiastic admiration, warm friends, and royal
patrons, with his own incessant productiveness, Mozart's life
in the capital was one long struggle with poverty, jealousies,
and disappointment.
In 1781, in spite of his father's remonstrances, he married
Constance Weber, of the same family as that of the composer Carl
Maria; and, though she was a well-intentioned affectionate girl,
she was without the strength of nature or the economic habits
needed to keep the thriftless genius from troubles and want.
Their married life, indeed, was one of constant anxiety and confusion.
The young composer gained a scanty and irregular livelihood by
teaching with slight success, and performing with applause, but
with constant interruption to his own original work. He was continually
engaged in public concerts, operas, and at the palaces of the
court and nobles; but his profits were small and soon exhausted,
and he could obtain no fixed appointment. In spite of all his
efforts, and the aid of many warm friends, the greatest of musicians
was allowed to live from hand to mouth on the proceeds of occasional
lessons and chance concerts, as he himself wrote to a friend--"always
hovering between hope and anxiety." After incessant rebuffs
and amidst violent intrigues, he produced the Nozze di Figaro
in 1786: he was then thirty, and it marks the high-tide of his
genius. It was received with delight; but brought the composer
little but applause. In the following year (1787) came his masterpiece,
Don Giovanni. Both of these he conducted in person: the
success of the latter was at first doubtful in Vienna; but it
brought him a yearly salary of £80. Journeys followed to
Dresden, Berlin, Leipsic, and Frankfort; at all of which he gave
concerts which brought him nothing but fame.
In 1789 he returned to Vienna for the last time; and was absorbed
in lessons, public concerts, and composition, amidst the utmost
anxiety from his wife's illness and his own precarious income.
In 1791 he undertook his last opera, the ZAuberflöte,
or Magic Flute, and in the midst of his labours he received
the order from an unknown patron to compose a Requiem
in secret. The Clemenza di Tito, based on Metastasio's
drama, was performed with poor success, and in a week afterwards
the Zauberflöte, which was far from well received.
Chagrin, overwork, and anxiety were now telling on his body and
mind. Fainting fits succeeded, and he fell into despondency.
He told his wife that he was writing the Requiem for himself.
And his presentiment was true. It was never finished. On November
15, though visibly dying, he composed a cantata, and conducted
it himself; but he was forced to take to his bed, where he laboured
at his Requiem, consumed with fever and anxiety. On December
4th he had the score brought to his bedside, tried a passage,
singing the alto to himself; but his strength gave way: he burst
into tears, and put aside the score. But up to midnight he continued
to give directions, and was seen in delirium to be puffing his
cheeks to imitate the action of the drums. By one o'clock in
the morning (it was December 5, 1791) he was no more. Next day,
with a pauper's funeral, without music and with no friends around
the coffin, Mozart was laid in the common grave of St. Marx churchyard,
at Vienna. Research has failed to identify the exact spot, nor
can his bones be found. So ended the greatest of musicians, at
the age of 35.
Mozart was very short, with a pleasant but somewhat feeble
countenance, beautiful hands and feet, hair and eyes; but his
appearance was far from impressive. He was affectionate, generous,
sociable, joyous, and sympathetic; but at the same time careless,
weak, improvident, and not uniformly abstemious. As a person
he has little to recommend him except a childlike simplicity
and lovable nature; but his genius is one of the most distinct
in human history. He has been well compared with Raphael, inasmuch
as they two of all artists have lived in one unbroken life of
beauty, and have clothed with instinctive grace every side of
their art and life. It is the peculiar gift of Mozart to have
left to the world abiding and superb works in every one of the
forms of music--song, sonata, concerto, symphony, mass, and opera.
In his instrumental pieces he greatly advanced the science, and
opened to it new fields. In song he is acknowledged as supreme.
No other master has left an equal number of exquisite airs of
which the world has never tired. In symphony and in mass he has
been equalled or surpassed only by Beethoven
and Bach; but in opera he is acknowledged to have produced the
perfect type.
In musical art the test of power to impress the imagination
of numbers in various ages is decisive. The philosopher, the
man of science, the inventor, can produce his vast social efforts,
indirectly through the medium of other minds. It is enough that
Aristotle, Kepler, Newton,
Descartes, Gutenberg, are followed by competent minds who can
give to posterity the results of their work. Even in poetry,
it is enough that Æschylus
and Dante have given to mankind eternal types of tragedy and
sacred poem, which the masses of men know only by repute. But
in music the business is to delight, to touch the soul, and to
elevate the spirit; and its effects can be indirectly extended
in a much less degree. It is not the business of musical creation
to astonish a coterie or to delight vurtuosi. When in art men
talk of "learning," "profundity," and "subjective
consciousness," we know that they are passing into the field
of abstract science, not of concrete expression. Music must rouse
enthusiasm throughout ages. Judged by this test, the supremacy
of Mozart is plain. Those who would place beside him or above
him Bach, Handel, and Beethoven are still amongst his passionate
devotees. Mozart is, to all who love pure melody, without a rival;
and, to those who prefer elaborate harmony, he is not second.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
|
