Chapter V (1)

1787-1791.

THE MAGIC FLUTE--TITUS--THE REQUIEM.

Haydn’s Opinion of Mozart--Made Court Composer by Joseph II.--Don
Giovanni in Vienna--Mozart’s Extreme Poverty--His Cheerfulness
under Adverse Circumstances--“The Song of the Swan”--Other
Compositions--Mozart’s Opinion of Handel--He becomes Acquainted
with Sebastian Bach--Mozart’s Opinion of Church Music--Traveling
Again--Some of Mozart’s Characteristics--Audience with the
Emperor--Petition to his Imperial Majesty--His Religious
Feelings--Joins the Free Masons--History of the Composition of the
Magic Flute--The Mysterious Stranger--The Requiem--Success of the
Magic Flute--Mozart as Reflected in his Music--His Industry--Last
Illness--Strange Fancies--Incidents of his Last Days--His Death.

The composer of _Figaro_, Mozart himself, writes in 1785: “If there were only a single German patriot in a position of influence, with him things would wear a different aspect. But, then, perhaps, our national theatre, now only in bud, would come to full bloom; and, of course, it would be an everlasting shame for Germany, if we should seriously begin to think German, act German, speak German, and even to sing German!” Chance would have it, that, towards the close of his days he was able to give his pen and not merely his tongue, as he did here, free rein on this point. And the very fact that his circumstances became poorer, and that the parties, which prevailed at the time, succeeded in relegating him to an inferior social position, was here of decisive influence.

Haydn now writes to Prague, where Mozart had declined the composition of another opera: “You ask me for another opera. With all my heart, if you wish to have something for yourself alone.” But he would have had too much to risk in writing for the theatre there, inasmuch as scarcely any one could be compared with the great Mozart. The noble master continues: “For if I could impress on the souls of all lovers of music, but above all on the great, the inimitable works of Mozart; could I endow them with a proper comprehension of music, and impart to them the feeling with which I understand and feel them, the nations would emulate one another for the possession of that jewel.” Prague, he said, should keep such a man, but at the same time, it should remunerate him properly, for when not properly remunerated the history of genius is sad indeed. And he concludes: “It grieves me sorely that Mozart, who has no equal, has not yet been engaged at some royal or imperial court.... Pardon me for not keeping to my subject, but I am so fond of the man.”

Schwind, the painter, who, during his youth in Vienna, knew very many of Mozart’s friends, writes: “People spoke of him as one speaks of the person he loves. Why was it that ‘the great’ did nothing for him?”

The success of the _Don Giovanni_ in Prague had a good effect in Vienna, and when it was learned that Mozart was going to leave that city for England, Joseph II. named him--it was on the 7th of December, 1787--his court composer with a salary of 800 guldens in all; of which Mozart once wrote on his tax-returns: “too much for what I do, too little for what I might do.” In his position, he had no duties but to write the dancing music for the imperial masquerades! And yet, the position which Gluck held from the emperor with a salary of two thousand guldens had just become vacant by that composer’s death! Mozart must have had wicked enemies and enviers and only half friends, at this court. His patron, Maximilian Francis, elector of Cologne, was now in Bonn, where he had found young Beethoven, and the emperor himself liked the lighter music better than Mozart’s. Thus Salieri again gained the advantage; and before the opera _Azur_, which had been ordered by the emperor, was given, _Don Giovanni_ was not to be thought of.

Yet, the emperor finally ordered its performance also. It took place on the 7th of May, 1788; but the opera did not give satisfaction. Da Ponte writes: “Everybody, Mozart alone excepted, was of opinion that the piece would have to be re-written. We made additions to it, changed pieces in it, and yet, a second time, _Don Giovanni_ did not give satisfaction.” According to Da Ponte, however, this did not keep the emperor from saying, that the “work was magnificent, more beautiful than _Figaro_, but no morsel for the Viennese.” Mozart, to whom this saying of the emperor had been carried, replied: “Only give them time to taste it;” and, indeed, every performance of the opera added to its success. Haydn said, in a company at the house of Count Rosenberg, which was no rendezvous for Mozart’s friends, that he could not settle their dispute about the faults of the work, but he knew that Mozart was the greatest composer which the world then had.

And yet, at this very time, Mozart was suffering from want, actual want! The first of those mournful letters to his friend Puchberg, the merchant, is dated the 17th of June of this year. These letters afford us a picture of his condition during the last years of his life. They even foreshadow the sad, premature end of our artist. He received from _Don Giovanni_, in Vienna, altogether two hundred and twenty-five guldens. His compositions were in contents and execution too difficult for the dilettanti, and his feeling and views on art did not allow him to write otherwise; so that the publishers were not able to pay him much. Besides, those parts of his compositions which were really popular, were everywhere republished. Concerts could not be given all the time, and his receipts from all sources were too irregular. His household expenses, spite of his simple way of living, were great. He had several children, in quick succession, and Constance was taken, repeatedly, very seriously ill--in one instance, for eight whole months. He closes one of his letters, asking for, and imploring a little “momentary assistance,” according to his friend’s pleasure, as follows: “My wife was sick again yesterday. To-day, thank God, she is better: yet I am very unhappy, always wavering between worry and hope.”

This affliction of body and mind was a constant trial of his better nature. His letters next to his music afford us the most beautiful proof of the purity of his soul and the depth of his feelings. Yet the last years of Mozart’s life disclose to us a mournful picture of the existence of a German artist; and it is only Mozart’s own spirit that can lift us high above the sadness and acrimony which we are disposed to feel here.

His mind did not grow gloomy. Like the phœnix, he always rose out of the ashes of the want that consumed him--more brilliantly arrayed and fitted for a grander flight. And it is truer of scarcely any artist than of him, that his last note was like the dying strains of the swan, an echo from another and higher world, a sound at once joyful and melancholy such as had never been heard before.

The symphony in E major which was finished in these summer days of 1788, has in fact, been called the Song of the Swan. Of it Hoffman, in his celebrated _Phantasiestuecken_, beautifully says: “The language of love and melancholy are heard in the sweet voices of spirits. The night breaks into a bright purple light, and, with an unspeakable longing, we follow the forms which invite us with friendly glances into their ranks as they fly through the clouds to the eternal music of the spheres.” Immediately following this came the exceedingly powerful and life-like symphony in G minor, and the Jupiter symphony. Did mortal ever before hear the quiet jubilation of all beings as it is heard in the _andante_ of this last? The man who can write such works has higher joys than the world can give or take away. His eye full of the truest happiness, is directed towards an eternal ideal which refreshes, preserves and blesses him. The grave little _adagio_ in H minor for the piano was also written in this same year, 1788.

At this time, Handel, with his vigorous and manly nature entered Mozart’s domain. He was preparing for a friend and patron, the former ambassador to Berlin, Baron von Swieten, _Acis and Galatea_ and the _Messias_. Mozart’s opinion of Handel was, that he understood better than any one else the power of music, and that when he chose, he could use chorus and orchestra with overwhelming effect; even his airs in the Italian style always betokened the composer of the Messias. But he was destined soon to become acquainted with a greater genius, a man all imposing to him--Sebastian Bach. Handel’s freer form and his dramatic characterization were not new to him; and we may judge from the _Idomeneo_ that Mozart possessed a power not unlike that which was peculiar to Handel. Yet Bach opened to him, both as an artist and a man, a new world, but one which he had long half suspected and half known--that ocean of polyphony governed with such sovereign power. And yet the matter lay deeper.

Some one in Leipzig itself--he probably had reference to Bach--had, in a conversation, called it a burning shame, that it was with so many great musicians as it had been with the old painters: they were compelled to employ their immense powers on the fruitless and mind-destroying subjects of the church. Mozart was highly displeased at the remark, and said in a very sad manner, that that was some more art-twaddle. And he continued in some such strain as this: “With you, enlightened Protestants, as you call yourselves, when all your religion is the religion of the head, there may be some truth in this. But with us, it is otherwise. You do not at all feel the meaning of the words, _Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem_. [Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world; grant us peace.] But when one has, from his earliest childhood, been introduced into the sanctuary of our religion, and attended its service with fervor, and called those happy who knelt at the touching strains of the _Agnus Dei_ and received the communion, while the music gushing in tender joy from the hearts of the faithful, said, _Benedictus qui venit_, [Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,] it is very different; and, when now, these words, heard a thousand times, are placed before one to be set to music, it all returns and stirs the soul within him.” On this occasion, he recalled that first composition for the consecration of a church in his childhood, in Vienna, and the religious impressions he carried away from Italy of which we spoke above.

He was now in Leipzig and became acquainted with Sebastian Bach in his church compositions. Necessity had again started him on an artistic journey. His friend and pupil, prince Charles Lichnowsky, who was soon destined to play an important part in Beethoven’s life also, had asked Mozart to travel with him to Berlin where he might probably be of some use to him with the music-loving Frederick William II. Our information concerning this journey and one that followed it, is to be found in those letters to his wife, of which she herself subsequently wrote that these unstudied epistles were the best indication of his way of thinking, of his peculiar nature and of his culture. She says: “The rare love for me which these letters breathe is supremely characteristic of him. Those written in his later years are just as tender as those which he must have written during the first years of our married life, are they not?” In those letters, indeed, we have the man, Mozart as he really was, and what he had gone through in life, before us.

In Prague, the director of the theatre had almost so arranged it that he was to get two hundred ducats for a new opera, and fifty ducats for traveling expenses. This gave him new life. One of his old Munich friends, the hautboyist Ramm, who had come from Berlin, had also told him, in Prague, that the king had asked him “very often and very anxiously” if it was sure that Mozart was coming, and when he saw that he had not come, said: “I am afraid that he is not going to come.” “Judging from this,” says Mozart, “my affairs will not go ill.” In Dresden, he formed the acquaintance of Schiller’s friend, Koerner, the father of the poet, whose sister-in-law, Doris Stock, made a drawing of his picture. But all the affection he met with only turned his thoughts more lovingly to his wife and child at home. He writes, on the 13th of April, 1789: “My dearest wife, if I only had a letter from you.... If I could only tell you all I have to say to your dear picture!... And when I put it away I let it slide from me gradually, while I say: Well! well! well! and, at the last, good night, pet, pleasant dreams!” The same complete ingenuousness of a really child-like soul, of which his friends in Prague were wont to speak. One of them, Professor Niemetschek, to whom we are indebted for the first biography of Mozart, says of him: “Brimming over with the pleasantest humor, he would surrender himself to the drollest fancies, so that people forgot entirely that they had the wonderful artist, Mozart, before them.” Closing the letter to his wife, above referred to, he says: “Now, I think I have written something which the world at least will think very stupid; but it is not stupid to us who love one another so tenderly.” We shall yet see what a treasure for his art was this heart of his, which always loved, as it did, the day he was married. Only genius can manifest so much innocence and, at the same time, such depth of feeling.

In Dresden he played at court and was presented with “a very pretty” snuff-box. Here, too, was one Haessler, a pupil of Sebastian Bach, whose forte was the piano and the organ. This served to stimulate Mozart’s ability to a higher pitch. He had already become acquainted, through Van Swieten, with a number of Bach’s and Handel’s fugues. He also had frequently improvised such fugues himself, or noted them down at the request of his wife. The man who understands polyphony as Mozart shows he did in the ensembles of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_--which testify to the magnitude of his technic powers chiefly by the fact that it is only the connoisseur that notices these marvels--must really insist on perfect art in this point, also. Mozart writes: “Now, the people here think that because I come from Vienna I know nothing whatever of this kind of music or this manner of playing. I, therefore, seated myself at the organ and played. Prince Lichnowsky, who knew Haessler well, persuaded him, after a great deal of trouble, to play, too.” It then appeared that Haessler had simply learned harmony and some modulations by rote from old Sebastian Bach, and was not able to execute a harmony properly; that, as Mozart expresses himself, he was, by no means, an Albrechtsberger--a man well known as one of Beethoven’s thorough-bass teachers. But, when Haessler sat down at the piano, he fared worse yet.

Mozart now went to Leipzig, itself, and the successor of the great Sebastian, the cantor Doles, master of the choir in the church of Saint Thomas, was very friendly to him. He first displayed his powers at the organ here. Says an eye-witness: “Doles was charmed with the artist’s playing, and imagined Sebastian Bach returned to life.” “With the greatest facility,” Mozart had put all the arts of harmony in operation, and improvised the chorale, “Jesus my trust,” in a masterly manner. This way of working up a chorale was the peculiar art of the North German school of artists. As a token of gratitude, Doles caused Bach’s motetto for eight voices, _Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied_, to be sung for him. Our artist was overjoyed, and exclaimed: “That is something full of suggestion!” When Beethoven heard this same motetto with all its elemental power and magnitude, he exclaimed, referring to its composer: “His name should not be Bach (_brook_), but Meer (_the sea_).” A similar expression of opinion is ascribed to Wagner, who performed the same motetto, in 1848, in Dresden.

When Mozart heard that the church of Saint Thomas had several other such motettoes, he asked for them all, and laid the several parts on his knees--there being no score--and on the chairs about him, and gave his whole soul to their study until he had thoroughly mastered them. At his request Doles gave him a copy of them.

Can we imagine what now passed in Mozart’s soul? The artist recognized the artist. Of predecessors, with like creative powers, he could have named only Palestrina. But what moved him still more, and stirred him to the very depths of his heart, was the sublimity of the religious feeling which lives in this spirit, and which laid hold of and lifted Mozart, the Catholic, up all the more because Bach was a Protestant. “Then he grew suddenly quiet, turned bitter, drank a great deal of strong wine, and spoke not another rational word,” writes Rochlitz, who became acquainted with him at this time, and who subsequently distinguished himself as a writer on Mozart. The opera here afforded him no opportunity to display his power, and writing for his own church had little attraction, since, through the reforms of Joseph II., the expenses allowed for music, even for a divine service, the very exigencies of which had created the art, were curtailed to the very utmost. But we shall soon see from his own compositions that he was deeply affected by the sublime peace of this great choir-master. And here, in Leipzig, we notice that he did not allow melancholy, at least externally, to lord it over him. He dined the last evening he spent there at Doles’ house. His host and hostess were very sad, and begged for a memento from his hand. He wrote, in at the most from five to six minutes, on two small leaves of paper, a canon or round for each, one in long notes and very melancholy, the other exceedingly droll. “When it was noticed,” says Rochlitz, “that they could be sung together, he wrote under the one: ‘Farewell, we shall meet again,’ and under the other, ‘Wail away like women old.’ It is impossible to describe what a ridiculous and yet profound, not to say angry and cutting effect this made upon us all, and if I do not mistake, upon himself, for, in a somewhat wild voice, he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Good-bye, children,’ and vanished.”

A closer acquaintance with “old Bach,” was the only lasting gain of this long-extended journey. Frederick William I. had, after the frank opinion Mozart had given of his private band, of which J. F. Reichardt was the leader, tendered him that position, at a yearly salary of three thousand thalers. But Mozart asked himself: “Shall I forsake my emperor?” This was the expression of the home-feeling he had for Austria--a feeling the fruitful and fostering soil of which would certainly have been lost in the sands of a margrave. One hundred Frederick sd’or, in a golden snuff-box, and a commission for three quartets--the king, who himself played the cello, was very fond of this kind of music--were, however, a moderate remuneration.

His friends at home urged him at least to lay the case before the emperor; for the king of Prussia had left his offer open a whole year. Mozart had an audience with his imperial majesty. The emperor said: “How, do you want to leave me?” To which Mozart replied: “I beg your majesty’s pardon; I shall remain.” And this was the only result of the audience. To a friend, who alluded to a possible increase of salary, he gave the characteristic reply: “Who on earth would think of that at such a time?” Mozart was an Austrian and idealized his emperor, especially at this time, when Joseph’s best intentions were misunderstood in his own country, and Turkey and Belgium caused him equal anxiety. Was he, who now felt himself forsaken by his own, to see himself separated from one of the very best of his subjects? That was more than Mozart’s feelings could stand. However, the emperor now ordered that _Figaro_ should be put on the stage again. Mozart had added to it the great aria of the countess in F major, and the renewed success of the work determined the emperor to charge him with the writing of a new opera, the words of which were suggested by the thoughtless bet of two officers. It was the _Cosi fan tutte_ (So They All Do, or The Lover’s School.)

Two officers and a bachelor make a wager as to the fidelity of their intended wives, and actually succeed, with the assistance of the waiting-maid, and by desperately intimidating them, in rendering them faithless, each to the other, whereupon they take refuge in the sorry consolation: _Cosi fan tutte_--so they all do.

It is hard to imagine a subject more frivolous. But, leaving out of consideration the tone of the time--a time when it was palpably evident that the _deluge_ was impending, and when people thoughtlessly enjoyed all that was to be enjoyed--Mozart did not treat it seriously. He rather illustrated by it the masquerade character of the _opera buffa_, made of it a species of magic-lantern performance, the excuse for, and the basis, so to speak, of his dream-like music. And, indeed, that music is wonderfully balmy, like a half-veiled sunny-cloudy morning, on which every object is still concealed, or only duskily seen shining through the air--such music as only a Mozart could write. But the words were so trifling and frivolous that it was soon all over with this opera, and all efforts to resuscitate it have proved vain. It was not until life, which had become a deceptive play to the profoundly thoughtful mind of our artist, arose before him like a picture of fairy-land, that he was able to infuse into that picture the full breath of the higher truth, which is not to be found in such a coarse, hollow-eyed and worm-eaten reality as the wager of those two officers. This brings us to the _Magic Flute_, and to the final perfection and full concentration of Mozart’s purposes and powers.

_Cosi fan tutte_ was given on the 26th of January, 1790, and was very successful. The work was written entirely in the light style of Italian music, so popular at the time. But the man who had prompted it never saw it. The emperor Joseph was sick at the time it was given, and fell a victim to the grief and worry of the last years of his reign, in February, 1790, without having done anything further for Mozart. In no year of his life did Mozart write fewer musical compositions. He ascribes this fact himself to his extreme pecuniary distress. To his shame, and still more to ours, who have come after him, he was obliged to write, just at this time, to his “dearest friend,” Puchberg: “You are right in not deigning to answer me. My importunity is too great.... I can only beg you to consider my circumstances in all their bearings, to pity and forgive my warm friendship and my trust in you.” Even his industry did not avail him. His compositions found no purchasers. They were above the comprehension of the people of his time, and thus he was soon left entirely without the means of support. The keeper of a neighboring inn surprised him one morning early, waltzing about his room with Constance. They were without fuel, and took this strange way of protecting themselves against the cold. O the mortal pilgrimage of genius!

A petition to the new emperor, Leopold I., and a memorial to an archduke, were drawn up, the draft of each of which is still extant. The court had its own orchestra in the court chapel of Saint Augustine; and, mindful of the church of Saint Thomas, in Leipzig, Mozart says, in his petition to the emperor: “A desire for fame, love of action, and a conviction of my abilities, embolden me to petition for a second place as _Capellmeister_, especially, as the very able _Capellmeister_, Salieri, never devoted himself to the church style of music, while I have made that style a favorite study from my youth.” He also requested to be allowed to instruct the royal family “because of the little fame the world had accorded him for his skill at the piano.” He had great hopes because the emperor retained his petition. But Gluck’s former patron was not friendly to Mozart, and, besides, it was scarcely to be expected that any one who had stood in close relations with Joseph I. would find favor in his eyes.

On the 17th of May, 1790, the composer of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ was obliged to write: “I have now two scholars. I would like to bring the number up to eight. Try to spread it abroad that I am giving lessons.” In the meantime, he finished at least three quartets for Frederick William I., and, through Swieten, received Handel’s _Alexander’s Feast_, and the _Ode for Saint Cecilia’s day_, to re-arrange. When Mozart saw that, on the occasion of the presence of the King of Naples, in September, 1790, he was passed over entirely, and that Salieri, as well as his pupil, Weigl, were preferred to him, he became convinced that he would have to seek his fortune in foreign parts. The emperor was to be crowned in Frankfurt, in October. Mozart decided on going there. He took his eldest sister-in-law’s husband, the violin player, Hofer, with him; for he had no doubt of his success on this occasion. It was not vouchsafed to him, however, to attach himself to the court as its composer of chamber music, and his silver-ware had to go to the pawn-shop, that he might procure as much as a vehicle to travel in. This journey for the purposes of his art--it was destined to be his last--is described in his letters to his “best and dearest wife of my heart.” They breathe the deepest melancholy. In reading them, we cannot fail to see that the shadows of death were even now playing about his head.

As if he had not been the most industrious of workers, he writes to his wife at this time: “I am now firmly resolved to do my very best here, and then I shall be heartily glad to be with you again. What a glorious life we shall live after this! I shall work--O how I shall work! that I may never again get into such a fatal state in consequence of unexpected contingencies.” He was, indeed, literally “immersed” in music. His application had so distracted him, and his mind was so unhinged in consequence, that he did not dare even to cut his own meat in eating, lest he might injure himself. His strange contortions of countenance and his strange gestures showed that his thoughts were far from being in the world about him. He had fallen into the hands of usurers, and that “un-christian class of people,” as he called them, succeeded in involving him completely in their meshes.

But, unfortunately, he was soon forced to the conviction, that, even in Frankfort, there was not much for him to do. In a letter of the 30th of September, 1790, to his wife, he says: “I am exceedingly glad to go back to you again. If people could only look into my heart I would be almost forced to blush. I am so cold, so icy cold to everything. If you were with me, perhaps I would find more pleasure in the kind treatment I receive from people; but, as it is, my heart is empty.” On his journey home, he visited Mayence where Tischbein, Goethe’s friend, painted his picture. He was going to Mannheim. “O the golden days of a heart’s first love!” What thoughts must have possessed him at this time! For, did not all Vienna know how happily he lived with his Constance, while the unhappy relations of Aloysia with her husband were matter of discussion in the public press? But why was it that the man who, at that time, gave promise of such a career of happiness, was now obliged to travel about the world in search of his daily bread? The thought of this filled his soul with bitterness, at the very time that he was invited to Munich, on account of the King of Naples, to a concert at court. He writes: “A pretty honor for the court of Vienna that the King has to hear me in a strange country!” And, indeed, the court’s neglect of him was the chief cause of the sad plight he was in.

His journey had cheered and strengthened him, but it had not improved his pecuniary condition. He could, in consequence, redeem only a portion of the silver-ware he had pledged, and the rest of it was lost entirely through his too great confidence in a Masonic friend. At this time, one of the directors of a London concert company, J. P. Salomon, had come to Vienna to take Haydn--his old patron prince Esterhazy having died--to London. Mozart was to follow after. His parting with the “old papa” was touching in the extreme. We saw above how deep his feeling of affection was for Mozart. The latter, with tears in his eyes, and at a time when he might well have thought rather of his own death, said to Haydn who was so much older: “This is probably our last good-bye, in this life.” He divined only too well. Haydn shed bitter tears of sorrow when he heard of Mozart’s premature death a year later, in London. He now wrote: “Posterity will have to wait a hundred years for another like him;” and again, many years afterwards: “Pardon me, but I must always weep when I hear my dear Mozart’s name.”

Mozart’s soul was deeply affected. But his mind soared into regions beyond this life, where compensation for its inequalities would be found. The debt that weighed upon him now was light in comparison with the wealth he had labored so industriously and devotedly to give the world, and which he was still bestowing on it. And hence it has genuine melancholy, not pain nor plaintive sighs that filled his soul. The golden light of consolation tinged all his work. A friend had once written in his album. “Love! love! love! is the soul of genius.” He now interpreted these words in the sense of eternal love and merciful goodness. A spirit of wonderful sweetness and reconciliation henceforth animates all his music. We need only remind the reader of the two “fantasias” for four hands in F minor. They were written in the winter of 1790-91 “at the urgent solicitation of a friend, a great lover of music,” for an orchestration, in which one Count Dehm produced, for the benefit of his countrymen, a number of distinguished historical characters in wax; and which was intended for the “mausoleum” of the celebrated Field-marshal Laudon. In it we reach the sunny heights of Mozart’s genius, and see how he dived down into, and was absorbed by, his own hard and chequered life, and how he was again lifted up to that eternal spring from which his own as well as Bach’s sublime religious art proceeded; the union of sanctified personal feeling to the sensible presentation of the Eternal itself, to which the human soul looks up in silent, earnest faith and resignation. It was time that another opportunity were offered to Mozart to give complete expression to this final and highest feeling of the human breast; and it was afforded him. Mere accident led to what he aimed at. We are thus brought face to face with his _Magic Flute_ and _Requiem_; works ushered in by those fantasias, like bright morning stars, just as the quintet in G minor had preceded his _Don Giovanni_.

In order fully to appreciate the place these two works fill in Mozart’s own life, we must turn our gaze backwards, for a time.

We know what Mozart’s heart-felt religious feeling was. He disclosed it in the frankest way whenever a proper occasion offered. He was just as honestly attached to his Church. When he was starting on his great Parisian journey, in the interest of his art, his father wrote him: “May the grace of God attend you everywhere, may it never forsake you, and it never will forsake you, if you are industrious to fulfill the duties of a really good Catholic.” But at this time, the necessity of examining the great questions of life, death and immortality, and of disclosing to each other, in earnest conversation, the questions of the soul, was very generally felt, by people even outside the Church. And this all the more, because neither the Protestant nor the Catholic service seemed able to satisfy the spiritual cravings of the educated. The Protestant Church was divided into the opposing parties of orthodoxy and rationalism. The Catholic Church had grown torpid, stereotyped in dogma, and its worship had sunk almost to the level of mere theatrical mummery. Oneness of spirit soon led to leagues or unions and orders of which the order of Free Masons attained the greatest importance. Of the men who constantly bore in mind the intellectual life and elevation of the German people, Lessing, Wieland, Herder and Goethe belonged to this order. And since it was its aim to realize the highest virtues of Christianity, the purification of the mind and heart by the sacrifice of self, and the assistance of all men, it was impossible that a man like Mozart should not have felt drawn to it.

He joined the order in Vienna, and so true did the doctrine of the sanctifying nature of death as the real “object and aim of life,” and as the symbol of the self-sacrifice we should be ever ready to make of ourselves, seem to him that he did not rest until he had induced his father to join it also. They, indeed, destroyed the correspondence with one another, on this subject. But the _Magic Flute_ bears witness to the earnestness with which Mozart held to these sublime truths of Christianity, even outside the Church. Its history is as follows:

Schikaneder who, as far back as 1780, had known how to make use of young Mozart in Salzburg, had been some years in Vienna, and had a small wooden theatre in the Stahremberg _Freihaus_.[9] His inexhaustible good humor made him very good company, and Mozart had long enjoyed himself in the circle of his theatrical friends. Schikaneder had frequently, when acting as theatrical director, alternately reveled in superfluity, and almost starved. Now, in consequence of the competition of the theatre in the Leopoldstadt, he was brought to the very brink of ruin. This was in the spring of 1791. He applied to Mozart for a “piece that would attract.” He said that he had a proper subject, a _Magic Opera_, and that Mozart was the man to write the music for it. It was an unparalleled piece of impudence, and one which discloses Schikaneder’s whole character, to ask the emperor’s composer, the author of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ to write a _Magic_ _Opera_ for a board booth in the suburbs. But Schikaneder knew the world and knew Mozart. And then he was linked to him by the ties of brotherhood in the order of Free Masons. To that brotherhood, Mozart himself owed the steady assistance he received from Puchberg. And hence his objections were soon overcome by the description the sly director gave of his extreme poverty. “If we are unfortunate in the matter, it will not be my fault,” Mozart replied; “for I never yet composed a ‘magic opera,’” and with these words, he went immediately to work.

To the clown, Schikaneder, the bird-catcher, Papageno--who understood so well how to describe the good natured, rather timid, fanciful, easy-going nature of the average Viennese--was of more consequence than the other nobler characters of the opera. But to the composer, the chosen play was a reflection of life such as he had seen it in his own soul for years, and above all, as it was in the heart of the loving pair who, separated by adverse fate, were destined to meet again in more intimate union; and in the _Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schoen_, we hear once more the first heart-felt love notes of his youth, more beautiful and more full of soul than ever. But we would call attention also to the ideal charm and transformation of all the other powers that appear in this magic play. Mozart really felt the existence of higher powers, and that they preside over our lives. The rehearsals of the first act began as early as July; for Schikaneder had the tact to win Mozart over to himself completely. He had even given up the summer house in the garden to him, and endeavored to provide him with the most cheerful society. The accounts that have come down to us representing Mozart as a frivolous pleasure-seeker originated about this time. But we need only read the letters which he wrote during this same time to his wife, who was not far away,--she was in Baden on account of sickness,--to see that his soul was not in these outer pleasures. Yet after all, what remained to him whom the great world disdained but the little world about him? He was now literally at the bottom round of the ladder, socially. The fact that he had, besides, to strain every nerve to eke out a mere existence for his wife and child, had an effect upon his entire system, which could be removed only by good-fellowship and wine. The increased action and concentration of all the powers of his mind and body, naturally called for in artistic and above all in musical invention, necessarily leads to the craving for enhanced enjoyment, if only for a few moments. And that Schikaneder knew how to procure such moments of enjoyment for Mozart, that he might own him entirely, and make the composer serve his purposes, we may infer from the story, that after Mozart’s death, which followed so soon on this, Schikaneder went about crying out: “His ghost pursues me wherever I go. He is always before my eyes!”

But more important than the question, how much of a pleasure-seeker Mozart was, is the fact that his somewhat irregular mode of life, at this time had a bad influence on him mentally. Two causes cooperated to produce this effect.

In May, 1791, he had solicited the position of assistant musician in the church of St. Stephen, for the reason that “he could consider himself more competent than others for the position, because of his more thorough knowledge of the church style of music.” He had long wished to find something to do in this sphere again, especially since the new emperor had removed the narrow limits put to it by the emperor, Joseph. Now he was asked to write a requiem, the most solemn music in the worship of his church; and the request came to him under the strangest, nay under mysterious circumstances. A long, lean man, dressed in gray, with a very serious expression of countenance, handed him the commission for the requiem in a very flattering letter. Mozart communicated the matter to his wife, saying, at the same time, that he longed to write some music of that kind once more, and to produce a work which friends and foes alike might study after his death. He took the commission and asked, as the entire price of the work, fifty ducats, without however, fixing the time when the work should be delivered. The messenger came once more, paid the money and promised an additional sum, the composer to write precisely as he felt, and only when he felt like writing, but to make no effort to discover the person who gave the commission, since any effort of the kind would be in vain.

We now know that it was one count Walsegg who gave the commission for the work, intending to have it performed as his own at the death of his wife. But the mysteriousness surrounding the commission took complete hold of Mozart’s mind. He looked upon it as a commandment from on high. His soul was already filled with thoughts that lead beyond the limits of this life. Added to this was the other circumstance referred to above.

The first act of the _Magic Flute_ was finished as far as the finale when Schikaneder was informed, to his sorrow, that the same thing was being played with the greatest success by the competing theatre. But he did not despair; it was resolved to change the point of the play, to transform the wicked wizard who had stolen the princess whom Tamino was to recover, into the sage and philanthropist Sarastro, and, instead of the disconsolate mother, to put the evil-minded “queen of the night” with her Moors and the three ladies in black. These changes occasioned a noticeable disparity and much that was contradictory in the opera as a whole; but, on the other hand, Mozart could now put his whole soul into it, and to this incident we are indebted for the most earnest and beautiful effusions of his mind and heart. The whole work now centered about the idea of free-masonry. By the earnest trial of their moral power, mortals must win their higher immortal portion, and with it their happiness. The bonds that unite the two lovers are purified and sanctified, transmuted into the more powerful and lasting life-bonds of marriage, which freed from all passion by the labors of love and resignation, discloses the real object and meaning of love. And, indeed, who had ever more purely tasted the sweets of this ever-virginal, marital love than Mozart, who even now, so many years after he was married, closed a letter to his wife with these words: “Good-bye, my dear, my only one. Two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine and a half kisses are flying from me through the air. Put out your hands and catch them; they are waiting for you. A thousand sweet kisses. Thy Mozart forever.”

And now as to the character of Sarastro. Of all the human shapes that Mozart had met in life, his father’s, after that of his beloved Constance, had the firmest hold upon him, and this spite of his misunderstandings of, and even want of confidence in, his son, in his declining years. And had not his personal experience with men, next to his artistic experiences, come to him, in real life and even in public life, in the guise, so to speak, of the rulers of his existence? Was not the emperor Joseph and the order of Free Masons the highest ideal of purely humanitarian aims that his imagination could conceive? All this had nothing whatever to do with his religious feelings. His Church and his own personal faith were things apart. He thought, indeed, that their abuses, as for instance the immoderate increase of the religious orders, might be attacked, but that which constituted their very core, and their truth, were sublimely beyond the reach of doubt. But while these last, in that which is imperishable in them, now found their holiest expression in the _Requiem_, it could not but be, that those parts of the new opera descriptive of those higher purely human aims, should participate in the solemn sacred tones that poured from Mozart’s soul. And hence we need not hesitate to say that the _Requiem_ and the _Magic Flute_ tell us all that Mozart’s heart knew and felt of heaven and of earth, that it transfigured the earthly in the light of heaven, and sought from heaven to bring down peace to earth. We know this both from the chorus: _O goldene Ruh’ steig hernieder, Kehr in den Menschen Herzen wieder_, as well as from Tamino’s painful, longing exclamation: _O ew’ge Nacht, wann wirst du schwinden? Wann wird das Licht mein Auge finden?_ It is the expression of a homesickness divine, a craving for God, the highest good for the human soul.

Obstacle after obstacle was placed in the way of the completion of both works. The Bohemians had ordered a great opera, _Titus the Mild_, for Leopold’s coronation. There were only a few weeks remaining during which it could be written. Mozart started immediately on his journey. It was the middle of August. Constance again accompanied him. As they were entering the carriage, the mysterious messenger in gray stood before them. Mozart quieted him with the assurance that the _Requiem_ was the first task that would engage him after his return. Yet this seemed to him a new warning not to postpone the last work of his life; for such he considered the _Requiem_ to be. He felt unwell even now. He overworked himself in Prague--_Titus_ was written and put in rehearsal within a fortnight--and thus accelerated the breaking down of his already over-taxed, vital energies. Added to this was the want of success of the opera. He had this time forgotten the rule “hasten slowly,” and the quintet in great dramatic style in the first finale, could not conceal from his Prague audience, who were certainly indulgent, the absence of the artist’s peculiar skill. Titus remained an _opera seria_, a bundle of arias, and the applause Mozart was wont to meet with, failed him, even in Prague. He was very much depressed in consequence. He again, indeed, recovered his native cheerfulness, but in leaving Prague the tears flowed abundantly. He had a presentiment that he would never see those friends again.

In the middle of September, he was in Vienna once more. The _Magic Flute_ was to be put on the stage, and might serve to make up what he had lost of reputation in Prague. Besides, it was part of his great life task. King Leopold had abolished the order of Free Masons, and it, therefore, now seemed to Mozart, simply a duty he owed to his order to put its humane aims in their true light, by every means in his power. And what a refulgence streams from the choruses of the second act, from the overture which, as well as the introductory march of the same act, so suggestive of _Idomeneo_, was only just written! “Through night to light!”--such is the sense in which Mozart wrote and understood the entire work, the accidental garb of which did not mislead him in the least. Into one of the pieces descriptive of this earnestness of moral trial of the heart, Mozart went as far as to weave a Protestant chorale. It is the song of the _Geharnischten Maenner_--the “men in mail;” and its “figuration” shows that Mozart had added Bach’s artistic characteristics to his own. But he had also appropriated his spirit of deep piety and genuine virtue! Nothing exhibits more clearly how solemn and high his vocation as an artist was to him, nor proves more forcibly that, for him, there was no secluded spot where alone the ideal and the divine were to be taught. The ideal and the divine should, like the sun, shed their rays everywhere, and the stage was the place where our artist felt that he could address, from his inmost heart, his nation and his contemporaries.

And what a work we have before us here! There never was a greater contrast between an ideal work of art and the place and occasion to which it owed its origin, than between the _Magic Flute_, one of the starting-points of the most ideal efforts of the German nation, and the audiences of a board booth in a suburb of Vienna!

We must, indeed, leave the trivialities and absurdities of the libretto out of consideration. And even here, Mozart’s music succeeded in turning deformity into ideal beauty; and this spite of the fact that the “bird-catcher,” Schikaneder, is said to have suggested many of the melodies to him which have since come into such universal favor. There is still a note of his extant in which we read: “Dear Wolfgang! In the meantime, I return your pa-pa-pa to you. I find it about right. It will do. We shall meet this evening. Yours--Schikaneder.” A church hymn was afterwards put to the air: _Bei Maennern welche Liebe fuehlen_. How ideal must not those lines have been when the higher moral sentiments could be awakened by so simple an air!

That best known of all solemn songs: _In diesen heil’gen Hallen_, has this very tone of the dignity of a heart that has mastered itself, and wisely and lovingly thinks only of humanity. Only the fact that it is as well known and as familiar to us as light and air, allows us to forget that it is as lustrous as the one and as ethereal as the other. The character of Sarastro personifies what Mozart conceived to be the deeper meaning of life. Pamina is the most beautiful expression of pure love and tenderness. Tamino is the ideal character of a youth who restrains his own feelings under life’s stern rule--and thus insures for himself and those confided to him by fate, the happiness of life. We need only ask the attention of the reader to the exclamation in the conversation with the priest, _der Lieb und Tugend Eigenthum!_--“love’s and virtue’s prize!” With the fullest expression of heart-felt conviction, these few tones describe the whole moral stability of Mozart’s nature.

It is not hard to see in what relation these characters stand to the heroes and female characters of Richard Wagner, and it is not without reason that Francz List has called the _Ring of the Niebelungen_ the _Magic Flute_ of our day. Wagner here filled out the clear outline of the human ideals which Mozart drew in the _Magic Flute_ from his knowledge of the German nature. All the sublime ideal powers which move and lead us, from the conscious emotions of our own hearts to the elemental, primeval forces which determine our will are here found, in the faintest outlines, it is true, but still as the first features of the surest characterization; and as Osmin points to Fafner, the “three boys” who lead Tamino point to the three daughters of the Rhine who warn Siegfried of his death. It was the first time that that which lives in every human breast as the consciousness of the most intimate knowledge of the real constitution of the world, and fills us with the feeling of the eternal, was portrayed with such Rafaelite, ideal art in opera. This it is that gives to the whole work its peculiar tone. Like the golden light of creation’s first morning, it plays about the opera of the _Magic Flute_.

The reception accorded to the work, the popularity of which is unequalled in any nation, was in keeping with its merits. The first representation of it took place on the 30th of September, under Mozart’s own direction. After the overture, the audience was perfectly motionless: for who could have expected such solemn, thrilling notes in a _Magic opera_? Schenk, who afterwards composed the _Dorfbarbier_, the teacher of Beethoven, who still occupied a place in the orchestra, crept up to the director’s chair, and kissed Mozart’s hand, who, continuing to beat time with the other, gave him a friendly look of recognition and gently stroked his cheek. Our artist felt that, even here, in this board booth, he was in his own dear Vienna, in his own beloved Austria. But, even after the close of the first act, the applause was not great, and it is said that Mozart went pale and perplexed to Schikaneder, who quieted and consoled him. During the second act, however, this motley multitude discovered the message that this music conveyed to the soul. It was, indeed, with difficulty that Mozart could now be moved to appear on the stage. It wounded him to the quick to think that the best he could do was so little appreciated. But he was soon able to write to his “best and dearest wife” at Baden, that, spite of the fact that it was mail day, the “opera was played before a very full house and met with the usual applause.” His feeling for the work is expressed at the close of the letter, in the words of the incomparable terzetto, when Sarastro dismisses the two lovers to make proof of their love: “The hour is striking farewell! we shall meet again.” With the unconcern of his own magnanimity he himself ushered in his mortal enemy, Salieri, and the latter found the work “worthy of being produced before the greatest monarch at the greatest festivities.” And how frequently this very thing has happened since! But the people continue Mozart’s real sovereign, the people in the most ingenuous innocence of their every impulse and emotion and of the most ideal view of life’s ultimate nature. And Mozart belongs to the people. To them, he is not dead.

But the hour of our parting ourselves with this phenomenal artist and phenomenal man will soon strike.