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Then it sounds out in all its glory, terse, closely gripped section to section, until the Valkyries' call is heard; purely pictorial passages follow; the theme is played with, even as Mozart and Beethoven played with their themes, and at the last the whole force of the orchestra is employed, and his object is attained he has given us a picture of storm such as was never done before, and he has done what was necessary for the subsequent drama made us feel the tremendous might of the god of storms.
It was virtue which bore me up in time of trouble; to her, next to my art, I owe thanks for my not having laid violent hands on myself." That Mozart had been able to compose music to such libretti as those of "Don Giovanni" and "Cosi fan tutte" filed him with pained wonder.
Wagner has taught us better on these points. The music of Fidelio has force and grandeur; some of it has a sensuous beauty that reminds us of Mozart at his best. Had Beethoven's choice fallen to a better libretto, the result might have been an altogether better opera. It may, in the right hands, come to be a greater work of art, viewed in its entirety, than either of the forms just mentioned.
Give Mozart a fairy tale like the Magic Flute or a lively comedy such as Le Nozze di Figaro and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece. It is a question whether there is any essential difference between history and mythology. History is made up of what probably happened; mythology of what probably did not happen. There are myths in history and history in myths.
Handel, even as a boy, wrote a new church composition for every Sunday. Mozart began to write music when less than five years old, and when he was yet a boy, in Rome, he wrote down a composition, sung by the choir of the Sistine Chapel, which was forbidden to the public. Harmony and counterpoint stand to music very much as spelling and grammar stand to language.
As he did not, however, at once succeed in procuring employment in this profession, he was forced, from his straitened means, to enter the service of Canon Count Thun as valet. In 1747 Leopold Mozart married Anna Maria Pertlin, a foster-child of the Convent of St. Gilgen.
And then how all the family would go back into the sitting-room after dinner; and how Tom, the family "Mozart," would sing "Home, Sweet Home;" and how Grandma Scott would rub her eyes with her handkerchief, and declare that the room smoked!
he "measured himself against Beethoven and Mozart" by playing in a public concert; at sixteen years of age he wrote his Première Symphonie. As he grew older he soaked himself in the music of Bach and Händel, and was able to compose at will after the manner of Rossini, Verdi, Schumann, and Wagner.
One would have said that this little barbarian was put there for a wager. His articles from 1884 to 1887 are full of life and humour. He upholds the great classic masters in them: Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner; he defends Berlioz; he scourges the modern Italians, whose success at Vienna was simply scandalous; he breaks lances for Bruckner, and begins a bold campaign against Brahms.
The nearest approach to any such enthusiastic tribute, is that which sometimes awaits the successful tragic poet at the representation of his dramas; but, besides the lion's share of applause which the actor is apt to appropriate, what dramatic writer, in our own experience or history, has been greeted with such homage as that paid to Handel, when the king and people of England stood up in trembling awe to hear his Hallelujah chorus? that which hailed Mozart from the enraptured theatres of Prague when listening to his greatest operas? that which fanned into new fire the dying embers of Haydn's spirit, when the Creation was performed at Vienna, to delight his declining days, before an audience of 1500 of the Austrian nobility and gentry?
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