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The crowd of mediocrities dimly felt him to be their master, and the greater the masterpieces he achieved the more vehemently did Salieri and his attendants protest that he was not a composer to compare with Salieri.
Salieri took care of the family and educated the two daughters as opera singers. His generosity was shown in numberless ways, and if by mishap he did not especially approve of Mozart, he was on most cordial terms with Haydn and Beethoven. He gave lessons and money to poor musicians; he loved nature piously; was exuberant; was devoted to pastry and sugar-plums, but cared nothing for wine.
While an artist like Herr Schuppanzigh was at the head of the first violins, and by his fiery and expressive mode of conducting kindled the zeal of the whole orchestra, Herr Kapellmeister Salieri did not scruple to give the time to the drums and cannonades; Herr Spohr and Herr Mayseder, each worthy from his talents to fill the highest post, played in the second and third rank.
After Haydn, Albrechtsberger and Salieri were for a time his teachers, but Beethoven got on no better with them, and Albrechtsberger said, "Have nothing to do with him; he has learnt nothing, and will never do anything in decent style." Perhaps not in your pedant's style, O great contrapuntist! Beethoven cannot be said to have been unfortunate in his friends.
The month of July, 1791, found Mozart at home in Vienna at work on a magic opera to help his friend Salieri, who had taken a little theater in the suburb of Wieden. One day he was visited by a stranger, a tall man, who said he came to commission Mozart to compose a Requiem. He would neither give his own name nor that of the person who had sent him.
The possession that music held over his nature shows itself clearly in the sudden outbreak of his genius. His family opposed the idea of his becoming a musician; and until he was twenty-two or twenty-three years old his weak will sulkily gave way to their wishes. In obedience to his father he began his studies in medicine at Paris. One evening he heard Les Danaïdes of Salieri.
During the time of her art reign she appeared in many of the principal operas of Piccini, Salieri, Sacchini, and Grétry, showing but little less talent for comedy than for tragedy. She retired from public life to become the wife of the Count d'Entraignes. Her tragic fate many years afterward is one of the celebrated political assassinations of the age.
The noise impressed Da Ponte, the libretto-monger, and he asked Salieri to set his best libretto and gave Mozart only his second best; and thus by a curious irony stumbled into his immortality through sheer stupidity, for his second best libretto was "Don Giovanni" of all possible subjects precisely that which a wise man would have given to Mozart.
The battle between Handel and Bononcini, as the exponents of German and Italian music, was also repeated in after-years between Mozart and Salieri, Weber and Rossini, and to-day is seen in the acrimonious disputes going on between Wagner and the Italian school. Bononcini's career in England came to an end very suddenly.
The audience paused; all forgot the imperial hymn, and looked only at the venerable old maestro, whom Salieri and Kreutzer lowered now softly into the easy-chair, which had been brought to them. "Take me home, dear ones," he said, faintly, "sing on, my 'Creation'; my soul will remain with you, but my body can no longer stay. Old age has broken its strength. Farewell, farewell, all of you!